A Perfect Brasserie-Style Restaurant
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by Sophie Gayot
In our latest Annual Restaurant Issue, we introduced a new award category: our Top 10 Insider Picks in the U.S. For ten different cities, we recommend one restaurant where readers should go if they only have one night to pick a place for dinner.
For San Francisco, Michael Mina’s RN74 was our choice. People may argue that there are some classic fine dining establishments in SF that should be the destination for that one special night, and some of them are on our Top 40 Restaurants in the U.S. list. But people already know about those places, while I think RN74 is somewhat of a hidden gem.
Chef Michael Mina, our 2011 Best Restaurateur in the U.S., along with his executive chef Jason Berthold, has composed a French brasserie menu with very strong California influences that can not really be any better for the genre. Watch my exclusive video interview with Berthold, and see pictures of the dishes from the menu below. Let us not forget the amazing wine list of over 3,000 bottles and the “train station” board that displays some of them.
For more video interviews, including with chef Michael Mina, go to the GAYOT.com interview page. Find more about San Francisco restaurants, SF restaurant news, SF culinary events, Bay Area wine dinners.
You can click on each photo to enlarge to see dishes from RN74 restaurant menu. All photos by Sophie Gayot.
- RN74 executive chef Jason Berthold with Sophie Gayot
- Loch Duart salmon pastrami with grilled country bread
- RN74’s wine list showcases an international selection
- White sesame pot de crème with chocolate glaze
- Valrhona chocolate marquise with hazelnut
- Hand-cut tagliatelle with pea leaves
- Applewood-smoked sturgeon blintz with potato and cucumber salad and grilled onion vinaigrette
- Soft-poached egg with crispy semolina dumpling
- Sautéed pork belly with chickpeas
- Grilled and marinated Monterey Bay sardines with navel orange, fennel, celery and frisée
- Prawn and shellfish curry with mussels
- House-made pâté de campagne with green apple
- Orange creamsicle float with orange sorbet
- A napkin at RN74
- Maitake mushroom tempura with yuzu salt and green onion mousseline
- The lounge at RN74
- Hamachi sashimi with Hawaiian hearts of palm
- Grilled beef hangar steak with fingerling potatoes
- The dining room at RN74 in San Francisco
- Crème fraîche panna cotta with candied apples
