EOS

901 Cole St, San Francisco, CA
(415) 566-3063
http://www.eossf.com/
 

It was after a long day of work on a Wednesday night, and there was nothing my friend and I wanted to do besides grabbing some drinks and dinner. We met up pretty late, and decided to take the muni to EOS on Cole Street for some sangrias and tapas. Tapas are perfect as small dinner especially late at night since I don't want to sleep with a full stomach.
 
The door front of EOS was pretty neat. Entering the restaurant, it was dim, but I was still able to see that it was still packed around 8 something at night. Our hostess led us to a corner with a red comfy couch, chair and table. This place contained a lot of small tables that are for party of 2 or 4. It looks like a place for romantic date. The place looks very artsy also, with paintings by local artists hanging on the walls, vase and a few nice red velvety couch.
 
EOS has a wall filled with wine because it is a wine bar. So the menu is mainly contained tapas, or wine food. I also notice that EOS' menu is very Asian inspired. Some of their dishes contains ingredients that are very common in Asian cuisine, like duck, shiitake mushroom, and ahi tuna. My friend and I decided to order two sangrias and some tapas to share. There were two items that contained mushrooms, and immediately I knew I wanted to order both...the Shiitake Mushroom Dumplings and Wild Mushroom Risotto. My friend is a fan of duck, and so we ordered the Roasted Duck with Pear Sauce.
 

Shiitake Mushroom Dumplings

The dumplings were very flavorful but also salty at the same time. I avoided the excess sauce when I could. Also, I could taste the shittake. I like it better when I ate a dumpling with the tomato. The sweetness in the fruit balanced out the saltiness of the sauce and dumpling.

 
 

Wild Mushroom Risotto

The risotto was really, really good! Usually the cheese used in a risotto dish tends to overpower the other ingredients in the dish, but not in this case. It was so good! The mushrooms also tasted really good. I couldn't tell what kind of mushroom was in it thoughnce the ambiance was quite dark. The aborio rice is just right, not too hard and not overly soft. You can still see the individual grain.

Roasted Duck with Pears

I never had ducks with pears or pear sauce before. I had roasted duck in Chinese cuisine, which serves with a sweet plum sauce. The duck and pear pair actually reminded me of duck with plum sauce, but not as sweet. I ate a piece of duck by itself, and it was very tender and juicy. Then I ate a piece of duck with some pear. The pear added some texture to the duck, because psychologically, the pear made the duck seems even more tender and sweet. From there on, I just ate the rest of my duck with the pears.

The sangria at EOS was okay. It was pretty light and refreshing. It wasn't dark at all like typical sangrias, it was also more translucent.
 
The experience at EOS was pretty unique. The dim light just made the atmosphere seems more upscale, which totally is, since their tapas cost around $10 to $20 a plate. It is definitely not a quiet place but I noticed that people tried not to talk too loud there. The service was not too good the night I went, but it was a busy night and it didn't seem like there were too many staffs. I would definitely go back, but with a small party of course or just whenever I want to relax by sipping on a drink and eating some tapas