Sens Restaurant

4 Embarcadero Center, Promenade Level, San Francisco, CA
(415) 362-0645
http://www.sens-sf.com/

Every January and June of last two years, I would take advantage of the Dine About Town menu that many San Francisco restaurants have to offer. This January was no exception.

Last night, my friends and I went to Sens Restaurant located in the financial district of San Francisco. First off, parking was super easy because the restaurant does validation for 4 free hours.

The scene at Sens is pretty business casual. I am not sure is it because we went after work on a Tuesday night, but almost everyone there was in business attire. In my "smart casual" attire as proposed by the Dine About Town site, I walk to our table. The service was pretty good. We were seated and menu was individually given to us. Our water was filled.

Four out of five of us ordered the Dine About Town menu with some overlaps.

I ordered a Kakavia as my starter, which is a greek fisherman's stew made with sea bass, squid, mussels, clams, and gulf white prawns in a fennel-ouzo tomato broth. The Kakavia broth tasted a bit bland for me. It reminded me of light can soup. I am not saying it taste like light can soup, but rather like light can soup, the tomato taste is strong when you first put into your mouth, and then every flavor is gone right when you swallow and after you swallow it. The seafood in it was decent. A lot of it retained its own flavor but barely absorb the tomato broth flavor.

My friends ordered the Free Range Lamb Tartare, in which they said it did not taste game-y at all. I did not want to try because I am not a fan of lamb, let alone raw lamb.

One of my friends and I tried the Pan-Roasted Group Filet as my second course or entree. The dish was made with a grouper filet crusted with coriander, and garnished with braised broccolini, jasmine and wild rice pilaf plated on a citrus brown butter sauce. I love ordering fish as an entree even though a lot of times, the fish can be super dry and flaky. Well, it was not the case at Sens. My fish was seared perfectly. The crust was golden brown and the meat was soft and tender. Even though the fish is cooked right, the plate as a whole was too buttery for both my friend's and my taste. From the fish to the broccolini to the rice, all we could taste was butter and more butter. We cannot taste the fish, the vegetable and the rice at all. I felt a little disgusted after awhile and only finished half of my plate with no doggie bag. I felt bad but I just could not eat it because I felt like I am eating straight up butter.

Now onto the best part of any meal--dessert! I ordered a Citrus Tartlet (picture all the way up), which was pretty simple and good, and tasted just like any ordinary citrus or lemon tart. My friend orderd a Frozen Pistachio Honey Nougat (picture left), and that was really delicious. It was very, very light, chewy but light. It was very unique. I totally recommend that.

It was a pretty good night. We got really good service and pretty good food (minus that overly buttery fish). Oh yes, even though the restaurant claimed to be mediterranean, and it really doesn't seem to mediterranean to me, maybe a fusion of it.