Beef Bavette (Spruce, SF)

Beef Bavette

The grilled beef bavette steak at Spruce is thick-sliced and flayed out like meaty arrows. dipped in Bordelaise and ready to pierce your taste buds. What an amazing steak;  this is one of the best of 2009. The richness of Bordelaise (sauce made from bone marrow, red wine, and broth) soaking the beef bavette can make your eyes roll back when you chew. Spruce’s bavette is paired with duck fat potatoes, which are terrific, and a seasonal vegetable.  A simple and fantastic dish, and a perfectly grilled steak.

Grilled Beef Bavette - Spruce, SF

The Spot: Spruce

Spruce itself is one of the smartest designed restaurants in San Francisco. Opulent but coolly so, every table comfortable and distant enough from neighbors to make you feel your party is the only one there. And faux-ostrich dining chairs…they should sell them.  Comfortable, plush, dark, romantic, Spruce is a great place for dinner. And there are great small tables in the bar area if you don’t have a reservation. 

The Grade: Awesome/Phenomenal 

(highest grade)

The Damage: $30

The Skinny: Spruce

3640 Sacramento Street, San Francisco CA
Phone: (415) 931-5100
Website: http://www.sprucesf.com/
Hours: Lunch M – F 11:30am – 2:30pm; Dinner nightly 5 – 10pm
Chef: Mark Sullivan 

Make a reservation at Spruce via Open Table

 
If you want to try a Bordelaise yourself, here’s a decent recipe (not from Spruce): Steak with Sauce Bordelaise

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Beef Bavette (Coco500, SF)

Beef Bavette

American Kobe Beef Bavette (Coco 500)

You’ll have to excavate the American Kobe Beef Bavette from under the little forest-trap of greens and chopped radish, but it’s a nice discovery. Cooked rare, this beef is terrifically tender and rich. The mizuna (a Japanese salad green) and organic radishes provide a good bright balance with slight bitterness and crunch, and some salsa verde gives a slight, spicy warmth. It’s juicy, tasty, and a bit sloppy. No matter. The beef is wonderful, and the plate well-balanced with flavors. So much so that you may even think you’re having a salad.

The Grade: Excellent

The Damage: $25

The Skinny: Coco500

500 Brannan Street (at 4th Street), SF CA 941107
Phone: (415) 543-2222
Hours: Mon – Thurs: 11:30 am to 10 pm
Friday: 11:30 am to 11 pm
Saturday: 5:30 pm to 11 pm
Closed Sundays

Website: http://www.coco500.com

Beef Bavette (Baraka, San Francisco CA)

The Spot: Baraka, San Francisco CA (Potrero Hill)

The Dish: Creekstone Farms Natural Beef Bavette

Incredible. Decadent. Unbelievably good.

The beef bavette at Baraka is that rare meal that can revive the glory of food and life in any dispirited soul. Certainly one of the best meat dishes I’ve enjoyed in 2008, Baraka’s beef bavette (a tender steak cut from the flap of the beef loin) is the kind of meal you daydream about obsessively until you realize you have to eat it again or you will confound the daily rhythms of your life.

The parsley bone marrow butter alone—glazed across the beautiful, fairly large portion of beef bavette—should get your heart racing after the first bite. It’s a rich and sumptuous touch that deifies perfect, medium-rare beef. As with the other dishes I’ve tried at Baraka, Chef Chad Newton blends flavors that successfully juxtapose each other in the palate. There’s the earthy, slightly bitter baby Savoy spinach, mildly sweet, white cippolini onions cooked sous-vide, and decadent, tender braised beef cheeks stuffed into a beef bone. The sauce bordelaise—which combines bone marrow, dry red wine, shallots, and demi-glace—is a superb complement as a lush moat around the beef, which sits squarely atop the spinach between the beef bone tower and the smaller stack of cippolinis in a cool, very architectural presentation.

This is the best beef bavette I’ve had in the past 5 years; a simply phenomenal dish. The only slight critique I might suggest would be to relocate the baby Savoy spinach to the side instead of beneath the bavette, simply because the crispness of greens stand out more when shielded a bit from the beef juices and sauce.

As described on the menu: Creekstone Farms Natural Beef Bavette – Braised Beef Cheeks, Baby Savoy Spinach, Parsley Bone Marrow Butter, Sous Vide Cippolinis, Bordelaise

The Grade: Sterling Awesome/Phenomenal (5 out of 5)

The Damage: $27 (quite a bargain, relative to other SF restaurant prices)

The Skinny: Baraka
288 Connecticut Street (at 18^TH Street)
San Francisco, CA 94107
Phone: (415) 255-0370
Dinner only, Sunday – Thursday 5:30pm to 10:00pm; Fridays/Saturdays 5:30pm to 11:00pm

Chef: Chad Newton (former Sous Chef at Postrio)

Sous Chef: Ashton Mullikin (worked with New Orleans greats Susan Spicer, Andrew Jaeger)

Baraka website: http://www.sfbaraka.com/

Open Table: Baraka online reservations