Note
We visited Foreign Cinema twice, once an unofficial visit on 2008-01-22 and once an official visit on 2005-04-07.
After a long hiatus, some of us returned to Foreign Cinema during SF's Dine About Town deal. Although I did my usual looking through restaurant reviews for highly recommended items, it worked only somewhat well this time because Foreign Cinema changes its menu often. Thus, most of my recommendations were based on a small sample size of extremely recent reviewers.
Overall, Foreign Cinema was pretty decent. Mostly everything was within a narrow quality range, with nothing deviating much on either the "wow, this is good" or the "this is bad" side.
Foreign Cinema is a pretty swanky place. We were seated on a balcony above the main dining room.
We were greeted with a basket of quality bread and creamy butter. This is definitely a place to go to for good bread.
We shared four appetizers:
- Baked brie. Simple. Served with crackers, potato wedges, florets of cauliflower, and the like.
- Chicory salad (a flowery salad green not unlike frisee). Served with dense, oily, fully flavored croutons that some of us liked. The salad, however, was too bitter; none of us liked it much.
- Beet and endive salad. Made good by its lively lemon dressing. The beets were diced finely.
- Carpaccio. After debating how to pronounce the word (\kär-'pä-ch(e-)o\), we decided it was definitely raw beef and each appreciated it according to our proclivities. Though sliced thinly, it the carpaccio was given a sizable bite from being mixed with horseradish sauce.
I had the pasta entree. It was a simple mix of kidney beans, which I was surprised to see worked, tomato, and pasta, all beautifully decorated with swirls of cheese. Like everything else, it was satisfying yet not exceptional.
The salmon entree another ordered was cooked well, mild, and delicate, and served with white beans and a butter roux.
Another person got the curry chicken. It was a decent roasted chicken, nicely juicy, though got "boring" as one ate more of the same. (I have to admit I reacted the same way to the pasta.) The second piece of chicken was ickily fatty. The chicken was served with bitter greens that people liked here, in contrast to the earlier salad.
A final person ordered some sort of seafood chowder. I remember tasting it and thinking it was pretty reasonable.
For dessert, I had a slice of chocolate cake ("gateau au chocolat"), accompanied by cherries and orange-flavored whipped cream. I liked it.
The person who ordered affogato, espresso poured over ice cream (in this case, one scoop of chocolate and one of vanilla), thought it was good but complained it came pre-poured, meaning the ice melted too fast. She'd have preferred to pour the espresso herself as needed. (She's seen it served this way previously.)
One person ordered the creme brulee. I forget what he thought of it.
The total was $40/person including tax and tip but not including drinks.
Comments from Other Attendees
Feel free to add remarks here.
As for my review, Foreign Cinema was quite good. All the dishes we ordered were excellently executed, though the tastes weren't especially distinctive or unique. We were disappointed by the amount of food in each dish as you'll see if you read on.
After looking at the menu and picking among ourselves our entrees, we asked our waitress for recommendations. And the first three entrees she recommended were exactly those we had planned to order! hehe. We started off with tasty beef carpaccio (very thin slice of raw beef with fried onions I believe) and calmari. The calmari was very good, but sadly there were only four or so pieces of it! We continued with three entrees: seared sea scallops (of which, once again there were only four) in a creamy puree of peas and asparagus, a beautifully tender small set of kobe beef short ribs, and a tasty well seasoned soft and juicy chicken. After inhaling these, we realized we were still hungry and a simple order of dessert wouldn't fix it. So we ordered the duck entree, again excellently prepared and served in slices, and followed it on with a two desserts: an order of fresh high-quality goat cheese (on bread) and a chocolate pot de creme (similar to chocolate mousse). The latter was beautifully rich and probably one of the stars of the evening (along with the short ribs, although everything was very good) and, not surprisingly, disappointingly small. In conclusion, to repeat the second sentence in the review: Foreign Cinema is a very good restaurant; everything was cooked/executed perfectly (and I mean that) but the flavors and tastes weren't unusual or special (which is why I couldn't describe many dishes in more detail than saying what-you-imagine-a-well-cooked-tender-juicy-x-would-taste-like).
Original Announcement
I'm (we're) heading to Foreign Cinema this Thursday, April 7th, 8:30 p.m.
http://www.foreigncinema.com/
Yes, it's a restaurant. Supposedly quite good. They also show movies on screens through the restaurant for background ambiance; the current one, in case you care, is Ed Wood.
It's in the Mission:
2534 Mission St
San Francisco, CA
(not far from the 22nd Street BART station)
Tell me if you are coming!
Comments from Other Attendees
Seth's Recollection:
I thought Foreign Cinema was cute but not really altogether that remarkable. I plan at sometime to try a similar restaurant in my new venue, Monkeytown restaurant in Williamsburg. My sense is this was relatively standard New American cuising that could just as easily been in Indianapolis than in San Francisco, although the dining had a slightly "Californian" emphasis on ingredients. Still, there are better examples of this type of dining in San Francisco, and the movie concept doesn't work that well because the room isn't really oriented around seeing the movie - more of a gimmick than anything else.
-Seth
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