Restaurants: B Restaurant & Bar

It’s always nice to have a pleasant experience at a restaurant I stumble across accidentally.

Some friends and I went to B to have drinks for a birthday. I had never heard of it before, nor did I know where it was. I was impressed the moment I walked in to the restaurant, which is perched on top of Yerba Buena Gardens. B’s interior is sophisticated, modern and elegant while also managing to be warm and inviting. It's a hard combination to turn out, but B does it with ease. Sitting by candlelight surrounded by the restaurant’s glass walls with downtown SF sparkling in the background was a decidedly glamorous experience.

After tipping back a few of B’s cocktail specials (more details below), we were naturally hungry. The menu looked promising, so we decided to stay and eat. I’m glad we did. I started out with the roasted beet and blue cheese salad, which was very good. There were many interesting choices on the menu for my main course, but the one that jumped out at me was the burger. This is partly because I just so happened to feel like eating a burger that night (a rare occurrence for me) and partly because said burger was topped with fried feta, fried basil leaves and a roasted tomato sauce. It was totally over the top and utterly delicious. The accompanying potato and bacon salad was a tasty, if very decadent, complement.

The table shared three desserts: a milk chocolate mousse with strawberries, a cabernet sorbet with apples and meringue, and a bread pudding with root beer reduction. Other people at my table liked the mousse; I didn’t. I like dark chocolate, and the mousse simply wasn’t chocolaty enough for me. The cabernet sorbet was a very interesting flavor/texture combination – the icy sorbet, the crisp apples, and the crunchy meringue. Overall, I liked it very much. The bread pudding with vanilla ice cream and root beer reduction could have been truly spectacular; the flavors were beautiful together, but the texture had problems. It arrived at the table with the reduction in a miniature root beer mug. (Nice touch.) Once the reduction was poured over the pudding and ice cream, though, it hardened and stuck to everything – plate, spoons, teeth. Still, the flavors went so well together that I went back for numerous bites and just dealt with the stickiness. Really, though, the chef should play with this recipe a bit, because fully realized, it would be one of the best desserts I’ve had in quite a while.

The cocktail menu was fun. I ordered several “Thunder Kats” – tequila and grapefruit juice served up with a cilantro salt rim. It was tasty and strong, but I would have loved to have tasted more cilantro on the rim. The real standout, though, was the dill Gibson. The gin, dill and cocktail onions were quite a combo.

Our server was very friendly and knowledgeable, and the host was very accommodating, especially considering our last-minute party of 9.

★ ★ ★

B Restaurant & Bar
Yerba Buena Gardens - Upper Terrace
720 Howard St
San Francisco, CA 94103
(415) 495-9800

(Originally written 01/24/2007)