Much Like the Congress, This Restaurant is No Longer Red
There's a new restaurant in town, and it opened quite quietly about 3 weeks ago. The new Eureka occupies the space which formerly housed Red Grill downstairs and Whiskey Lounge upstairs. The building got a spiffy new paint job too, trading the darker red and black color scheme for something you might describe as "nouveau Restoration Hardware."
They don't have a web page yet, but I did find this restaurant description on menupages.com which includes a link to their current menu. (I called to confirm that the info is accurate.) The restaurant describes itself as "California cuisine with French influences," which, yeah, there's a lot of that in San Francisco, but the menu does look like it favors the heavier fare that the old Red Grill specialized in.
As for the former Whiskey Lounge upstairs, it is now half restaurant seating, and half cocktail area. I'll miss the old place which was one of the few bars where you could actually have a conversation, but maybe this restaurant bar will be a new "hidden treasure" like the Catch bar.
Comments
There aren't many -- that's for sure! And if people have good suggestions I'd love to hear them.
The other two places I can recommend are:
Twin Peaks: Yes, not the glamour stop for shiny boys, but inside they have a mezzanine level with a couple of tables, and it is a nice place to have an actual conversation. It's not a great spot for people watching because the street windows are awkwardly placed and so the only view is down on the (mostly bald) heads of the clientele below, but at least you can sit and hear your drink-mate's catty comments.
Catch: The bar at Catch is just that -- a bar in a restaurant and not a separate room -- so it's not a cozy, secluded experience. But they make good cocktails, and we've found that when other places are unbearably crowded, this bar often still has space for 3 or 4 to sit at the rail. They used to have a cool aquarium high up in the wall and we always wondered how they could possibly maintain the thing. A few weeks back we noticed that it was gone, and the waiter said that they removed it because it was too hard to maintain. Knew it!
BTW, henrik, I'm glad to hear that my humble blog helps you feel connected to good ol' SF! Let me know if you are curious about any stores, bars, or restaurants in particular!
I heard terrible things about the food in Catch. did you have a personal god experience there? [from another homesick, and now also visa-less reader in the diaspora]
Catch has gotten much better, IMHO. When it first opened we had a pretty mediocre meal there, but the last couple of times we've eaten at Catch the meal has been quite nice. And the times that we've gone for cocktails only, the bartending has been very good.
Just beware of the tables underneath the elevated piano. Having the piano player shimmy up a fire escape ladder to start pounding away just a few feet overhead is a bit unnerving.