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ReviewIsa

Page history last edited by Mark P 15 years, 3 months ago

Isa Review

 

Isa was a good small plates French restaurant. The food ranged from okay to very good -no items significantly missed the mark- but the value to cost ratio didn't feel as high as we'd like.

 

The plates are served in a ongoing sequence, so roughly when one dish is empty or nearly empty that's when the next dish, freshly prepared and hot, arrives. The particular dishes we ordered were: 

  • Crab salad. Fine but didn't excite any of us. Greens were very fresh. Aside from the crab, the flavors were quite mild.
  • Baked goat cheese (on red peppers?) with pine nuts. Very good. Served warm, the goat cheese was excellent and the pine nuts complemented it well. (What is it about pine nuts and soft cheeses that make them work so well together?)
  • Seared yellow fin tuna. Very good. The sides were well-seasoned with a spice mix with a slight kick. Very tasty; the flavor of the insides wasn't really noticeable above this, but who cares what the inside of a seared piece of tuna tastes like? One wants the seared flavor, and they delivered. Though it is slightly odd that some pieces were left raw in the middle while others were cooked through.
  • Potato wrapped sea bass. Fine. Oddly, the restaurant is supposedly famous for this dish, but we were unimpressed. Parts of the potato peel that were crispy were good, but the sea bass was nothing special, and the whole dish (served with capers and tomatoes) was fairly salty (especially the tomatoes).
  • Steak with potato fries. Good quality steak with a steak-sauce like flavor (which was good but remarkable because most steaks aren't served like this). (The steak looked like it had a thin film of the sauce on it and between every slice; this could be from heavy marinating or how it was cooked.) A tad salty. The potato fries were also very good.
  • Crispy chicken with mashed potatoes. Very good. We loved the crispy skin of the chicken. We were surprised the whole dish was Zuni's quality of chicken, with the one detraction being the sauce was way too salty.

 

The dishes come in two sizes, and they recommend (rightly) that one should order 2-3 per person. Of the six dishes the three of us ordered (plus bread: quality fresh-out-of-oven baguette pieces), we had two small plates (the first two) and four "larger" small plates (which still aren't very large mind you). We were hungry at the end of the meal but figured it could be resolved by ordering dessert.

 

I know I usually don't discuss the service at restaurants, but this one desires mention. It was clear our waitress was new. An example: Since the plates were delivered by the chefs (it appeared), when the waitress arrived at the end of the meal, she remarked (accurately) that it had been a while since we saw her. It's both odd that it's true, and odd that she said it. Then she covered her face for a few seconds and asked about drinks and dessert, and we asked for a dessert menu. She took our drink orders and delivered them, but entirely forgot about the dessert menus. (We then abandoned dessert.) But somehow we couldn't hold all inexperience [1] against her; she's just a very amiable person.

 

The total, before drinks and tip, came to 30-something per person. And we left a bit hungry, probably needing to order enough three dishes or some desserts. Unless we were going to the before 7pm price fixe deal, we probably wouldn't come back.

 

[1] Other examples of our waitress's amateurishness:

  • It took us a while to get to place our order. (It took us a while to decide too, but we also waited quite a bit before placing the order, and apparently we had to do that before bread arrived.)
  • She asked us if we wanted bottled water or tap and when we agreed tap, she remarked that California had fine quality water.
  • Only when she asked us what we wanted to drink did she realize we didn't

    have drink menus.

 

Original Announcement

 

This Wednesday at 8:00pm we'll head to the Marina to eat at Lux, a French small-plate restaurant. It's generally well-received by chowhounders and has been a Chronicle Top 100 restaurant for years.

 

Please tell me if you are coming!

 

Comments from Other Attendees

 

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