The Short Exact Guide…

Hayes & Kebab

April 16, 2007

Hayes & Kebab is a relatively recent addition to the restaurant scene in Hayes Valley. Of course, it offers Middle Eastern fare — a more or less standard collection of items: mainly gyros, kebabs, and a handful of sides such as hummus, tabouleh, and baba ghanoush. They also offer full entree plates (featuring a kebab and a side dish), as well as some specials, posted on the board right outside the front door.

In terms of the menu, this is a fairly standard gyro and kebab joint. However, in terms of the decor, it is definitely not standard. Hayes & Kebab is located right on the edge of the increasingly fashionable corner of Hayes and Gough, and it looks like the owners have decided that such a chic address required chic decor. Okay, maybe the decor isn’t exactly chic, but compared to your standard kebab joint, it’s quite an upgrade. Decorations are draped around the room, along with several framed pictures; there is some nice wooden furniture, and the seating area is actually a pleasant place to linger. Prices here are somewhat higher than expected (it’s part of the “Hayes Valley experience,” right?), but it is still a more inexpensive alternative to the upscale joints in this area, such as Absinthe and Jardiniere.

Anyway, the room here is nice, but the main question here is: did the food deliver? We ordered an adana kebab wrap:

One quick glance at this photo tells you that not only has Hayes & Kebab has upgraded the restaurant decor, but it has also upgraded the plating. To be honest, we find it borderline ridiculous that we are even using the word “plating” in the context of a kebab joint, but there’s a first for everything. Although it sports a foil wrap, our adana kebab sandwich had been sliced on a bias and arranged attractively; the plate had even been sprinkled with parsley. Usually, doing a review for a burrito or gyro type place requires that we cut the wrap in half first before taking a picture, but in this case, Hayes & Kebab did the work for us.

Having said that, we would have preferred more attention be spent on the cooking, and less on the plating. The wrap was acceptable, but not great. The vegetables were crisp and fresh; however, the spicing of the meat needed a considerable extra dose of strength and pizzazz. The wrap was also somewhat dry, and the tahini sauce used on the wrap tasted watered down, so that the sandwich lacked a really nice flavor depth. The sandwich should also have been served with warmer bread. We did not get an opportunity to try the hummus, but from what we could tell by glancing at neighboring plates, it looked to be pretty good. Obviously, we cannot vouch for taste, but the hummus looked to have a somewhat dense consistency, and it was properly garnished with olive oil, sprinked parsley, and paprika.

One note is that the service at Hayes & Kebab, while friendly, is definitely on the slow side. It took 17 minutes for our wrap to be delivered to the table (yes, we timed it), which is pretty slow for a kebab joint, especially considering that the restaurant was not that full, and the only item we ordered was a wrap.

All in all, the food here, based on our one sampling, seems to be okay, but not noteworthy. We certainly wouldn’t make a special trek here — since the dressed-up Hayes Valley decor doesn’t really do much for us, personally — but we might stop in again for a bite before a concert, especially since this increasingly upscale neighborhood does not really have a plethora of “cheap eats.”

RATING:

COST:

406 Hayes Street (between Gough St. and Octavia St.)
San Francisco, CA 94102
Phone: 415.861.2977
Hours: Sun-Thurs, 11:00 am – 10:00 pm; Fri-Sat, 11:00 am – 11:00 pm.

Cuisine: Middle Eastern
Neighborhood: Hayes Valley/Civic Center

How to get there: Muni lines 5, 6, 7, 21, 47, 49, 71, F, J, K, L, M, N, and T. Closest underground stations are the Muni Van Ness station (4 blocks away) and BART/Muni Civic Center station (5-6 blocks away).

Posted in Cuisine: Middle Eastern, SF: Hayes Valley/Civic Center | 4 Comments »

Back to Perbacco

April 11, 2007

A few months ago, we visited Perbacco, a relatively new addition to the Financial District specializing in the cuisines of Piemonte and Liguria, two regions of northern Italy in close proximity to France. We had a fantastic lunch there, and every aspect of that experience was spot on, including prompt, attentive, and helpful service, and of course, delicious dishes featuring high quality ingredients and very good preparations. As positive as this experience was, it still was only a single experience, and for some time now, we’ve planned on a return visit to see if Perbacco could live up to our expectations by providing another whiz bang meal. This time, though, we went for dinner, since the dinner menu has some different options, including a small handful of crudo dishes (creative preparations of raw fish) that are not available at lunch. The big question, though: did this dinner live up to the standard set by the lunch from a few months ago?

Well, one thing is for sure: the starting salad certainly did not. If you read our first review of Perbacco, you might recall we were a fan of the beet salad, both for its delicious combination of contrasting flavors and for its bright, diverse colors. We enjoyed the salad so much that Short Exact and dining companion ordered it again at this dinner, but unfortunately, it did not live up to the expectations set by our first experience. Actually, the salad looked as though it had been only partially finished but accidentally brought out to the table anyway, as it was noticeably smaller (with far fewer gold and red beets) than the dish we received at lunch a few months ago. The Castelmagno cheese had the same great flavor and crumbly texture as before, but the whole salad was dry, and the promised white balsamic vinaigrette was nowhere to be found. We really should have just sent this dish back, but we were also on a time crunch to make it to a Symphony concert, and the salad was not the focal point of the meal in any case, so we just brushed the whole thing off.

Next up was the uni (sea urchin) crudo:

This crudo had a nice bright flavor furnished by the lime and kumquat, while the small slice of Serrano chili included in each bite of the crudo added an appropriate amount of heat to finish it off. Still, the impact of the Serrano was somehow too disconnected from the lime and the kumquat; we were hoping for the effect of these different ingredients to be more unified, but instead, the trajectory of each single crudo bite was a little abrupt. Meanwhile, the delicate brininess of the uni was overpowered by the other elements of the crudo, so the main contribution of the uni was its nice creamy texture, rather than its flavor. Not perfect, but this was a pretty good crudo. We didn’t have the opportunity to try any of the other crudo dishes, but on the day we visited Perbacco, four crudo total were available. In addition to the uni, there was hamachi with blood orange and fennel, a yellowfin tuna with grated apple, and sea scallops with grapefruit oil.

From the pasta section of the menu, we tried the the tortelloni,

pasta filled with bits of roast pork and prosciutto. The peas provided a well-rounded sweet flavor that was a good complement to the tinge of saltiness provided by the pork in the tortelloni. The pasta here was not quite of the delicate fine quality exhibited by the tagliatelle (with pork sugo) that we ordered on our first meal here, but it was definitely decent. To top it off, the dish was served with a teasing broth that is a mixture of beef, lamb, and pork stocks. This pasta dish was not a revelation, but it was still rather successful, on the whole.

By far, the winner of the night was the milk-braised Berkshire pork shoulder:

One note here: Short Exact split this entree with our dining companion, so the portion size you see in the above photo is smaller than a full entree portion.

The pork shoulder rested on a bed of fresh, crispy Savoy cabbage, and it was served with a side of Anson Mills polenta that was creamy, with a very delicate sweetness. The main star of the show, though, was the pork shoulder, which was rich and deeply flavorful. It was certainly tender, but not consistently so. While some sections of the shoulder were merely somewhat soft, other sections were so exceedingly tender that the meat literally melted underneath the slightest pressure from our fork. Nonetheless, it was a very good dish, and we would order it again. Judging from this pork shoulder, the pasta with pork sugo we ordered on our last visit, and the house-cured salumi misti (also from our last visit), it is clear that despite the availability of vegetarian dishes on the menu, Perbacco excels in its preparations of meat dishes, particularly pork.

Although we reported on our first lunch at Perbacco on January 29, 2007, the actual lunch took place a month earlier, at the very end of December 2006. We’re going to be completely honest and transparent here regarding our first review of Perbacco. The entirety of 2006 was an extremely difficult, taxing, emotional roller coaster sort of year for us, and the lunch at Perbacco was literally and symbolically a celebratory way of looking forward to what would hopefully be a much better year in 2007. Given this, it is entirely possible that our initial exceptionally high rating of this restaurant was colored by our enthusiasm and hope at being able to put the hard times behind us. The recent dinner we had at Perbacco was not quite as stellar of an experience, and this is likely due to a combination of an actually inferior experience and the fact that we were a bit more discriminating this time than we were at the lunch in December. The service the second time around was at least as helpful and enthusiastic as it was the first time, but the food did not perform at the level that a rating of 4.5 stars implies.

In any event, despite the mishap with the beet salad, our recent dinner at Perbacco probably floats in the 3-to-3.5 star range, with the quality service putting it at a more solid 3.5. Averaged with the 4.5 stars from our last review, we’ll update Perbacco’s rating to 4 stars. Even though the dinner was not as nice as the lunch, our overall impression is still a favorable one, and we would like to return to explore more of the menu.

RATING:

COST:

Please scroll to the bottom of our original review for the restaurant hours and contact information.

Posted in Cuisine: Italian, SF: Financial District | 5 Comments »

SF Muni’s T-Third Line is Open for Business

April 5, 2007

UPDATE (April 11, 2007): As expected, the full-time debut of the T-Third has been somewhat of a disaster, as Muni copes with the challenges of adding a new rail line to the Metro system. However, Nat Ford, Executive Director of the SFMTA, has posted an official apology on the website. Eh, it’s something, but hopefully service will be set right soon — that’s better than any apology.

UPDATE (April 12, 2007): Ford’s official apology has been removed off the website. Surprise, surprise. Muni finally shows some class and apologizes, but then… they revoke the apology. Anyway, to read more about the unfolding disaster, check out this article from the Chronicle. Or pretty much any blog or official news source, since it seems just about everyone is discussing this.

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We’re very happy to announce here on the Short Exact Guide that San Francisco Muni (the agency which operates the buses, light rail, and cable cars in San Francisco) — at long last, after years of anticipation (as well as construction errors and budget overruns) — is officially opening its new T-Third Street (or “T-Third”) light rail line for full operation, starting this Saturday, April 7, 2007. This is a very substantial change for Muni, an agency generally for known for cutting service rather than adding it. The new T-Third line, which contains over five miles of brand spanking new light rail track, runs from Sunnydale Avenue (in Visitacion Valley) on the one end, to Castro Station on the other end.

With the addition of the new line, Muni is making other service changes. Most notable is that the 15-Third bus (which essentially duplicates most of the T) is being chopped entirely, while the 9X-San Bruno Express now has an expanded route running full time, and the J-Church will run past Embarcadero to serve the ballpark and Caltrain station area at peak hours only. The S-Castro Shuttle is also effectively being discontinued, but it never came half the time anyway, so this might not be such a big loss. At any rate, click here to read about all the service changes and to see a map of the new route.

We know what you’re probably thinking: “Muni? Light rail line? This is a food blog. I came to read about restaurants and look at pictures of food, not to hear about a new Muni line. What combination of drugs is this guy on — and, might he be willing to share some of it?”

We claim that even though this post is not a restaurant review, it is still relevant to this blog. Regular readers have probably guessed that Short Exact is a bit of a public transit nut (and you would be right), since at the end of each review, we eschew providing more typical information on the parking situation, and instead suggest the transit routes you can use to reach each restaurant. Of course, the substantial service changes going into effect on April 7 render many of our old transit “itineraries” obsolete. The other point of this post (besides sharing our excitement about the new light rail line) is to let you know we have updated each and every one of our old reviews so that they are consistent with the new Muni service that starts on Saturday.

At any rate, we’ll be back to our usual programming soon, with a follow-up review of the newish FiDi Italian restaurant Perbacco. See you soon, and have fun “riding the rails”!

Posted in Miscellaneous | 15 Comments »