It’s Saint V-Day, but today we are not concentrating on St. Valentine, but paying respect to St. Vincent, the patron saint of wine. In a previous post, we discussed how Owner-Sommelier David Lynch’s St. Vincent has one of the best wine lists in San Francisco. In addition to the food by Chef Bill Niles, their innovative approach of offering half of any bottle on their list at half price keeps us coming back as regulars.
We wanted to order a half bottle of a sparkling rosé from Cramant as an apéritif, but our server informed us that they only offered sparkling wine by the glass or bottle, not splits. We were fine with that because with their generous pours, it seemed like two glasses were actually more than half a bottle:
We always get an order of the She-Crab when it is in season: a chowder made with sea urchin, Carolina gold rice and local dungeness crab. We’ll have to find out the origin of the name for this dish one day since most dungeness crab consumed is male (females are thrown back into the ocean so they can continue to proliferate). Our server had the kitchen split the order for us:
The Fried Ling Cod was one of their newer items that we had not seen on their menu before. The expertly fried fish was coated in a crispy batter accompanied by wild nori and a seaweed salad. We hope that they keep this dish on their menu for a while:
The Scrapple was another new item that we would order any day. The pork scraps and trimmings cake came with a fried egg, an arugula salad and house-made husk cherry (cape gooseberry) “catsup”:
We ordered this very tasty Gigondas to pair with the rest of our meal:
We selected the vegetarian Rice and Beans to share as an entrée. The healthy whole grain rice came with sea island red peas and mushrooms:
We also ordered a side of Roasted Brussels Sprouts to share. The sprouts were perfectly cooked; they were nicely caramelized but still held some crunch:
Since we still had some wine leftover, we ordered a cheese to go with it. We had originally wanted the aged goat cheese, but the server highly recommended the 10 year cheddar. He kindly provided us with a little bit of each:
It’s great to see that Chef Bill Niles continues to expand the menu at St. Vincent’s in new directions. This might be the first time we ate something fried there (the Ling Cod), and we hope it continues. The fried fish would make a great base for an upscale version of Fish and Chips, which may just convince us to look at ordering from their excellent beer menu (although it would be difficult to stray from ordering off the one of the best wine lists in the City.)
Related Posts
Sunday Sauce at St. Vincent (Oct. 23, 2012)
Wine and Dine at St. Vincent (Oct. 8, 2012)
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