Orson revisited
Since our first visit to Orson we’ve heard it going through some ups and downs. I’ve now gone back 2x and have to say, I’m impressed.
Our first visit was for drinks and appetizers with an out of town guest. We had a fun time in our neighborhood—oysters and drinks at Bacar, drinks and snacks at Orson, more drinks at Tres Agaves, and then dinner at Coco500. We do live in a great dining ‘hood. I went back again with a friend who moved out of the Bay area and needed a good meal when she returned.
For drinks and snacks, we had:
- pork belly, pizza, & tempura egg.
- crab cakes this is part of Orson’s retooled menu. There were three to the order served with edamame and I forget the sauce. These were moist, flavorful, and quite good.
- smoked tempura egg this is served with a broth poured tableside. Use a spoon to split the egg and let the tempura soak the egg and broth. The smoky flavor is a delicate surprise. Again, a hit.
- grilled tri tip, bloomsdale spinach, espresso, potato fog, horseradish this is prepared sous vide, so the meat is incredibly tender and presented medium rare. The potato fog is really a potato foam; perhaps they’re avoiding the word “foam”. Also very very good.
- farro, grilled peach, crescenza, scallion Like a nice risotto almost, with the lovely addition of peaches.
- corn dumplings, sungold tomato, rye this first time we were here we had carrot dumplings that were airy with just a hint of carrot. I was thinking of these when I ordered them. These were not light and delicate, but were actually small fried corn dumplings. More like chunks of polenta. And also, really good.
- a quick glance a dessert comprise of pluots, honey ice cream, olive oil cream. This was just OK. The pluots were nice. The honey ice cream was interesting with an incredibly soft texture. Probably would order something else instead of this next time.
Overall thumbs: Up. I thought all of the food was quite solid. Service and ambiance were also great.
Tastiness rating: High. All of our selections were tasty and filling.
Service rating: From the moment we walked in our service was outstanding. Manager types stopped by a couple teams to see how everything was and our server was friendly and great at answering questions we had on the menu.
