Ok, there are restaurants and then there are Restaurants.
My idea of a place to eat is one that is casual, decent atmosphere, decent food, and reasonable prices. I don’t care about a wine list and I certainly don’t care about what is trendy. Oh, and vegetarian entrees would be really nice.
This is a rant about pretentious restaurants – you have been warned.
Up front, the couple with whom we had dinner are wonderful people; bright, funny and great conversationalists. They picked the restaurant based on recommendations from others. La Mar is haute Peruvian Cuisine. Located in a former warehouse at the Port of San Francisco it has that loud, echoy feel of such places with too many reflective walls and sharp corners. I am sure you can imagine about how well I could hear given the crowds.
Not their fault, it seemed like every restaurant along the Bay was hosting receptions that evening so we had to eel our way through dense crowds of drink holding posturing people before arriving at our table.
The menus did have prices, so it wasn’t one of *those* kind of places. It did suffer from fancy names and descriptions for what turned out to be pretty ordinary foods. The portions were normal size for what one would expect given that this was a high end eatery (not Denny’s…..).
The vegetarian selections were limited while the meat and seafood choices were extensive. No matter how you dress it up, two lumps of mash potatoes (cold) each formed into a pyramid topped by minced and chopped vegetables flavored by herbs and spices is not my idea of anything all that interesting. Salad is salad. I think Noah and George both fared a bit better than I.
Even so, the evening didn’t spoil my day. The boy and I had walked from downtown to Pacific Heights and back. We rooted through both Best Buy and a Staples while killing time. I find camera bags which have been on my list for a long time. I also managed to get some knitting down and enjoyed our conversations. The Mole is rapidly disappearing and I am going to have to find him a new name.
