Masas, SF

[Kahlil]

648 Bush Street
San Francisco, CA 94108
[phone]

**** 4/5 stars

one of the best french restaurants i've been to. great tasting menu. imho, it's better than french laundery which btw is over rated. good place to take a date but not kid friendly.

[Joanna Salgado Liwanag]

Eric took me there for Valentine's Day in 2003. I loved it so much that I wrote about it.

Dinner was amazing. It was a fixed seven-course menu (which turned out to be nine), where there were two different dishes for each course, and so E. got one and I got the other.

Amuse-bouche (Course 0): A little 3-inch piece of asparagus in hollandaise sauce. E.'s came with two pieces of shaved black truffle on top, mine came with a little bit of lobster.

Soup (Course 1): I got the chilled salsify velouté with a little bit of Hog Island Oyster, some little itty bitty leeks sprinkled on top, and a dime-sized dollop of Osetra caviar on top. E. had a lobster soup poured over a sprinkling of bits of root vegetables and pancetta. I didn't try his soup, but mine was excellent. The caviar complemented it perfectly.

Appetizer (Course 2): I had a crab salad on top of blood orange segments and avocado, with a mandarin gelée around the edges. It was yummy. E. had a carpaccio of ahi, with some sorrel salad and black truffle vinaigrette on top. There were two tiny potato chips on top, which E. insisted tasted baked. I had two bites of his appetizer, and while mine was great, I wouldn't have minded having his.

Seafood (Course 3): I had butter poached Maine lobster on top of a sunchoke purée and black truffle sauce drizzled on top. E. had a gigantic diver scallop (maybe an inch and a half in diameter) on top of a sweet onion ragoût and some osetra on top. While his scallop was good, the caviar tasted really fishy with it. My caviar course was better.

Fowl (Course 4): I had the sautéed Hudson Valley foie gras on top of a crispy brioche with lavender honey and quince compote, and a dove-and-tarragon jus. Incredible. I actually liked the foie gras, especially the crunchy parts on the outside, and I'm not a huge fan of it in general. Yay for the Hudson Valley! It was like a little bit of home in my mouth. E. had a California quail on top of romaine hearts and bits of crispy sweetbreads in a quail jus. Again, I don't care for sweetbreads, but they were good. I really liked the quail.

Red Meat (Course 5): I had a milk-fed tenderloin of veal on top of a gigantic (2-inch diameter) red wine braised oxtail ravioli, and julienned black truffles sprinkled on top. It was in an oxtail jus and had bits of mushroom floating around. Wow. I was starting to get full by this point, and I wasn't sure I was going to be able to eat the whole thing. The veal was the best I'd ever had, so I forced myself. It's not like it was that much anyway. I didn't find the oxtail to be anything special, but it was still good and I ate it. E. had a beef rib-eye medallion with a black truffle and bone marrow croquette and a wild mushroom risotto. He said the risotto was really really good. It must have been, because he didn't give me any.

Intermezzo (Course 6): We both got the same thing because one of the options was a lime and cilantro sorbet, and I had made it clear when I made the reservation that I absolutely HATE cilantro. The maître d' even teased me about it a couple of times. So we had a pear sorbet with a pomegranate gelée. They went together surprisingly well, and our palates were well-cleansed and ready for dessert.

Dessert (Course 7): I got a cute heart-shaped mocha chocolate torte with two little (1/2 inch diamater) balls of tangerine sherbet that had carmelized sugar underneath, and a very thin little biscuit shaped like an arrow. E. got a warm apple charlotte with a crispy brioche crust and ginger ice cream. He's not a huge fan of ginger, so he split his dessert in half and put all of the ice cream on top of the half he didn't eat. We switched plates in the middle of dessert, and I got ALL of the ginger ice cream. I didn't think it was all that gingery, and it went great with the apple.

By this time we thought we were done, and in fact we were getting very full. So we were expecting a check, when a waiter wheeled over a cart with trays of little candies all over it. He said it was on the house, and selected some candies for us to eat. We each had candied orange peels to start, because there were two of them. Then I had a raspberry caramel (which reminded me of raspberry lambic), a tiny (1/2 inch, cubed) chocolate cheesecake and a chocolate mint. E. had a fruit jelly, then a tiny pineapple cakey thing, then a cherry-filled chocolate and a passionfruit-filled chocolate. We pocketed the lollipops to eat later. They're so pretty, I wonder if we'll actually eat them.



...almost 6 years later, I don't remember whether or not we ate the lollipops.