Sunday, August 10, 2008

Sauce

Tonight Gretchen, Dawn, and I ate at Sauce in Hayes Valley (Yelp reviews). We started the meal off with some cocktails -- I forget the drinks' names, but the ladies got the same drink -- something based on a mix of iced tea and lemonaide with (I think) some vodka, while I had a lime, gin, and soda concoction. The drinks were OK but generally a bit too sweet. For the meal we ordered most of the items from their small plates menu: portabella mushroom fries, crab wontons, ham and cheese tater tots, seared tuna, steak sate, bacon-wrapped scallops, potato and bacon "nachos", and we also got the peach and cashew salad. We had a 2006 Pinot Noir from Sonoma, CA (I think -- I forget the name, glad I saved the cork, gotta find it!). Overall the food was good (I thought): we really liked the portabella fries, the tuna, and the crab wontons. The tater tots were somewhat bland. I liked the steak bites on-a-stick, but no one else did. The scallops were OK but pairing them with sauted red onions and brussels sprout leaves was unexpected and a bit off-putting. The nachos -- you just can't really go wrong with potatoes, bacon, cheese, and sour cream. The peach salad was good, but the cheese could've been stronger/sharper to offset the sweetness of the peaches, which were a bit unripe and crunchy. The wine was quite good, too. For dessert we ordered and shared their sampler platter, which at $20 was a bargain, since it was a huge platter with four of their normal desserts: cinnamon doughnuts with a bourbon-caramel dipping sauce (GREAT), "PB&J" cake (pound cake, berry compote, and peanut-butter ice cream sandwiched together -- also tasty), 4 mini-scoops of butter-pecan ice cream, and 4 fresh strawberries with whipped cream and brown sugar. Dessert was fun! The service was decent, and I think we all had a great time!