One of the restaurants that I was most looking forward to visit during our trip to the Bay Area for my 40th birthday was Lazy Bear in the Mission neighborhood of San Francisco. A highly acclaimed restaurant with two Michelin stars and a slogan of modern American dinner party, it had quickly become one of the fine dining destinations in the city with its communal dining setting that seems to fully embrace the California ethos of being cool but not taking yourself too seriously. The background of chef David Barzelay who was a former lawyer with no formal background in the kitchen seems to have added another layer of intrigue to the dining experience at Lazy Bear. So when my wife Jun and I met with a long-time friend who moved to SF from New York City a while ago (and her husband), did Lazy Bear live up to our expectations?

The tasting menu at Lazy Bear consists of about a dozen courses running at close to $300 per person. There is also an option to pay extra for desserts and dessert wine flights in the den upstairs. On each course, our server ever so enthusiastically explained the concept and ingredients, perhaps a little bit longer than necessary. After all the mini lectures on how each dish was prepared, however, Jun and I couldn’t help but notice that there was no “Oh my god, this is truly extraordinary!” item during our meal. Yes, the whipped scrambled eggs with bacon and hot sauce were playful. Sure, the “feast of seven dishes” featuring a variety of fish and shellfish were all fresh and well-executed.

My favorite dish of the night was the winter squash fondue with chanterelles, kale and alba white truffle that worked exceptionally well with a red glass of Barolo from our wine pairing. The remaining savory dishes (dry-aged duck with citrus and sunchoke followed by Jewish brisket made of coal-roasted Wagyu accompanied by glazed carrot, latke and caramelized onion) were both above-average, too, in terms of the way the meats were prepared but again, they were not quite like the most unique dishes we hadn’t encountered at other fine-dining restaurants before. After a palate cleanser of poached bear, we did enjoy the French toast dessert with apple flambe and foie gras ice cream alongside a glass of Hungarian Tokaji.   

The restaurant is still quite popular in the SF dining scene, so booking in advance by purchasing the tickets on Tock is essential. I was appreciative of the thoughtful wine pairing featuring several wines from California. The service staff was friendly overall, but as I alluded to above, I wish they could’ve shortened the script for the dishes a little bit lest they sounded too proud and over the top on what the restaurant had accomplished; it also didn’t help that one of the members accidentally tipped over Jun’s wine glass to nearly ruin her prized jacket. Perhaps we were a bit too distracted catching up with our friends to savor each course with more focus. Still, our dinner at Lazy Bear was one of the moments when Jun and I again questioned whether we had been too spoiled from our past fine dining adventures. In fact, we promised ourselves not to visit another fine dining restaurant for a couple of months after this trip to “cleanse” our palate. For now, our verdict is that the restaurant offers a good experience with solid food, but at least the menu we tried perhaps played too safe and we hadn’t seen anything quite groundbreaking in light of our past journey together.

Address: 3416 19th Street, San Francisco, CA 94110

KenScale: 8.0/10 (Jun’s Score: 8.0/10)

Website: https://www.lazybearsf.com/

Reservation via Tock