Tadich Grill Review

At Tadich Grill we were served an assortment of thoroughly drab seafood (drab in taste, not in presentation) by rude or weird waiters.

We were seated to find a loaf of sourdough bread already on the table. Slightly stale, it's "seen better days."

Per our waiter's encouragement, we tried deep-fried crab legs as an appetizer. While almost entirely crab with a very thin batter, one person remarked, ignoring the distinctive crab texture, the lack of any crab flavor means this dish might as well have been chicken. Still, it was served with some very good zesty tartar sauce, and the crab legs served as a good carrier for it.

(We had originally planned on ordering fried calamari as our appetizer, consciously eliminating crab legs because I thought they were out of season and therefore likely to be frozen. The waiter's endorsement convinced us to go against our initial instincts, instincts which, judging by the taste of the crab, apparently may have been correct.)

Our entrees were nearly as disappointing. We tried two fish dishes: pan-fried sand dabs (a small fish related to flounder) and charcoal broiled petrale sole. The sole had practically no taste; the sand dabs were marginally better. Both we ended up eating with a little tartar sauce. Likewise, the potato wedges both dishes came with served even more obviously as a transport for tartar sauce. They also came with limp and obviously overcooked vegetables.

We also tried the cioppino, a seafood stew Tadich Grill is known for and for which we were all provided bibs. Definitely better than the other entrees, we were impressed by large pile of seafood in the bowl. But this happiness was misleading -- it was the broth that was wonderful; the seafood itself was sad. The fish was overcooked and flavorless, and the crab was like that in the appetizer. The baby shrimp were clearly filler. The mussels and squid were fine though. In this way, we would've loved to have more than the tiny amount of broth we had and much less of the huge pile of seafood. The accompanying garlic toast was fine.

Tadich Grill, notorious for having brusque wait-staff with decades of experience, fulfilled its promise. I tried calling ahead to get our name on the waiting list and barely got to complete a sentence. (They said no.) When adding my name at the restaurant, the person there was nearly as terse. (On the plus side, the estimate of twenty minutes was perfectly correct.) Our waiter greeted us by offering drinks and looked disappointed when asked him to come back later. (I imagine he was happier when we all ordered drinks: either gin or vodka martinis, all quite respectable.) He must've been tired; he never noticed we were one menu short, and he even dropped utensils when cleaning up at one point in the evening. A friendly guy, but these events combined with the recommendation for the deep-fried crab legs (which turned out to be 3x more expensive than our originally intended appetizer, and more expensive than any entree we ordered) made the whole service experience bumpy at best.

Although we sat in a booth, the atmosphere of the restaurant was more like that of a bar with food. A long bar ran ran through the middle of the restaurant served as the base for the waiters and bartenders, all older white males dressed in identical formal white collared shirts.

Yet no matter how boring the food, we could and did repeatedly say, "it's good tartar sauce though."

Original Announcement

This Wednesday we'll heard to the Tadich Grill. Around since 1849, it's the oldest restaurant in the city and known for its seafood. Although not widely acclaimed, chowhounds frequently point out-of-towners there because it has some distinctively San Francisco dishes (such as sand dabs).

Please tell me if you are coming. We can walk over from the Embarcadero BART station together.

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