September 17, 2008
Foreign Cinema
Finally got the chance to visit the Bay Area again after the honeymoon. Like last time, we drove across the Bay Bridge to stay with Sam and Michelle at their place in San Fran for a night. Being gracious hosts, they treated us to dinner. Thankfully it worked out that our typhoon-delayed travel plans didn't affect our dinner date, because I was looking forward to trying out Foreign Cinema.
Converting a movie theater into an alternative dining venue is old hat nowadays. But FC was one of the first, and it offers a more upscale menu than most restaurant/theaters. But it was a relatively chilly night, and we were more interested in chatting and catching up instead of obscure movies in European languages. So we sat inside instead of out in the courtyard where the actual foreign movie was being projected onto the whitewashed side of the neighboring building. It was too bad we missed out on Foreign Cinema's namesake schtick, but the space inside was very nice, too, with high ceilings and good spacing between tables, an increasingly rare feature due to sky-high rents.
The menu items were suitably Cali-cosmopolitan, good ingredients with a basis in Mediterranean techniques. It must've been such a revelation way back when CP first did it, but it's almost like comfort food at this point. I had the salmon wrapped in fig leaf, while Sam chose the Middle-Eastern-spiced lamb skewer. Sam doesn't even particularly love lamb, but he feels compelled to order it when he sees it just to have something different. On the other hand, I've gone more towards ordering generic things like salmon and chicken more to experience non-exotic ingredients done well.
SO had slices of Kobe bavette steak with arugula and tomatoes. She found it a bit too rare for her liking initially. Really it should've been that way for a perfect medium rare, but they took it back to cook it to medium-well without flinching. The meat even retained most of its tenderness and flavor after the secondary cooking, now without bloody juice drippings. Michelle had halibut on a curried chutney, perfectly sustainable seafood and another interesting flavor to be passed around the table as we shared nibbles.
A half-bottle of pinot-noir was well-received by all, although split between three it was more a taste than a glass, which was all we wanted, really. The meal was well portioned to leave room for dessert, and the four of us shared a lusciously rich chocolate pots-de-creme covered with whip cream and a deconstructed pear-nectarine crisp a-la-mode. A cappuccino for Sam, plain coffee for me topped it all off.
Foreign Cinema has thrived for almost ten years, practically an historical institution compared to typical SF restaurant lifetimes. They've done it by appealing to both locals and tourists, or both at the same time, like in our case. Not to mention that it makes a great first-date restaurant, with the movie serving as conversation starter or escape hatch, depending on how it goes. Of course, all buttressed by good food at upscale but not wallet-busting prices. Looking forward to going back again in the future, to catch a movie this time.
Foreign Cinema
2534 Mission St.
(between 21st St & 22nd St)
San Francisco, CA 94110
(415) 648-7600