The Slanted Door San Ramon — Restaurant in San Ramon

Overall, this restaurant is fantastic. I never went to the SF Slanted Door so to have it in San Ramon is convenient and nice. However, first things first: there's no clear sign for this restaurant! Of course, it's rather easy to find since it's the biggest and busiest restaurant at City Center but as far as I could see, there wasn't even a small sign indicating that this restaurant was the Slanted Door. But personally, I don't hold that against them, assuming that they want to keep some "minimalist" aesthetic. The interior of the restaurant, as one could probably tell from the outside, is very spacious. I went there with a friend for dinner and it was POPPING. Since it was Friday evening (at prime time dinner time), it was rather loud, but not noisy per se. We got bar seats which made it easier to have a conversation in spite of the high volume level in the restaurant. As to the food: this is the main reason why this restaurant is fantastic. I really wouldn't recommend this place for family dinners; more for dates and such. We ordered the spring rolls for an appetizer (from what I remember, there were 2 kinds of spring rolls but I don't remember specifically what we ordered; we got the non-vegetarian one). The sauce for the spring rolls really made it. For the entree, we got the most appealing thing: the wagyu steak ($46). Was it worth the price? YES. That's a rather subjective YES but like I said, this place is for dates and a wagyu steak around here is something worth $46 to me. Don't know if the steak if dry-aged but nevertheless, it had a deep umami unlike most other steaks one eats. It comes with grilled spring onions and shitake mushrooms which are a great touch to the steak. One thing that the servers will tell you if you eat here for the first time is that everything on the menu is for sharing. It's not necessarily tapas-style or tapas-sized but it's that general idea. There's no mashed potatoes or extra vegetables that comes with your order. What you see is what you get on the menu. As to the menu, it's rather compact, which I appreciate. Come to expect to spend almost $100, if not more, for two, if you want to be satisfied. Which is another reason why you shouldn't bring the kids here, especially pubescent ones who eat incessantly. Nevertheless, quality of the food and general dining experience was great and though I have certain reservations regarding the aesthetic appeal of the City Center architecture in general, Slanted Door San Ramon is probably one of the greater restaurants in...

Very disappointing.

The cocktails were good, I had a Fourth regiment, Singapore sling, and an Original. All just fine. My wife had three glasses of wine that were fine.

The server did fine until her section filled up then she disappeared, not unexpected generally but part of the pricing seems like it includes good to great service, this service was fine.

We started with the live scallop. It was chopped up raw scallop with some flavor, that wasn’t flavorful. It was ok.

We also had the banana blossom salad, it was the second best thing we had. Nice fish sauce flavor. Nothing special but pretty good.

Then we had the spareribs. These were sad. Tough and flavorless. Undercooked, chewy, covered in sauce and scallions.

They brought the duck out next, out of proper order, and the runner asked why we hadn’t ordered rice. We mentioned that we had but it hadn’t come, she promptly brought some. The duck meat was over cooked and chewy and the skin was rubbery and undercooked. I don’t know how they pulled that off. $44 for garbage.

Then the famed Cellophane noodles and shimmering beef. The Noodles were really good but the shimmering beef was a joke. Filet mignon that they somehow made tough. Tough filet mignon, seriously? As a flagship dish? Again $50 for food so easy to cook it cooks itself, and they ruined it.

The best dish was the stir fried guncho.

I am not a pretentiously over critical reviewer. This is my fourth review ever anywhere and I feel so strongly about how not good it was for any restaraunt, much less a high priced one that I am posting in several places to help other middle class folks not waste their fancy food money here. $350 for a meal where they really screwed the pooch on basic elements of cooking (err on over on the ribs, not under. Leave the duck meat under and crisp the skin, DO NOT OVERCOOK THE FILET MIGNON) is just silly.

Hopefully they are just sorting out newish restaurant kinks but I don’t have the dough to find out if they can figure it out. Based on their rep and the amount of people with more money than sense I’m sure they will be fine, but my honest recommendation is that even if you are made of money you can find a better fire to through it into.

They got a second star for the stir fried bok Choy,...

I have been waiting to try this place since it opened. I really like the the one in SF so I made a reservation for 4 when it opened at 5:30 for dinner. If you don't like to wait, making a reservation is recommended since people are still curious about this place. The atmosphere is nice but gets pretty loud when it is crowded. Slanted Door serves sort of like a family style. It's not the family style that I had in mind which restaurants should really adopted. The tables are too small to have all the food out at the same time so they serve the dishes based on the course from appetizer to entrees. I rather have all the food out and have a real family dinner so everyone can chow down while having a good conversation. Why the 2 stars? Well, I give the stars to the waiter and the bus lady who were very nice and helpful. The food, on the other hand, is not up to par given how much they charge. Actually, the food is not even as good as some very affordable Asian restaurants. I don't think the people who gave good ratings tried other cheaper Asian restaurants in the Bay Area. We got the Hue Dumpling, BBQ pork spare ribs, shaking beef (their signature), whole fish, and long string beans with fried garlic. The spare ribs were too salty and that made the tangy taste of the BBQ sauce unpleasant. Shaking beef cubes were very rubbery. The cubes were too big to be bite size so cutting the large rubbery cubes was a pain. Imagine eating that. I can make beef cutes more tender and juicy with my eyes closed. This was very disappointing for $41! Whole fish is a little better but dry maybe because it is baked to give it smokey favor. Didn't get that smokey taste. I rather have a fresh steamed fish. Go to a nice Chinese seafood restaurant and you'll know what I mean. Be careful of the fish bones if you are not used to picking them out. long beans could also be better. Didn't have that cooked crunchy texture you normally expect. Expect to pay a premium for this especially when you add the drinks. Even if the food is good, it's not a place for me to frequent often. A party of 4 will cost you around $200. I didn't even...