Golden Era
572 O'Farrell
By Paul Reidinger,
SF Bay Guardian
When you step into Golden Era, you pass through a narrow door and descend a few steps, as if into a subterranean world of disrepute. But you land on a landing, instead of at a bar crowded with sooty Mafia dons, as you might have expected, and from the landing you descend another brief staircase to the dining room, which opens out expansively around you. The experience is a little like the one long offered at Postrio, Wolfgang Puck's (now closed) restaurant near Union Square.
One difference is that while Postrio was very much about au courant glamour, Golden Era shimmers with a sense of lost glamour. The large dining room, with its high ceilings and wooden arches, is a little dowdy, but its bones are impressive. It's like a beaten-up pair of good shoes. Local lore teaches that the building was once a residence hotel run by Swedes and the spacious dining room a space for the serving of a Swedish menu. And I can't imagine a Swedish menu without meatballs.
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Lers Ros
730 Larkin St
By Meredith Brody,
SF Weekly
It's rare that I've eaten in Thai restaurants that have exploded my idea of what Thai food is, introducing me to exciting dishes as good as anything I've ever eaten anywhere. For years, decades even, Thai menus in America offered a list of preparations - stir-fried with basil, garlic and pepper, or ginger; stewed in red, green, or yellow curry - that you could order with your choice of meat, fowl, or seafood. The idea that nothing changed except the protein was less than inspiring. Classic Thai food is supposed to balance spicy, sour, sweet, and salty in each dish, but the general impression would be sweetish, with nam pla (fish sauce) seasoning almost everything. In addition, there'd be some appetizers (often including satay), salads (including the dependable larb, minced pork or chicken in a spicy lime dressing), soups (equally dependable: tom kha gai, the coconut-milk soup with chicken, lemongrass, and kaffir lime leaves), and noodles (pad thai, rice noodles topped with fresh herbs and chopped peanuts).
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Bodega Bistro
607 Larkin St
Take apart the name Bodega Bistro and you've got a trilogy of Vietnamese cooking. Bo-de-ga means beef-lamb-chicken, three staple proteins in Northern Vietnamese cooking. But to chef-owner Jimmie Kwok, the name means more than that.
After my visits to review the restaurant, I called Kwok to find out how he came up with the idea of Bodega Bistro, a classy little joint in a sea of pho shops on Larkin Street in San Francisco.
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