Michael Mina
Michael Mina was chef/partner in one of my favorite restaurants in SF, Aqua. He left that a few years ago to start his own restaurant empire (
http://www.michaelmina.net/index.html).
I was very excited to try this, because it was one of my favorite chefs doing a style (small plate tasting menus w/ trios of different preparations) that I really enjoy.
This was a couple or few years ago, a few months after they opened.
The restaurant is in a hotel in Union Square. It's right off the lobby, so straight off the bat it feels a little more hotel-y than optimal. Hard to describe, but it feels more focused on being expensive and impressive to business travelers and tourists (I've found this to be the case at a number of places in hotels) as opposed to really being all about the restaurant.
We sit down, and the first thing I notice is that it's just way too loud. Annoyingly so.
Then we get our options. A few different levels of tasting menus. We did the full
tasting menu, which at the time was $120. This was quite annoying, as standard at the time was around $100 for this level of dining. Now they've increased to $135.
When presented, one of us needed a course sub'd for something else due to allergy or something. They said that was fine, but then suggested what they'd change it to and said that selection would be a $10 supplement. Weak. Also, somewhere in the middle of the courses there was an option to have something (I don't recall what, but it was not something incredibly special or anything) that was another $10 or $15 supplement. These little touches just seemed chintzy at a place where we are paying $120/per before wine.
The concept for this menu is that everything is presented in trios, three preparations of the same ingredient. So, a seared foie gras, a foie gras terrine, and something else. This was very cool in a few spots, but also resulted in getting pretty small tastes of the best stuff. In a lot of courses, there were one or two preparations that made sense and a third that clearly felt like "damn, gotta come up with a third preparation." Overall, I only recall two courses that were really "wow" - I believe they were scallops and beef. Everything was good, but generally most of the stuff was just that, good. I recall the poultry dish (some sort of game hen I believe) being very ordinary. Just not what I'm expecting from this level of restaurant.
Service was overall quite good.
We pay and get our parking validated. We go to the garage and present our ticket to the attendant. That's when I notice the sign, something like "Valet $20, $15 w/ restaurant validation." Hahahaha, how ridiculous. $5 off. I don't care if I have to pay for parking, that is fine. But just forget about the whole parking validation thing if you're just gonna give a $5 discount, what a joke.
So, all in all, not a place I would recommend at all. I think it's a place worth going if you're on a business dinner, as it is a somewhat unique experience, but definitely not one I'd pay for for a special occassion.