Idea / ambience: 5/5 Food: 3/5 I know Chef Chen reads all - Eight Tables by George Chen San Francisco - Buy Reservations
- Anything Postpaid
- Postpaid Table for 2
- Postpaid Table for 4
- Postpaid Table for 6
- Imperial Degustation - 帝国品味 - Any Table Size
- Table for 1
- Table for 2
- Table for 3
- Table for 4
- Table for 5
- Table for 6
- Culinary Explorations - 烹饪探索 - Any Table Size
- Table for 1
- Table for 2
- Table for 3
- Table for 4
- Table for 5
- Table for 6
- Seasonal Short Story - 时令短篇 - Any Table Size
- Table for 1
- Table for 2
- Table for 3
- Table for 4
- Table for 5
- Table for 6
Getting a Reservation at Eight Tables by George Chen San Francisco for Today or Tomorrow is Easy!
Buy a verified reservation at Eight Tables by George Chen San Francisco from someone who doesn't need theirs anymore.
If there is nothing that fits your schedule, you can bid on your preferred time.
We only list verified Reservations!
All listed Reservations are reviewed by our team before appearing in the calendar or being allowed to answer a bid you place. That's why AppointmentTrader comes with a included Money Back Guarantee for each transaction.
San Francisco's Best Prepaid Restaurants that are most frequently booked by customers of Eight Tables by George Chen San Francisco
Ranked #15 in San Francisco's Best Prepaid Restaurants.
Ranked #16 in San Francisco's Best Prepaid Restaurants.
😍 5/5 - Idea / ambience: 5/5 Food: 3/5 I know Chef Chen reads all
By 👻 @Carol Y., 03/24/2024 3:00 am
|
Idea / ambience: 5/5 Food: 3/5 I know Chef Chen reads all of these comments, so this is more of a letter to the chef than a review. First of all, I appreciate the idea of Chinese fine dining which "elevates" it in the western perception. Why can omakase charge $300+ per person but Chinese food can't? So I stand wholeheartedly behind Chef Chen's vision, which is why I left five stars. That being said, I came here with the wrong expectations. Based on the price for the meal, I was expecting something similar to Lei Garden in Hong Kong. Where traditional Chinese cooking is fine tuned and served with Michelin standards of presentation and service. However, the food has an Americanized palette with Chinese ingredients, and left something more to be desired. The quality of the ingredients and detail in preparation was excellent, but the taste was lacking I'll go into why dish by dish: 1) The nine plates 九宫格 It was very creative to have 9 distinctive flavors, but they could be improved. Starting with the jujube and rice cake, the rice cake was a bit too firm compared to the texture of the jujube, maybe a loose sticky rice 糯米 filling would have been better, like what's usually in 糯米藕. The pickled cabbage and crispy pork was over salted. The citrus flavor profile just didn't taste Chinese, it tasted super western. The potato croquette was just a western potato ball. I understand most people are not familiar with numbing spice so this maybe was a gentle way to introduce that. The wonton was undercooked, the skin was too firm. This one might benefit with a slightly longer cooking time and higher serving temperature. The lower right plate (crispy meat with ham), could do well with a higher serving temperature as well. It was lukewarm when it came to us, and fried foods just taste oily when they're not piping hot. My favorite was the bitter melon with salted egg, everything else not mentioned was unimpressive. 2) The cold noodles. I enjoyed the soymilk base to this, but the flavors were a bit one dimensional after a few bites. All I could taste was soymilk and spicy oil, if there were more to the texture (like adding in crushed peanuts) or more flavor profiles (like adding a sesame paste or sauce and meat chunks), it may have had a more lasting impression. 3) Steamed egg I was actually quite disappointed with this one. All I could taste was the caviar and chives, and although the presentation was gorgeous, the taste of the egg custard was fully overpowered by the caviar and other ingredients. I wanted to taste the 鲜 of the egg. The raw lily bulbs may have looked pretty but the texture was weird in combination with the egg custard. The earthy taste of raw lily bulbs also didn't mix well with the caviar. I would have much preferred the lily bulbs to be cooked and for there not to be the citrus chunks, this dish was doing too much at once. 4) Sichuan sea bass This was my favorite dish of the evening. The fish was slightly (maybe by a minute) overcooked, but that could be a result of the meat near the skin being cooked by hot oil. I am not sure. The flaky skin was great, I also liked the flavor profile of the sauce. However, the only comment I have is that if the sauce could be less oily, that may have worked better? I wanted to drink the remaining soup but realized it was more of a sauce than soup. However, the consistency did coat the fish better. 5) Smoked garlic chicken I wish the chicken could just be eaten by itself without a sauce, more like traditional 熏鸡. Additionally, the skin of the chicken was slightly tough to chew and not crispy, and the meat itself was slightly dry. 6) Lamb The lamb was cooked fine, and I appreciated the cumin flavor profile of the sauce. However, there's a few nits: the sauce doesn't coat the meat well, it doesn't stay on, so the meat could benefit with some flavoring (salt, cumin, spices), or the sauce could be thicker. I prefer super soft daikon rather than firm ones. The stuffed morel tasted great, loved the spices in the meat. The stuffed morel tasted more middle eastern than Chinese, but was interesting. 7) clay pot rice This was a disappointment due to a few reasons: the crispy onions topping ended up being chewy rather than crispy, the guoba of the rice was also not crispy when mixed in but was chewy, the sausages in the clay pot didn't have the normal Cantonese sweet flavor profile (the iberico ham was unnecessary in my opinion), and the entire clay pot was missing the sweet soy sauce Cantonese clay pot rice usually comes with. 8) Desserts The citrus plate was fine, nothing impressive. The deconstructed boba was a fun idea. Overall, I appreciate the concept Chef Chen is going for, however this is more of a restaurant for westerners as it provides "new" flavor profiles relative to what they normally experience. For Chinese people, the westernized touch to the flavor profile is likely a miss for anyone expecting Eight Tables to serve Chinese food.
0 Replys
0 Comments |
Be the first to Reply |