Epic Roasthouse

Since I moved to San Francisco I’ve been calling things by the wrong name.  For example, North Beach is “Little Italy”, the Ferry Building is “the Embarcadero”, the Muni is simply “the Tram”.  At first it was out of ignorance, but now I purposefully do this because (I think) it’s charming.  From now on, I’m going to call Epic Roasthouse “Epic Roadhouse” mostly because I miss Patrick Swayze, but also because it I don’t eat steak and it just sounds more fun.  

I liked Roadhouse so much that I went there twice this week.  First was Wednesday for dinner and last night for happy hour (HH).   On Wednesday, we decided to start with oysters.  I hadn’t had oysters in a really long time.  It’s really hard to mess up oysters.  All you do is shuck and serve.  Unless they’re bad, it’s pretty much a done deal.  Roadhouse serves there’s up with hot horseradish sauce.  I love hot and horseradish, but it seemed to overpower the subtly of the oyster, so I stuck with the simple vinegar.  

The salad course was next.  I obviously went with the salad that has three of my favorite ingredients:  spinach, poached (duck) egg and bacon!  The spinach was slightly wilted with lots of smoky bacon chunks and the runny egg just pulled it all together.  I will definitely recreate this one in the Mogil test kitchen (let’s be honest, I’ll use a chicken egg).  Continuing with salads, my friend had the minutina salad with pork belly and shaved eggs.  Minutina is a leafy herb that is apparently only available for a few weeks this time of year.  It looks like very long, thin blades of grass.  Guess what? It also tasted a lot like grass.  Very earthy, which is probably why they added pork belly to the salad.  Interesting, but that was probably my only stint with minutina.

For my main I had the roasted whole fish, which was dorado.  The server filleted it for me tableside.  At least, that was what he was supposed to do.  Unfortunately, there were a million bones still in this sucker.  I spent the whole time fishing out bones from each bite, this dish was a total bust.

For dessert we had a devil’s food cake, which was chocolatey and pretty standard.  The best part, however, was that it was served with a bourbon milkshake!  Sign me up! The best desserts are served with booze in my opinion.  We also had a strawberry rhubarb tart.  (Has anyone had rhubarb in anything but a dessert?)  It was so fresh and rhubarby – this was a keeper.

Last night we just did aps.  The cured meat plate was average.  My friends got bone marrow, which I didn’t touch.  We also had a few sides.  Sides at Roadhouse are listed under this heading:  “Things You Just Want in a Steakhouse.”  Um, yeah! Mac & cheese, steamed spinach, steakhouse fries, friend onion rings, asparagus and mushrooms.  The mac & cheese was to die for! The only problem was that it was served in a tiny dish and we gobbled it up and really wanted ten more.  We also had the chilled asparagus with blood orange hollandaise.  You had me at hollandaise.

The atmosphere at Roadhouse is pretty swanky and you really can’t beat the views of the Bay Bridge.  It’s a great HH scene, filled with easy-on-the-eyes professionals.  I hope to become a regular.  Epic Roadhouse:  3 stars.