Tyler Florence is a definite favorite celebrity chef of mine. I have been watching him forever and I love his very simple approach to cooking wonderful comforting meals. I don’t believe he owns a restaurant here in NYC? and if so, please feel free to let me know. With that said, I’ve never tried his food although I have salivated over his creations on t.v.
He DOES have a restaurant in San Fran, however, and its name is Wayfare Tavern. I made 9pm reservations for our last night in San Fran there.
The restaurant is pretty masculine. Reminded me of a hunting lodge for some reason – probably the dark dark woods that are all over the place and brass garnishes. It’s a handsome bar and it’s two floors. We were seated upstairs in the smaller cozier dining area.
Our waitress was kind of bad. She was scattered and we pretty much sat there for awhile before she even took our order. Then we had to wait another while to get the famous popovers Wayfare serves as the bread. Sigh – I really hate bad service at expensive restaurants. Anyways the popovers came and they were light as air and delicious.
Unable to decide, we decided to go halfs on two appetizers: the curried deviled eggs and the tomato soup.
The yolks were curried and topped with crispy shallots and pickled carrots. It was really good. The yolk was incredibly creamy and there wasn’t too much curry but just the right amount to make it pop and taste a little different from your usual. The carrot’s acidity helped cut the heavy richness of the egg yolks.
The tomato soup had butter braised romaine lettuce, a slab of braised pork belly and sourdough croutons in it. Tomato soup was creamy but not overly so and it had a nice tang from the tomatoes. As for the butter braised lettuce, I’m not a fan of cooked lettuce – it’s just weird to me. I know people grill it and make salads out of it and stuff but cooked lettuce tastes like wilted lettuce and I do not like it. So I ate around it. Now the pork belly was all good – smoky and tender. I definitely will eat anything pork 
.
Cookie Monster is a sucker for ANYTHING with ricotta in it so after MUCH MUCH thought, he got the Cowgirl ricotta ravioli with roasted zucchini, sweet corn, cherry tomato confit, fried blossoms and basil.
He liked it alot. I found it a tad sweet and of course there is no protein in it so I would never get it myself. I didn’t think it was anything special to be honest but I guess it’s a good hearty meal for anyone that wants to go vegetarian for the night. Wonder why they call it “Cowgirl ravioli?” – because girls are more likely to eat vegetarian meals? Not this one!
I got the much touted organic buttermilk fried chicken with roasted garlic, crisp woody herbs and lemon wedges:
The chicken was definitely juicy on the inside but I did not find that the skin was crispy enough. I like my fried chicken super crunchy! That’s what makes fried chicken so great. The seasoning was ok, a bit too much thyme on everything in my opinion – again the herbs overpowered alot of the flavors. The breading was falling off on certain parts which tells me perhaps it was not dredged properly. I was incredibly underwhelmed and even disappointed. Honestly? Popeyes and KFC serves up better fried chicken in my opinion because at least the seasoning is great and the skin is ALWAYS super crispy.
I got a side of the shishito peppers with white anchovy and toasted garlic for some green with my fried:
I love these shisito peppers as they are commonly found in Korean food. They are so good and mildly spicy. And they are rendered quite tender when roasted. Anchovies added a nice nutty but salty flavor. I practically ate the whole plate.
So the meal had some hits and some misses. I cannot say I was blown away by this meal and the service sucked but we were happy to have tried it nonetheless.
So that ended our Napa/San Fran eating tour and closes out that chapter on this blog. I hope you enjoyed reading all the great places we were lucky to have tried and hopefully if you are in the area, you will be inspired to stop by some of our favorites!
Wayfare Tavern, 558 Sacramento Street, San Francisco, CA
