Gastronomic Dissapointment

And the award goes to A16. I've been trying to go to this place since I moved. Anytime I've mentioned the area I live in to any respectable foodie, the question has been, "Have you been to A16?" After two canceled reservations, Brian, Cat, Annie and I had finally made plans pre-Thanksgiving to go in early December.

As fate would have it, on the night of, Annie wasn't able to go, and I was starting to get sick. Perhaps it's a good thing Annie couldn't go since she seemed the most excited out of all of us to go--and so she may have been the most disappointed of all.

The restaurant is beautiful and the wood burning stove in the open kitchen was very encouraging. The place was packed and even though we had reservations, we still had to wait. All very good signs. The menu was extensive and well thought out. I was excited to try a lot of things and had decided to order a beet and potato salad, and split a spaghetti and mushroom pizza with Cat. I was a bit wary of the spaghetti dish since it had mint in it, but as it turned out, it was the only edible thing on the plate.

As I had discovered back in April 2008, I really like beets. And ever since then, I've been on the prowl and order them every chance I get... I even had an episode of Good Eats saved on my DVR all about beets. So for me to say that the beets were so salty and the potatoes so over-cooked and grainy that I couldn't finish the dish, should tell you something. I left so much on the plate that they didn't even take it away when the spaghetti arrived because they thought I was still working on the plate.

When the pizza arrived I was ready to dig in, the smell of the mushrooms was the first thing my stuffed up nose smelled all day and it smelled great. I took a big bite and grimaced... it was as if, someone had poured salt onto every part of the pizza, the sauce, the cheese, the mushrooms, even the dough. Then I thought, it must be because my tastebuds are out of whack, but Cat confirmed my worst fears. Between the two of us, who could have easily demolished the whole pizza, we didn't even finish half.

After waiting for so long, braving the cold and the long lines, I was very hungry and unfulfilled customer. But the place was still packed when we left, so there is a good chance that this was hopefully a random case or that SF'ers aren't really as health conscious just salt deprived. :)