Bar 888 & Bistro 888 — Restaurant in San Francisco

The food has gone downhill significantly from when this was a Michelin-starred restaurant named Luce.

I had the special short rib poutine; one of my favorite cuts, but cooked in a way that rendered it flavorless. The fries and cheese were fine, hard to mess that up, but the whole thing didn't mesh.

We also got asparagus with a spring onion sauce, and the asparagus was cooked acceptably, but the sauce was sad and bland and not the happy energy that had drawn me in the name on the menu.

I did appreciate that there was a hot chocolate dispenser in the lobby (though it tasted like Swiss Miss).

We waited maybe twenty minutes before the first server came to check up on us, and it didn't seem that busy. The server was consistently neglectful. We had an acceptable skillet of molten Brie with crostini, and they kept trying to take it away instead of bringing more crostini. It's a bad sign when the waiters assume you don't want to...

The food is good and the drinks are nice. The prices are a bit high and you should watch your ticket. You may find prices marked up drink prices several dollars above what is on the menu. Our table split a check and the first half noted the incorrect prices and sent the check back to be adjusted. The second half of the table got their ticket shortly after and the same staff did not correct the same incorrect prices on several drinks just a few minutes later. The manager apologized and admitted it happened earlier in the evening, suggesting to me they are not mindful about known problems of...

The bar was, as described, posh and cool. The food we tried was great, and we had a tasting of different Grappas. The only reason this is not a five star is (perhaps unfairly) because I apparently hate Grappa. I tried to like it...I really did. Six different options firmly convinced me that Grappa is not something that I'm ever going to try to put in my body again. I appear to be opposed to it on a cellular level.

But the bar was really nice. And if you like Grappa, it's probably...