la folie in san francisco (russian hill) & a quick note on Check! Please Bay Area

It's been quite some time since I last wrote about a Bay Area gastronomic adventure. And Emmelle has certainly expressed her dismay at our recent epicurean futility. Well, I can certainly take a hint when I'm bludgeoned over the head with it, which led to a reservation at the highly regarded La Folie on Polk Street. We actually made the reservation after watching a re-run of Check, Please! Bay Area.

Quick side note, how awesome is Check, Please!? It rivals Top Chef as my favorite television food show. Like Yelp, you have to take individual reviews with a grain of salt - the shows producers do a great job of finding some serious weirdos to journey around the Bay Area's food scene. They can't be trusted. But it's fairly easy to get a sense of each place, and whether or not it's worthy of a visit. The most interesting part of the half hour show occurs when one of the guests complains about a dining experience (chosen by another guest), completely offending the other. Great TV when you put together real folks who don't understand how to conduct themselves on television (I guess that's the point of reality TV).

As for La Folie, it was an extremely pleasurable dining experience. Let's go backwards because it's easier to remember it that way, a few select highlights:

• Emmelle's bread pudding dessert was accompanied by a Maker's Mark ice cream (I think we have an ice cream maker on our wedding gift registry. I'll just be feeding a bottle of Maker's Mark into the machine the first time we make any kind of vanilla ice cream).
  
• Our main courses, duck and rack of lamb (exquisite), were topped with tongue pieces of each animal. I've never had duck tongue or lamb tongue, and both were pretty good. I'm too tired to try to explain it.
  
• Butter poached lobster on squash ravioli; lobster and mushroom risotto - wow.
  
• I had a foie gras dish that included (among other things), quince chutney, a peanut butter "graham cracker" (didn't really know what it was) and some brioche bread. You're basically compiling a PB&J sandwich with foie gras. Decadent. This appetizer pretty much knocked me out.
  
• Two amuse bouche (bouches?). Quantity isn't the most important aspect of a meal of this nature but the exquisite taste of each was not wasted on us.

I'm of the opinion that anytime you are dropping serious coin on a French or Japanese meal, you are sitting down to potentially a "best meal of all time" situation. La Folie was definitely one of the better meals I've had. The best? That's too hard to say because I just ate what could only be described as an inspiring bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios.

Here's the Check, Please! Bay Area La Folie episode from Season 2, Episode 21. I have no pictures to share because I accidentally left the DSLR in the car before passing the car off to the valet service.



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