chi Spacca
Bone marrow pie is ridiculous.
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What does the bone marrow add to that dish?
Bone marrow at Bestia pretty much makes the dish. I’m not one of the people that is super crazy about bone marrow for it’s own sake, and typically it just seems like it’s “there”, whereas the Bestia dish actually makes it a focal point that makes sense to me.
Chi Spacca pie is good, but the marrow is just kind of there it seems like…not sure if it would be any worse without it there to be honest.
To me, it does make the dish.
Cuz without it you’d just have a typical beef pot pie. Big deal.
The bone marrow flan at CUT is my favorite in the city. It is destination worthy for me.
This is going to sound blasphemous, but I actually think the best part of that dish is the brioche toast.
I don’t recall the flavor of the bread because it is usually topped with globs of flan and mushroom.
lol…so you think of the dish as just a run-of-the-mill pot pie with some bone marrow tossed on top?
+1
No
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Had a great meal at Bestia last night. The cavatelli is seriously incredible. The one let down at Bestia–consistently for me–is the desserts. They are more interesting than craveworthy. Was at Pizzeria Mozza the other week and had such great desserts–the budino, banana gelato pie, caramel copetta–nothing we had at Bestia sniffed those desserts. Even the coffee and doughnuts are just fine. On the bright side, I was stuffed with amazing food by the time the desserts came, so it was fine.
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I like Bestia’s dessert’s because they are quirky and unique. They’re more of a homemade quality than a professional chef quality, though, I think due to the wife basically doing all of them, and she has no professional experience. But heck, I’d say at least 50% of the time I don’t get dessert there, maybe more often than that.
The donuts are maybe not “spectacular” per se, but I am a sucker for the simplicity, and that thick whipped cream. Not nearly enough places do that kind of thick whipped cream.
Another stop-in at Bestia a year after creating this thread.
They’ve shifted the cauliflower to a prep that is quite simple, focusing on the cauliflower, with an excellent char, gussied up with touches of mint and dill, and taken with a deeply earthy paprika aioli. For some reason, most places cannot get cauliflower so succulent as Bestia it seems like. I always love what they do with it, and this was no exception. I did ask for extra aioli, but mostly because it was just so incredible.
I haven’t had the bone marrow and spinach gnochetti so I went for it. I’m not into bone marrow enough for 2 bones, but this remains my favorite bone marrow dish ever. I had to ask them to refire it, though, because the gnochetti was overcooked somewhat the first time around. To me, one of the greatest elements of this dish is the textural contrast between the chewy, astringent gnochetti and the gooey bone marrow that sort of creates a meatbutter sauce giving the effect of a carbonara in a way. The first bone marrow was also not quite done enough and didn’t mix into the too-soft pasta, it tasted only ok, but the refire was spot on and awesome. It really revealed how much the execution matters, and reminded me that slip ups like that are both infrequent, and happily corrected at Bestia, which is an immensely comforting thought for me.
The stringing nettle ravioli was a much better use of nettles than the past pappardelle I had at Bestia, which somehow did not work for me. Now it has been transformed into a massive pasta parcel stuffed with a rich mixture of walnuts, ricotta, and mushrooms alongside of a perfectly cooked egg yolk, and dredged in brown butter sage sauce. The pasta was absolutely perfect, giving a great chew and highlighting the effervescence of the nettles set against the tremendous unctuousness of the butter sauce. The creamy egg yolk, and woody, funky, nutty mixture of mushrooms, cheese, and walnuts created a great counter balance as well. A pasta dish that was both contemplative and indulgent at once; lovely.
With my savories, I had a most excellent, and intriguing orange wine. A 2013 catarratto from Sicily made by Il Censo, which is the Sicilian project of Giampiero Bea (Paolo Bea’s son) and Gaetano Gargano. Biodynamic, natural…you know, all of the right buzzwords, but the pedigree of the Bea name really shows here. I selected with from a sample of several other wines they gave me tastes of for being particularly tart, yet tannic, and having a deep nuttiness on the back palate, though not so much as to be like a sherry as some orange wines are wont to do. It paired superbly with every dish I had (except for dessert). Baked apricot and orange peel on the nose, with dried citrus and salt notes on the finish. Quite an exhilarating wine! They gave me what I can only assume is a rather generous pour, for which I love them dearly. I always find myself enjoying the wine selection at Bestia quite a bit, and chancing upon a Sicilian Bea collab by the glass is just the sort of thing that makes exploring wine there so great to me, even if others find the markup offensive.
And touching on my comments about Bestia’s desserts, a creamsicle torte. So whimsical: it is a dessert perhaps more redolent of childhood than anything else. Aside from the fancy marshmallow, elegantly perched atop the torte, and torched into a beautiful goo and bits of crunchy coconut, and the thick, buttery crust on the bottom, the middle layers are simply like the best orange creamsicle ever. The citrus is really prominent, and yet on the palate it is wondrously creamy. This simply isn’t something you would find anywhere else, and it is one of my favorite desserts ever.
This meal highlighted the reason I named Bestia my comfort restaurant. It’s a simple place I can walk into, eat solid, precisely executed food, drink strange, excellent wine, and get lost, while knowing that if anything does go wrong, it will be taken care of by the lovely staff.
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I’m now 1 for 3 with Bestia. An incredible first visit when they opened followed by two hit-and-miss dinners in recent years, both with far too many average dishes to warrant the high cost and hassle of getting a reservation. (Oh yeah, screw them for selling so many of their tables on services like Table8. Greedy bastards…)
They really should be ashamed to be serving that tomahawk pork chop in a city with an offering like Chi Spacca’s. It was really unremarkable. The only true highlight of the night was the pate.
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Hi @Helper_Monkey,
You’re not alone. I’ve had too many hit or miss meals there as well, and agreed about selling their tables / reservations.
When did you eat the tomahawk there?
I’ve only been to Bestia once and there were some good dishes and some ok ones. We didn’t care for the pastas - the uni spaghetti rustichella or the bone marrow gnochetti - or the pork chop, which was overdone. We found the apps to be the best, specifically the smoked chicken liver on toast was excellent.
The thing about Bestia is expectations. We left thinking that if we didn’t know much about it, we’d feel it’s a great neighborhood find. If one orders well one can have a really great meal there. But people were telling us that their meals at Bestia were incredible all across the board, some saying they were the best in their lives - well, our expectations went sky high. That’s not Bestia’s fault, though. They do get bagged on for being a bit heavy, which may be true with some dishes (but I haven’t eaten there enough to really confirm).
If it weren’t so hyped, I’d probably think more favorably about it. And given that it’s so hard to make a reservation for, I’m not inclined to go back anytime soon. But if it were cast more as an easy and fun neighborhood place instead of a destination (and was a lot easier to get into), I’d go back to sample more, because I’m open to the idea that we didn’t order the best dishes there.
When did you go there? Just out of curiosity. I remember when they first started making the pork chips they were completely fucking them up. But somewhat recently it seems they recalibrated and now cook the chops to a gorgeous pink that has been quite impressive to me.
The vast majority of people eating at Bestia have never eaten at a place like Saison, so I imagine they are sincere in their beliefs and claims that eating at Bestia was THEIR personal best. Or if the people you know who said that hav eaten at Saison, idk what to say because that’s absurd.
Since I’m the only person who likes Bestia and I also am the only one who doesn’t make reservations but just walks in last minute and treats it like a comforting neighborhood spot it seems your assessment is probably correct. Everyone else that hates it seems to hate it because of the reservations and food falling short of “best restaurant in the world” hype.
Probably no need for you to return though. The bone marrow and rustichella are about as good as dishes get there. Genuinely surprised though. Feels like everyone at least enjoys their pasta, but I suppose it’s hard to tell. Every so often things get misfired though but who knows haha
How do you know this?
Even if factually accurate, I would imagine that would be true of the “vast majority of people eating” at 99% of the restaurants in the world.
Oh, but you’re not.
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That’s pretty much how I know it’s accurate.
It’s more of a reference to Bradford specifically, as he eats at Saison (and every place like it in the Bay Area) regularly. His frame of reference for “best meal of my life” is assuredly several orders of magnitude beyond the average Bestia diner, or even the average diner anywhere in the world.