It’s by far not everywhere but a number of restaurants serve (many) dishes by the line cook/chef who made them - more recently we had it here in SF at Birdsong, Lazy Bear, Commis, RichTable, 7 Adams, Ssal, Anomaly. It’s getting more “normal” and be part of a tasting menu
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For mocktails in town I think most good cocktail programs have solid mocktails. I’ve especially enjoyed the proliferation of non-alcoholic milk punches. Firstborn has one with hojicha and Darling has one with mushrooms. Both were excellent. For NA pairings I did like Vespertine’s and baroo’s (as well as Kato’s, though when I went a good chunk of it was just NA wine, which I wasn’t crazy about). I think somni’s drinks were probably better overall but those all felt more like pairings to me.
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Hm I think I might need to further define what I like about Somni.
For Somni: Presentation about dish > serve > eat > service engages you about the dish
Other restaurants I typically see present dish, it’s served, you eat it, and that’s it. Sometimes they come and ask what you thought which isn’t quite the same level of engagement I felt at Somni. I asked my friend who’s done a lot of the Bay Area higher end fine dining and he felt Saison and Enclos were the closest. For reference, I think his favorite restaurants up there are Enclos and Cyrus (though they’re both more like Napa).
Appreciate the comments about NA pairings. I guess its more important for me that the drinks would be delicious standalone as well as pairing. I also enjoyed Baroo but when I ate with family they did not feel the same. I also thought the Kato non-alc cocktails were great but so much of it was non-alc wine when I went and I wasn’t all that into it (though I’m also not particularly into wine; much prefer sake).
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I might be the exception, but I don’t like lengthy presentations about dishes. My mind starts wandering halfway in. The London restaurant Dinner by Heston Blumenthal had an interesting solution. They put three cards on your table, and you choose to display one of them to the servers. Each card corresponds to how much detail you’d like the servers to provide about upcoming dishes. We ended up going with medium.
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Sometimes it is scary how much attention spans have shortened over the last 20 years. Same for example with music - there was a time when it was normal to listen to whole albums all the time. Now artist are lucky when most people are able to focus on half a song
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I liked that touch at Dinner. We went with medium as well.
I’d sit at the bar a couple times a week for a burger and fries if that place was anywhere near where I lived.
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There was a lot of discussion months back - including from me - about the vaca vieja dish that was on the opening menu. To my palate, it was absolutely inedible - overly tough and chewy, lacking flavor. Just awful. Many on here agreed, a few sort of disagreed, but apparently the restaurant agreed with the complaints since they quickly changed the dish.
Anyways - I was in Madrid last week. On my last night, I ended up at an elevated tapas spot called Taberna Laredo.
Vaca vieja was on the menu. I knew I had to order it.
Cooked very rare like at Somni. But it was moderately tender (not filet tender of course) and had good flavor. Even the fat parts were less chewy than the non-fat parts were at Somni.
I have learned that I have nothing against vaca vieja. In fact, I thought the version at Taberna Laredo was fantastic.
It’s just that the Somni version was terrible - which is surprising for a chef like Aitor.
(And to be clear, I loved my meal at Somni, aside from the vaca vieja dish).
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has anyone gotten to be a solo diner here?? heard a rumor they were going to start doing that but unsure
lol this is incredible work.
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Moving from OpenTable to Resy.
My understanding is that OpenTable has been offering top restaurants like Somni a lot of compensation (both cash and ad spend) to use OpenTable. I presume Resy is now responding in kind with lucrative switching offers.
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Rumors in my neck of the woods that Resy/OpenTable is offering 5 figures to some restaurants to move. The suite of tools on Resy/Tock is also better from what I hear. I’ve seen places flip back and forth every year or two since the pandemic.
Uber is also trying to get into this game, so might be exciting times to be an in demand restaurant
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5 is the norm for a standard hot spot. OpenTable has been offering 6 figures for crème de la creme restaurants like Somni. I presume Resy is now matching that.
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That AmEx money behind them…
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Resy and Tock are both Amex now! Surprised they are merging Tock into Resy, rather than merging backend systems while keeping different front ends. I enjoy my user experience on Tock way more than on Resy
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It doesn’t surprise me - Tock does look more premium, but it’s also a bit clunkier for standard reservations and the number of restaurants on Tock has been dwindling for years now.
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fyi the numbers are astronomical. OT is actually withdrawing while Resy and a surprise contender (seven rooms) have come out firing this month.
can’t divulge exact details but the numbers would shock you all. Especially Seven Rooms. Doordash now wants to be a dominate player in the game with their 1.1b acquisition of Seven Rooms and their goal in 2026 is to take it over. Especially in New York City. Rumors are multiple millions for a couple of NYC restaurants. You’ll see a switch in LA for a couple big name places too.
Probably should be it’s own thread the discussion (i feel like there already is one @robert ?)
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Yea support a thread split here after my initial post, but oof that sucks about SevenRooms. It’s such an atrocious platform from a diner standpoint. Barely useable. I think they just implemented user accounts. No alerts. Rudimentary functionality. The iOS app has 1.5/5 stars compared to OpenTable 4.9/5 and Resy also 4.9/5. I presume DoorDash bought SevenRooms more for the client roster rather than the technology, but I think that SevenRooms’ existing platform is likely unredeemable. They’ll spend years and millions of dollars trying to fix that broken mess. Restaurants will switch to SevenRooms and immediately regret it, mark my words.
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something depressing about that number being given for a reservation system while the restaurants themselves are in constant struggle. of course thats for the entire country, and the world has changed hundreds of times over since the days of calling by phone for a reservation, but … that system used to work relatively fine…..
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