Cafe Tiramisu — Restaurant in San Francisco

This restaurant has been a favorite of ours for Italian cuisine over many years, but since the COVID pandemic it suffers from the same problem affecting San Francisco restaurants: the high cost of doing business (especially rising rents) and the lack of sufficient staff. Our first problem with our recent visit: the posted website menu has little to do with the current dinner menu. Current prices are much higher, and the website descriptions of the menu belie what you actually get. For example, instead of 6 oysters for $16, it’s 6 oysters for $24; and instead of “chicken breast stuffed with smoked mozzarella, sun dried tomatoes… vegy and mashed potato,” I was served a small chicken leg (unstuffed) in a nice brown sauce, a few strands of asparagus, and a smear of potato purée. The chicken was good if slightly overdone, but it was nothing you can’t make at home on a weekday night and not worth $25. My dinner partner enjoyed a well-prepared but pricey branzino with a side of sautéed spinach. (There are no contorni available on the menu.) Bread now cost $7, wine prices are at typical San-Francisco highs, and to secure a reservation you must provide a credit card that is charged $25 per person if canceled within less than 24 hours. In fairness, the owner has complained to us in the past about the high proportion of no-show reservations. The staff is cheerful and attentive, but they rush around like beheaded chickens while serving the diners with a full house (as it was on the Saturday evening when we went). The frenetic service lent a tense ambiance to the meal. Despite the high prices and menu problems, diners lacking reservations waited outside for tables the entire time we were there. From appearances, most were tourists, as the Beldin Place restaurant-row location is adjacent to Chinatown and other tourist attractions. When a favorite restaurant goes downhill, it feels like one is losing a friend, and we have lost many restaurant friends since the Pandemic. We don’t attribute the problems at this restaurant to greed or complaisance on the part of the proprietors but instead to the fraught business climate in San Francisco. Good restaurants require on good patrons, but as things are going, patrons are being driven away in...

It is first worth mentioning that the food and the general atmosphere at this restaurant is amazing. However, the service is incredibly problematic.

My partner and I came there to celebrate getting engaged earlier that day, and the way we were treated by our server put a serious damper on our celebration. Our server was an older taller man, that looked to be dressed more like a manager rather than a server, so perhaps they were short staffed, however that is no excuse for the way were were spoken to and treated. Throughout the meal, I felt like the server was behaving in a way that suggested he was incredibly inconvenienced by our presence there, although we had made a reservation. This did not seem to be a common theme at every table, as we saw him laughing and smiling at other tables, but this kindness seemed to be reserved for tables where most of the guests where middle aged or older. The server seemed to have no interest in taking care of his tables with individuals that appeared to be in their 20s to 30s.

By the end of the meal, it was clear our server wasn't even bothered to treat us with basic human decency or respect. We order two different desserts and when the server approached us, he said the name of their first dessert as a way of asking who had it. He didn't allow for even 2 seconds to process what he had said and respond before he angrily and aggressively said the dessert again, as a way of expressing his frustration in waiting for us to respond. It was incredibly inappropriate and uncalled for, as there was no real delay for him to be responding to.

I am not someone who is quick to anger, so I sat on writing a review for a few days after dining to be confident my frustrations were justified, but quite frankly the whole experience was...

This version of a romantic Italian trattoria hit the spot for us on Sunday night. It's located in a narrow alley in the financial district known as Belden Place, aligned on one side with numerous other Mediterranean/European restaurants. Don't let the trash bins on the way down the alley throw you. There were no off-color smells to put us off eating outside, where the staff is happy to seat you (if available) even if you have reservations "for inside only," as some of their online presence claims. There weren't many people there when we went, which was certainly a factor. As expected, there's an expansive wine list that goes from roughly affordable to stratospheric, and a small set of good beers on draft to suit that preference. We had a delicious appetizer of grilled octopus with avocado. My wife enjoyed the salmon, while I enjoyed a pork scallopini. Both were delicious and the portions were right-sized, so neither one of us felt guilty for finishing them, yet we weren't stuffed afterward. We also shared the dessert collection (which is a great deal, by the way) for two. It would have been five stars except our server was a bit careless with plate service, and the crashing silverware resulted in me having a lemon-butter sauce stained shirt. (I'm not put off by tiny mistakes, mind; if you'd seen the shirt, you'd have been shocked.) But regardless, it was a fine meal and I have no problem recommending this place especially for a romantic...