S is for: State Bird Provisions {Restaurant Review}

One of the things I love about San Francisco is the sheer abundance of high-quality restaurants serving interesting and innovative food. New restaurants are constantly popping up, making it hard to keep up, but certainly fun to try.

One of my other favorite things about the city is the amount of friends I’ve made in my short time here, and I’m constantly adding to my friend groups.

Last week was a perfect example of both coming together as I tried out a new place on Fillmore Street with a group of new girlfriends. It’s called State Bird Provisions, and the concept is to serve California cuisine in a dim-sum style atmosphere. It can be a little intimidating if you are indecisive like I am, but it’s kind of cool to actually see what you’re going to be eating before committing to it. They do have a few items that you order from your waiter, such as their signature dish, quail (the state bird of course), pictured above. Everything is also organic and local, and the menu is constantly changing.

We also ordered the bacon wrapped dates with farmers cheese (lower left) from our waiter, but for the most part, we grabbed what looked good off the carts being wheeled through the dining room. Also pictured above: little gem lettuce with salt cod, caper, and bean spread (top left), shrimp with coriander emulsion (top right), and duck rillette with almond biscuit (bottom right).

We also snagged a 7 pepper fry bread with oxtail (top left), a trout tartare & quinoa with bonito-rosemary aioli (top right) and marinated mushrooms with vanilla-parsnip and hazelnuts (bottom left). We ordered the sourdough, sauerkraut, pecorino & ricotta pancakes (bottom right) off the menu. All were fantastic, but the bacon wrapped dates were definitely crowd pleasers (we ordered two), and the mushrooms were popular with our group as well.

In addition to the full quail, we also ordered a couple other main dishes from the open kitchen, which is located at the front of the restaurant. We got the glazed pork ribs (left) and the char-grilled chicories with yogurt, dates & almonds (right). I would say the favorites of the table were definitely the ribs and the quail, which were both cooked to perfection.

They also have an assortment of small desserts, so we ordered all but one of them that were being featured that evening. On the top left was a milk chocolate sesame crunch, top right was an orange blossom bun with honey cloud cream and huckleberries (and you know how much I love huckleberries). Bottom left was a dark chocolate pear ice cream sandwich, and bottom right is a hazelnut and apricot linzer bar. I liked the orange blossom bun and the ice cream sandwich the best.

I also must give a huge shout-out to Sandy, whom I had only met once before this evening, as she helped out with the “lighting” of all the food (a.k.a flashlight app on the iPhone). That’s a lot to ask at a tapas place, but she cheerfully obliged.

Overall, we had a great dinner, and got to try a ton of different things, which is always a plus for me. I loved the dim-sum concept, and I think this would be fun for a date night, but you would get to try more dishes if it was a bigger group. In all, the four of us girls ordered a bottle of wine, 13 dishes (3 of them mains), and 4 desserts. Our bill came out to less than 50 bucks per person including tip. Another great San Francisco meal with fun friends. Thanks Andrea, Sandy and Victoria for a memorable evening!