www.lucewinerestaurant.com
There were a lot of firsts in this evening, but I guess I should start by saying, it's the first time I've been to this restaurant. It was the first time I had raw deer, and it was the first time I had a six course dinner. Let me see if I can remember it all accurately, because it was a three hour event, and the longest and most engaging dinner I ever had with my girlfriend.I first read about Luce and its chef, Dominique Crenn, on the pages of this month's Esquire Magazine. They had a six page spread on "restaurants we endorse" and I was intrigued by the column of Luce in San Francisco. There were only three restaurants in the bay area, and Luce was there. I mentioned it to my girlfriend and hinted that I wanted to try it, so she arranged to have a RSVP there for Saturday evening. It was going to be my belated birthday dinner.
We got there half an hour earlier than expected and we got seated right away. The hostess was all smiles and she was very attentive to us, although we seemed like we didn't belong there. Luce is a pretty up-scale restaurant on the bottom of the Inter-continenal Hotel. The clientele seemed like mostly business folk, or wealthy foreigners visiting San Francisco, but not people from Oakland to have a birthday dinner.
Anyway we got seated. We asked about the six-course dinner, and she was delighted to arrange it for us. My girlfriend checked out the wine pairing option and we ordered that also. Why not? it's rare for us to go to a restaurant like Luce. The hostess told us that the entree for the night was lamb, but for $25 more we can have wa-gyu (Japanese Beef or Kobe' beef) that was freshly flown in. I thought about that for a minute, and it has been maybe four years since I had that, so I affirmed that as well. She took an extra precaution and asked us about alergies to anything and mentioned that the first dish would be raw, raw venison. I told her as she left, "Well we're in your hands for the evening" and she smiled back like a magician before a show.
The dinner began with glistening champagin flukes brought to us by waiters dressed in black. The first wine of the evening was bubbly from a little pink bottle. I guess I can finally say I had crystal at a restaurant? I don't know how the rappers do it. It was light and we enjoyed it with the usual basket of bread that they brought out. Then the glasses and plates kept coming, one for each wine and course.
We started with the aformentioned raw venison patte'. Yes, that's deer. I had a hard time eating it, but it lead to some interesting conversation about food and the appreciation of certain dishes. The second dish was Foie Gras or goose liver, our French delacacy for the night. I was hesitant to eat it, but it was amazingly moist when I took my first bite. It was another first for me, and I have to say it was good. We had our flukes removed, and wine glasses appeared along with the first white wine for the evening. The second dish was quail with a side of mushrooms. I had to say, the French do know how to prepare fowl, another tasty treat. So that's how the evening went on. It's hard to recall, but it went something like this:
0. welcoming and bread
1. First Appetizer - Venison Patte with Champaign
2. Second Appetizer - Foie Gras with White wine
3. Pre-Entree - Lobster with Second White wine
3.1 Intermission - Citrus Sorbet Shot
4. Entree - Wagyu Beef and Lamb with Red wine
4.1 Intermission #2 - miso-flaked sorbet
5. Post-Entree - Bread with cheese sampler (and raisins from the Mojavi desert) with Red Wine
6. Dessert - Chocolate Egg with Green Tea tart and Macaroon, with a Dessert Wine.
Somewhere in between the lobster and the entree, I spotted the chef. Dominique wore a white chef's coat with her hair tied up. She had the face of a quarterback and Luce was her field. She surveyed the crowd regularly. There were many things that left great impressions about Luce, but one that we couldn't forget was the Chef herself. She actually came up to greet us! Now that was a first even for my girlfriend. She talked with a French accent and seemed very enthusiastic about food and her customers. It really made our day.We finished off and walked our merry little way back to the parking lot, five blocks away. We were quite buzzed by the wines, and the thing on my mind was: why do they have grapes in the Mojavi desert? the Hostess made it a point to have us know that. I could spend another five paragraphs about the juicy beef and the succulent lobster, but it's just one of those things, you had to have been there.
It was three hours of my life well spent, with the person who I adore most, so I guess there is a bias, I have to admit. Luce was an experience that I won't forget, and I implore anyone to try it if they have the time. Bring your credit cards, it will be a heavy bill.
P.S. For categorization reasons, I'm putting a $50 plus tag on this restaurant, but it's a lot more expensive than that.
Yelp's two cents.
