Excellent meal last night at Kiln. Most bites delicious, all cohesive, great room, service and vibe (except for the inconsistent music selections).
I’ll post more details in the comments later today.
by ioof13
Excellent meal last night at Kiln. Most bites delicious, all cohesive, great room, service and vibe (except for the inconsistent music selections).
I’ll post more details in the comments later today.
by ioof13
5 Comments
Looks just as good, if not better than my last visit. Goddamn.
Awesome! Looks like it’s changed enough to revisit now!
Wow that looks incredible. I may need to visit them.
Kiln is one of my favorite SF restaurants!
First of all, apologies for the poor photography. I was trying to capture quick reminders of the food, not take perfect photos.
This was my first visit to Kiln even though I live walking distance from it. I had been to it multiple times when Cala was there. It is a stark space with high wooden ceilings with skylights and concrete walls. Very sparse. If you like rich decor or soft chairs, Kiln is not for you.
I brought a bottle with me (2002 Krug) but every table around me clearly had wine pairings. The wine list is excellent, expensive, and very young.
Service was perfect. Informal, informative, and very well coordinated. Unobtrusive but always attentive.
Onto the food itself. I was struck by the flavor combinations and the lack of “modernity” (few foams, no tricks) combined with the sourcing and ingredient quality. With a couple of exceptions, the ingredients and their handling was top notch.
Way too many bites to review them all, but the starting bite (first picture) was a highlight. Combining black truffle and goat cheese isn’t very original, but the malt vinegar was a great touch I haven’t tasted in this context before, and the beignet base made for a complex set of textures. That for me is what Kiln is about – great flavors and textures with a lot of acidity rather than fat to highlight them.
Other standouts for me were the smoked sturgeon with dill vinegar, with the very assertive flavor of the smoke balanced by the acidity of the vinegar, as well as the two crab dishes, which showed off the purity and sweetness of the Dungeness crab perfectly.
The only dish I think didn’t work was the final main of lamb, where my piece had noticeable gristle and fat you should never see in a **.
With so many dishes, its easy for the pacing to be problematic, but I think they did an excellent job. We were at table for 3 hours, which is about right for a school night.
This is San Francisco so the cost was very high (all in $575/pp with service, corkage and a split half bottle of Burgundy) but definitely a meal that deserves ** that I highly enjoyed.