Eats: Fringale

Fringale
570 4th Street
San Francisco, CA 94107
http://www.fringalesf.com

i used to live at 821 folsom st., which is right on the corner of 4th and Folsom in the city. while i lived up there, i would occasionally hear about this basque-french restaurant that was down the street from my apartment, but i never got around to checking it out. it took a couple of years and moving 30 miles away to finally go.

ivy and i started making use of the SF Dine About Town program last night by taking a quick jaunt up to the city for a nice, reasonable prix fixe meal at fringale. if you don’t know about dine about town, and live around san francisco, you’re missing out because a number of really good restaurants participate. go ahead and take a look at that link above. i’ll wait.

anyhow, the restaurant turned out to be pretty good. it’s a tiny place (10 tables?) with cozy mood lighting on an industrial block of SOMA and was littered with asian(-american) people. clearly other cheap asians were looking to get a reasonably-priced meal as well.

the food was good, not great. i had a rib eye cooked with some bizarre red-orangish tomato butter on it and some fries (STRAIGHT from in-n-out, i swear) on the side. immediately upon looking at the steak i knew i probably made a poor choice. the byproduct of eating at so many nice steakhouses over the past few years is that your enjoyment of a mediocre steak goes straight to the tubes. ivy had the lamb and that appeared to be far superior.

we also sprung the extra cash for an order of their wild mushroom risotto to share and that was probably the culinary highlight of the evening with its nice texture and ingredients. then again, we both have a soft spot for risotto because it’s fucking awesome.

the chocolate gourmand for dessert is definitely recommended.

all in all it was a good meal and a really nice experience. good place for couples or dates. probably not great for big groups. looking over the regular menu, most of the prices looked reasonable ($18-28 main dishes) and our wines by the glass were decent.

a nice 7 out of 10.