As is the case with many restaurants in the Mission, I’ve known about Garcon! for a while and have never gotten around to going. More’s the shame since it’s a short walk from home. I was on a date one night having some drinks down the street from Garçon! when the chef and bartender came in after closing up for the night. The girl I was with knew them (being a regular both at this particular bar and the restaurant, her office being between the two) and introduced us. I love chatting with chefs and other folks in the food industry. Now I was determined to eat there, and it just so happened that I was looking for a place to take a good friend from out of town the following Saturday.
So we had dinner there, and I enjoyed it so much that I suggested it the next week as a spot for dinner with Suzanne and a couple friends that publish Whore! Magazine (who I shall refer to using their twitter names). Also, I was so engaged with catching up that I forgot to continue taking pictures after my appetizer. This then is the result of two dinners at Garçon!
On my first visit, I had the special of the day appetizer: grilled calimari panzenella. Both the squid and bread were grilled very nicely. The reassembly of a squid tube and tentacles on top of the salad was a crowning touch. I had gone on to have the pan roasted salmon for my main course, which I enjoyed very much.
Our table of four (on to the second visit now) had a total of three appetizers as two of us made the same selection.
Suzanne went with braised lamb , mint gnocchi, english peas, pearl onion, lemon confit, natural jus. She commented later that this was rather heavy for an appetizer, and that the lamb was slightly dry.
@Whore_Magazine had caramelized veal sweetbreads, potato puree, caper, lemon, grilled endive, beurre noisette. I’m no real sweatbread fan, but he seemed to enjoy them. I will say that the presentation was great.
Both @Princess_Whore and I had grilled albacore tuna nicoise, braised fingerlings, olive, haricot vert, egg, lemon aioli. Big juicy chunks of tuna, fresh greens, crisp beans, and very tasty aioli.
@Princess_Whore was meeting friends for pizza later in the evening so limited herself to the nicoise. Suzanne chose a halibut dish on a bed of quinoa topped with cucumber and a meyer lemon sauce. Once again she found the fish to be on the dry side, which I concur with based on the sample I had of it.
@Whore_Magazine and I had the steak frites. This was reasonably good, but nothing exceptional. I’ve had better steak elsewhere, and fries are … well … fries. Truffle butter on the steak was a nice touch, though.
So overall, the first meal I had at Garçon! was far more impressive that the second. For the price I’m confident we could do better.
