I made some ravioli tonight for dinner: ricotta thyme filling with roasted heirloom tomato sauce. Everything made from scratch: the pasta, the filling, the sauce, and the ricotta in the filling.

Suzanne and I went to a ricotta making workshop recently and learned to make our own ricotta from scratch. Mix that with a bunch of fresh thyme, some lemon juice and olive oil. The pasta was a basic egg pasta: flour, egg yolks, olive oil, and some water. For the sauce, I took a few fresh, ripe hierloom tomatoes, cored them, rubbed them with olive oil and roasted under a 400 F broiler until they were soft, browned, and bubbling. Then I heated some olive oil, sauteed some minced garlic until it was soft but not browned. Next I broke up the tomatoes and add them to the garlic and let it simmer and reduce.

Our friend @Whore_Magazine tipped us off to Hog & Rocks, a new restaurant on 19th St (just off Mission). Their “thing” is ham and oysters. We went there for dinner recently with a serious fish and chip craving. Suzanne like oysters as well, so that was an added bonus.

The place is nice and looks like so many other trendy restaurants: open kitchen, high communal tables, lower tables to seat 2 and 4 at a time.

We went without reservations at about 5:30 on a Saturday evening. We were shown promptly to a table. Soon thereafter our server took our order for oysters, ham and a cocktail each. All this arrived fairly promptly and we gave our dinner order (and a beer for myself). The Newsom ham was very nice and Suzanne said that the oysters were as well, and had a couple rounds.

Our entrees arrived in a reasonable time. I went for the fish and chips, while Suzanne decided to try the Sea Scallops Crudo.

The fish and chips were ok. Just ok. The fish was tasty, and the chips were crisp. Everything was hot. I have a couple issues with the dish, however. It was served in a small bowl, with the piece of fish sitting on top of the chips. This made it problematic to cut the fish without mixing everything together.

The chips came with malt vinegar, as well they should. However there was no standard bottle that I’m familiar with (I’m from Canada):

Instead, there was a small dish of malt vinegar on the side. This meant that chips had to be dipped in it individually. Lame. You should be able to douse the chips liberally with vinegar and then chow down. Having the fish one top of the chips would complicate this.

To add insult to injury, there was no salt. No salt on the chips, and no salt on the table. Apparently I could have gotten some if I had asked, but as mentioned earlier, there was that great piece of fish overshadowing the chips, and thus making adding salt to the fries challenging.

Finally, it was good, but decidedly not a great, piece of fish. Also, I’d consider what I had to be a children’s size serving of fish and chips.

By now our cocktails were gone, and nobody seemed to be in a rush to refresh Suzanne’s or to bring me my beer. This kept up for some time. Far too long. In my opinion, the beer should have arrived when the fish & chips did, especially as I had ordered them together. When the beer did eventually arrive, it had no head. I can only assume that it had been sitting neglected for a while before being delivered to our table.

While the food was tasty, there wasn’t enough of it, and the service we experienced was worse than mediocre. Another gimicky and unsatisfying trendy restaurant. I doubt I’ll bother to go back.