The Restaurant of My Dreams
posted at 9:13 pm
on May. 30, 2010
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I just had dinner at Beautifull Food, a new-ish restaurant in Laurel Village, San Francisco, that happens to be the restaurant I have always dreamed of some day eating at. Not because of its reputation—I didn’t even know it existed—but because of its style and philosophy and cuisine.
Scene: I’m staying a few blocks away, house-sitting in the apartment of a friend who’s out of town while I’m here for a conference, and I suddenly came over all peckish… esurient... hungry-like. So I head out, wander a block or two, turn right, cross the street, and there on the corner is a bright, attractive restaurant with a Twitter-blue sign.
I was really looking for a coffee place, and there were three nearby, so I almost went past, but something drew me in, and boy am I glad I did!
Intermezzo: In 1993, I lived in France as a student, and I got the idea for a restaurant based on the university cafeterias that I ate in there. As a student, you were entitled to eat the daily meal served from any campus: a simple, tasty, balanced meal, for a subsidized, cheap price. You went in as an individual or in a group, grabbed your food and a place to sit and a carafe of tap water, and ate in a clean and relatively calm atmosphere.
My wish was to see these types of restaurants proliferate in dense urban areas; a meal provider that you could go to every day if you didn’t want to make your own meal for one person, that would save you time, encourage walking and socializing and getting to know the people around you; and provide nutritious alternatives cheaply. But in North America, there appear to be two main types of restaurants: fast food, and full meals.
Beautifull manages to be this third way I’ve been thinking about: fast full food. Like a cafeteria, you see the food choices of the day when you walk in. They serve it, you pay for it at the cash register, then you find at seat at a table or along the window bar. They seem particularly well prepared for take-out, too, and have a curb-side service where they’ll bring your order to your car.
But all that is beside the point if they just did the same food that I got in the French cafeterias, which was NOT the best part of my restaurant fantasy: the cafeteria food was very utilitarian and drab—couscous and an apple and a yogurt and a piece of chicken, for instance. Not that it was awful: the bread was great, the cheese superb… but I digress.
Beautifull, with its slogan of “The best prepared fresh food in the world,” set my expectations high and totally delivered. I had the thai red curry turkey bowl with a side of kale flavoured with—drat, I forget what—and quinoa salad with edamame, vinegar, ginger root, agave….
Now, you know quinoa is the way to my heart, and so I was super pleased when I asked for the quinoa side, and the fellow behind the counter went to scoop some hot quinoa onto my plate, and I said, “Oh, sorry, no, the quinoa salad,” and he went scoop yet ANOTHER quinoa dish and I was all “No, the quinoa and edamame salad” and that’s when I knew I’d be eating here more than once.
The food was fresh—the turkey curry had just the right spice to flavor ratio—and the salads were awesome, if a little more heathy-fiber—full-ish than I’m used to, which isn’t a bad thing, just different than the soft Mexican beans and rice and so on I’ve been eating non-stop for the past two weeks.
The coffee was great, the service quick and friendly, and in the line behind me, people struck up conversations with each other and offered tips on what they’d already tried.
The place is open for lunch and dinner until 8 p.m., 7 days a week, and it probably goes without saying, but since my review is so unabashedly positive and out of the blue, I have to say—it’s completely unsolicited. I just really have been wanting to find a place like this for a long time.
Now, if only I can convince them to open a franchise in Vancouver.
