One of my favorite treats of traveling, especially to a great city like San Francisco, is getting to dine at small chef-owned restaurants. This trip, our son who lives there chose the restaurants, but I approved of the list. All of the places were great!
The first night we arrived, Sean picked us up at the airport and we drove straight to the first restaurant on our list for a late reservation. Flour & Water in the Mission district. You'd think that at 9:30 p.m. on a weeknight would mean you'd have the place to yourself. But not in this city. The place was packed and we had to wait a bit for our table.
No problem though, as I love to check out the place, people-watch, and get our bearings before being seated. Flour + Water is another great SMALL restaurant in the neighborhoods of San Francisco. My favorite type of restaurants to visit when traveling are off the beaten tourist-path. And this place hit the spot. Four + Water has been nominated for a bunch of awards including Best New Restaurant by the James Beard Foundation. Located at 2401 Harrison Street - on a small corner location, it's a little gem.
From the moment we stepped inside, there was a cool, industrial-meets-farmhouse kind of vibe going on. Dark and cozy. Love it. The service was great too. The staff was friendly and relaxed. The place was packed...with people much younger than Kev and I. Oh well :) I'm getting used to being the oldest person in the place. My tastes are younger than my age.
As you can predict from the name of the restaurant, Flour & Water, is an Italian restaurant. But it's much more updated than traditional northern or southern style. It's about fresh pasta, pizza, and locally grown produce. The menus are printed each day because the chef decides what to offer based on what's available. The waitress suggested we share some small plates and each have our own entree. And that's what we did. We began with a salad (above) described as: "Sierra Beauty apples with marisa cheese, shaved fennel, mustard greens & wild arugula". Tasty!
We then shared one of their thin-crust pizzas: "Salsiccia - with braised artichokes, cardoons, clams, pork sausage & crack black pepper". Very interesting and delicious too. For my main entree I chose a pasta called "Agnolotti dal plin" which were like large ravioli stuffed with a pork and vegetable filling. Very tasty.
Flour + Water was a fun and tasty restaurant experience. When you're in this kind of place, you can almost pretend you're a local. You feel at home.
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