Last night, Vanessa and I made our second visit to Spork, a restaurant that is a couple blocks away from my apartment in the Mission. We had enjoyed our initial visit, maybe six months, but were not blown away by the food–Spork occupies the “not cheap, but not too expensive” niche, of which there are a multitude of great places in SF, including Andalu, Vanessa’s favorite restaurant.
However, other friends that had visited Spork subsequent to us reported in with much more positive views, so we figured we owed it a second chance. Our take: very good. I think we’ll definitely add it to the rotation of restaurants that we frequent.
The broccoli and cauliflower chile appetizer was great, if a bit too spicy for Vanessa. I also enjoyed the mozzarella starter, which came with fava beans, olive oil and kalamata olives. Nothing fancy or revelatory in the flavor, but still good. For our entrees, Vanessa got the steak and I ordered the seared scallops. The scallops were the winner there, as they were large, flavorful and seared just right. As Vanessa put it, she likes scallops that are sufficiently seared to not have a mushy, overly scallopy center. To end the meal, we had some tasty and light beignets sprinkled with cinnamon sugar. The only real miss all evening was the coffee, which was pretty flavorless and blah, despite using Ritual beans. No espresso available, either (my preference).
Recommended.