September 01, 2004

2223 Restaurant & Bar

Last Friday it was one of the warmest days of the year, and the heat carried on into the night, where it was nice to be able to wander about, for once, in a tank top, unencumbered by coat or sweater (trust me, in San Francisco, this is a big deal).

2223 has windows that open up towards the street and on this evening they were appropriately wide open. Our table,m unforutunately, was in the windowless back room, which after a while and perhaps exacerbated by the large 20-person party that descended about halfway into our dinner, became a bit of an oven.

But with enough alcohol and enough good food, many things are tolerable, even if the service is a little too flippantly sarcastic for my taste, just a tad bordering on condescending. Unfortunate.

We ordered the calamari "salad" to share, and it was enormous: a huge platter of crispy golden calamari topped with cocktail sauce and what I guess was anchovy aioli. The lot was served over steamed cauliflower and broccoli, a nice twist on the regular calamari dish. For some reason I don't recall tasting much of the anchovy aioli...

The first picture above is the house speciality: herb roasted free range rocky jr. chicken, garlic mashed potatoes, blue lake beans, fried onion rings. It never leaves the menu, our server assured us. David had ordered it and it was deemed very good. I unfortunately didn't opt for a taste as I was too busy concentrating on my dish, and getting quite full after the appetizer and the wine.

Dawn ordered the pork chop, which looked absolutely huge and was served with some stir-fried Asiany-looking greens over polenta with some grilled(?) fruit on the side.

And I chose the sweetbreads -- fried and served with a panzanella bread salad. I asked for a substitution of the side: I had wanted the mushroom ragout and -- mashed potatoes? -- that accompanied the steak; but when my dish came a few minutes after Dawn's and David's it seemed that the kitchen or the server had neglected to comply. I didn't want to make a fuss, and it turned out that the panzanella was quite good: a small round of toasted or grilled bread topped with some melted cheese and over that, some dressed baby arugula and tiny tomatoes. The gooey-crunchiness of the bread and cheese was at times pretty similar to the gooey-crunchiness of the sweetbreads and crust -- perhaps the panzanella treatment was the chef's attempt to create a "vegetarian" version of sweetbreads? The coating on the 'breads was not that crisp, but it was good, and carried faint hints of cumin and other spices. I really enjoyed my entree; indeed my confession is that I chose 2223 for this very listing on the menu!

I would go back, despite the few misses -- prices were reasonable, and next time I'm going to specifically request a table in the front room.

Information
2223 Market St, at Sanchez
San Francisco, CA 94114
Fri-Sat 6:00pm-11:00pm
Sun 10:00am- 2:00pm
Sun-Thu 6:00pm-10:00pm
Tel: (415) 431-0692
Reservations are available via Open Table.
Posted by claudine at September 1, 2004 11:37 AM

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