Bix Review

Bix, an expensive eclectic American restaurant, was decent on average, with the entrees being generally good and the hors d'oeuvres and desserts being generally mediocre (some actually bad, some good). Service and decor comments below (skip ahead a while); here are overly long details on the food, contributed by myself and Ojan:

For hors d'oeuvres, we had the chef's selection and weren't thrilled with anything on it. Ojan writes: "Basically, they all looked very fancy, but tasted like nothing. They tasted so much like nothing, in fact, that none of us can remember what was in any of them. Some of them had some sort of fluffy, bready wrapper and some mysterious filling. The texture was unappealing and there was nothing to the flavor. There was one cheese with caviar that was a really flavorless cheese. Blech."

Our entrees included:

• The fresh fish of a day: We thought it was okay but nothing special. Ojan writes: "This was a tuna with some mushrooms. The mushrooms were OK, as was the tuna. There was this green sauce that went with it that was surrounding the edges. I'm not really sure what was in the sauce. It tasted decent and added *some* flavor to the tuna at least. I was not a big fan."

• Prawns with gnocchi, fennel, tomatoes, and bread crumbs: Ojan writes: "This was actually pretty good. The prawns were pretty tasty. The bread crumbs added a pretty nice texture. It had a nice sauce. But maybe this is just in comparison to the other dishes."

• Lobster spaghetti with cherry tomatoes: Quite good. Everyone agreed this was the best dish. It also happened to be the most ample. The spices were complex: slightly creamy and they certainly included large flakes of ground peppers but it was difficult to identify the individual ingredients.

• Kobe Steak with mashed potatoes (though they called this "pommes puree"): A quite good though unexceptional steak.

Desserts were: 

• Banana's Foster (a dish made with bananas, melted sugar, and liquor, flambeed, then poured over ice cream): Quite good, but then banana's foster is always quite good. Had a strong but not overpowering rum flavor (which I liked). However, I was disappointed they didn't prepare it in front of us. Any dish requiring flambeing should really be prepared as a performance piece and most times I've ordered banana's foster it has been.

• Chocolate brioche bread pudding: Fairly good. Very rich: the four of us couldn't finish it! Had dense whipped cream on top that looked like ice cream so we started eating it with the pudding as if it were ice cream. That probably also influenced our reaction to the richness of this dish.

• A cheese platter. Bad. It included one blue cheese and a red hawk cheese (which tasted vaguely blue-ish to me; none of us liked these and, yes, some of the attendees normally do enjoy blue cheeses). It also included a quite hard cheddar which was better but I certainly wouldn't call it good. One attendee really liked the (very little) toasted walnut bread the cheese came with, though the rest of us didn't think it was anything special. The platter also came a little bid of small jellied cubes (apricot?) and soft slices of dates (which were better than the cheese).

The decor really was 1930s speakeasy. The atmosphere (meaning the people and, to some extent, the decor, but not the air) was stuffy. But regarding the layout and decor, one attendee commented it could be turned with ease into a high class strip club. As for me, the feature I was most hopeful about - live jazz - turned out to be disappointing: the restaurant was too noisy to be able to easily listen to the music.

Service was okay. It was perfectly fine, except (i) we had a reservation and still had to wait 15 minutes. (They suggested waiting at the bar, but that was impossible because the bar was packed and didn't have any seating.) (ii) They provided the butter well before the rolls, which was quite odd. (On the other hand, the rolls did taste fresh out of the oven when they arrived.) (iii) There wasn't anywhere near enough butter and they didn't notice and provide us more. (They should've noticed when we had to rub our bread on the inside of the butter dish to try to get the last little bit.) (iv) They brought the two non-cheese dessert separate from the cheese one. This would be fine except that the cheese one came last. After the sweet desserts, our taste buds weren't ready to properly eat the cheese.

Ended at the (surprisingly high) total ~$55 per person, including tax and tip but not drinks.

Ojan's conclusion (which I roughly agree with): "not worth a second trip. or a first beyond the insatiable need to try new foods."

Original Announcement

This Wednesday we'll be journeying to Bix, an up-scale restaurant sometimes called a "supper club" or "like an elegant speakeasy from the 1930s" that serves American food with a little eclectic touch. With (supposedly) the best martinis in San Francisco and live jazz every night, it's consistently made the Chronicle's Top 100 restaurant list since it opened.

http://www.bixrestaurant.com/

Please tell me if you are coming! Note that the prices are a bit steeperthan the last few restaurants to which we've gone.

Addendum:

Resent to correct the subject line and correct my erroneous statement:

> it's consistently made the Chronicle's Top 100 restaurant list since it opened.

This isn't true. (I was mislead by the dates of the reviews.) It's been around for nearly twenty years, and has consistently made the Top 100 for the last three.

Comments from Other Attendees

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