Cortez Review

Cortez served us solid meal in a stylish place; we'd happily return. We ordered off the regular menu (which changes gradually throughout the year) and ended up getting to try half of it. In the end I was told to write that we should give it a "hearty endorsement" and that it does vegetables very well. (Although we ordered practically no vegetarian dishes -it served practically none-, in many dishes the vegetables surpassed the meat.)

We started with a salad of frisee (a kind of green), smoked trout (much like lox, although a different fish), and avocado, in a vinaigrette dressing. It was very good; the ingredients were quality and really went well together (especially the richness of the avocado with the trout).

Next came a good crab cake that did taste strongly of crab (unlike most crab cakes), topped with fancy-looking shredded stuff that I supposed is "citrus marinated cabbage."

This was followed by an even-fancier looking and equally good scallops topped with black truffles and placed in a white foam of "garlic-parsley froth." It was accompanied by some tasty green beans.

The next dish, salmon with mushrooms (chiodini?) and greens, was drowned by the excess of spicing on the salmon.

Ravioli filled with ricotta and topped with mushrooms and parmesan slices followed. It was a decent but unexceptional performance and didn't match up to the first few dishes.

Next came a hangar steak. (Notice how the progression of the dishes got heavier? The progressions worked. And dishes were generally well timed; after we finished one the next one arrived soon after.) The steak by itself wasn't seasoned enough but the buttery bitter greens it came with were great! And best yet, the greens complemented the steak when eaten in the same bite and really improved it. The dish also came with some mediocre onion rings.

Well-seasoned lamb also arrived at this time, accompanied by some potatoes and some pureed green stuff that I really enjoyed. (I don't know what it was when eating it and I can't recall from the menu.) All of this was good and interacted harmoniously.

The fries we ordered also arrived with the meat. They were okay crispy shoestring fries and certainly not worth the $6.50 they charged for them. They came with two dips ("harissa & zaatar spiced aiolis") but these really tasted like regular mayonnaise and spicy thousand island to us.

For dessert, we shared Cortez's most popular one: a warm chocolate peanut butter truffle cake. The cake was good but we weren't sure the peanut butter (served in the center of cake so one could get as much as one wanted with each bite) added anything. It came with ice cream that we believe was expresso ice cream and none of us appreciated it, I least of all. But the quality of the cake itself (quite good but not amazing) was deemed a "good ending" and people declared they "like this place."

Incidentally, some of us ventured into Cortez's unusual drink menu. I tried a nice drink of champagne and elderflower. Elderflower is hard to describe but one attendee that tried my drink said the fruit it was most similar to was lychee. (I found this connection tenuous but couldn't offer a better one.) Another attendee tried a gin-based elderberry drink and said it was quite strong. (Neat fact: elderberries are mildly poisonous when raw.)

The decor is notable. The layout of the colors behind the bar was like a large Mondrian painting. The lights that hung from the ceiling were a variety of similar colors. Moreover, the lights hung in spheres at the end of barbells or at the ends of crescent moon shaped metal. These contraptions of pairs of bulbs hung on cords, demonstrating an impressive knowledge of physics. And it looked really cool! Indeed, the style made one attendee observe the place could be a setting from Sex in the City (although the crowd was generally a bit older than a Sex in the City crowd would be).

The table settings, with glass plates and a sack (yes, sack) of bread, were similarly distinctive.

Total was ~$40/person, including tax and tip but without drinks.

Original Announcement

This Wednesday at 8:00pm we'll head a Cortez, a Mediterranean-inspired small plates restaurant near the financial district (that was recommended by one of you!). Although it is participating in SF Dine About Town ( http://www.sfdineabouttown.com/ ), it's unclear to me how a three-course meal option will work at a sharing small plates place, so we'll probably end up ordering off the regular menu.

http://www.cortezrestaurant.com/

Tell me if you are coming!

Comments from Other Attendees

Seth's Comment:

This was the best of the mpearson dining places I visited. It epitomized California cuisine done right - fresh ingredients cooked in a way that emphasized the value of using them - highlighting dishes in a clever way. In fact, without the fresh greens, most of the food would have been pretty disappointing, but they complemented their meats very well. The hangar steak was a great example.

-Seth

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