Incanto, San Francisco
I have mixed feelings about Incanto. We did have a fabulous dinner there, and all the dishes were very well executed with the highest quality ingredients. However, I felt that the menu was a bit skewed toward Italian-fusion rather than original Italian, which is what I like to focus on. I will skip the more blatantly un-Italian dishes we tried (like the eggplant- chocolate tart, quite good to be honest!) and just tell you about what I liked about our dinner.
The focaccia served in place of bread was amazing: fresh and soft, it had just the right balance between oily and fragrant, and kit was a pleasure to eat, just as the grissini breadsticks, made in the traditional piemontese fashion- Yummy!
The antipasto platter we ate with it was even better: a selection of Boccalone salumi served with roasted garlic and pickled vegetables. We didn’t love all the meats (I found mortadella too sweet, for example), but I can see how in a year’s time Boccalone is becoming the new standard for cured meats in the Bay Area!
The pasta was good- freshly made, the handkerchief with rustic pork ragu’ were really great, while the pappardelle with porcini mushrooms tasted a bit too much of mint to be real Italian. Nepitella was part of the sauce- a herb more commonly used in meat dishes, so its use with porcini was a bit unusual.
My local sardines with garlic chives, capers, chilli and cherry tomatoes were fantastic. I have nothing to say about this dish other that it could have been served in a coastal Southern town, maybe in Calabria, with the scent of the sea around you in a warm and breezy evening… Delicious!
Incanto Restaurant & Wine Bar
1550 Church St
San Francisco, CA 94131
(415) 641-4500
Filed under: Restaurants, San Francisco
[...] Chris passion is definitely in pig. His head to tail dinners have become legendary, and at his Incanto you will find Italian specialties reinterpreted, with a penchant for offal as main [...]