Maya
Our last Dine About Town experience was with Maya, which Melissa suggested. Her aunt recommended it, and we rarely go out for Mexican food (let alone high-end Mexican), so she thought it would make for a nice change of pace.
Walking into the restaurant from a chilly San Francisco evening is a pleasant experience. You start on a more or less empty downtown street, wander across the forlorn, empty plaza of a set of office buildings, and end up in a restaurant alive with people. Warm decor and a friendly host greet you, and before long you are seated. The Dine About Town menu was very generous. A few items in each section were marked as being not available, but for the most part the menu was ours to choose from.
So, here starts my one negative comment. I am willing to believe that they were atypically busy that evening (the restaurant was crowded), but we had really bad service. I am willing to cut a lot of slack on service, but this was particularly noteworthy.
Our openers arrived quickly. So quickly, in fact, that they preceded the wine we had ordered. By a lot. In fact, while our openers sat getting cold, I had to hunt down and ask our server for the wine. To my mind, wine should always show up before the food (or at least concurrent). Our server was not terribly friendly, and our entrées took a long time to appear. Good thing our wine had arrived by then, at least.
But like I said, let's assume they were in dire straits that evening. How was the food?
Fantastic. Everything was flavorful, well-seasoned, cooked appropriately, and well matched. To start, Melissa had the tamal al chipotle, a tamale with shredded chicken, sweet chipotle sauce, plus crema fresca (presumably, the Mexican equivalent of creme fraiche), avocado and cilantro oil. Nice, classic flavors. Presentation was okay. Not Thomas Keller, but not tossed onto the plate with the eyes closed, either.
My starter was the callos de hacha, a seared diver sea scallop that had a great texture and again, classic well-thought-out seasonings.
For the main course, we each opted for the pechuga adobada--sliced chicken breast marinated in adobo and served with a medley of nice sides. This dish continued the trend; the chicken was flavorful and tender, the seasonings blending well.
We found their wine list to be fairly extensive and reasonably well priced (not quite twice retail in many cases). They offered bottles up and down the budget scale, always a plus. The wine we opted for that took so long to arrive was the Eberle Mill Road Vineyard Viognier from Paso Robles. Viognier is enjoying a lot of vogue at the moment, but this is for a good reason. It's more food friendly and more enjoyable than many California Chardonnays, and it has roughly the same weight in the mouth. My favorite Eberle Viognier is from the Glenrose Farm vineyard, but they don't make very much (it's not even one of the vineyards they list on their site).
Finally, for dessert we both went for the flan. No faltering on this dish either.
If it hadn't been for the service, we might have actually preferred Maya to bacar this year. Certainly we'd go back and try it again, hoping for better service.
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