South Food & Wine Bar

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You know you’ve had a really terrific vacation when more than a month later, you’re desperately holding on to the vestiges of the trip. Sure, I’ve stopped reading the Sydney Morning Herald and even more recently given up using the milk frother everytime I make coffee, but we did find ourselves at South Food and Wine Bar this weekend.

And even though Saturday was super windy and we found ourselves in a restaurant without power within about 15 minutes of sitting down, I kept my sunny Sydney disposition (and the wine probably helped, too).

South is even smaller than I thought — probably no more than 50-60 seats in all, even with the communal table just across from the bar.

The menu features the sorts of things you’d expect — barramundi, lamb, venison — but sadly no meat pies (perhaps too stereotypical). But the preparations and ingredients are lovely enough that you get over the eco-guilt of knowing they were probably flown nearly 8,000 miles to get to San Francisco.

Spring Pea Soup with Creme Fraiche

The wine list was quite broad and we had several lovely selections by the glass (unforeseen consequence of the power outage) and though I’d read about the Layer Cake Shiraz, the way the timing worked out with ordering wine and our food arriving once the power came back on, didn’t allow me to try it. Just as well, I read somewhere it retails for about $15 a bottle – and they were charging about $10 a glass. The Jug Shop carries a good number of Southern Hemisphere wines, so I just may get a shot at it.

Service is just fine, although still trying to relive my vacation, I wished our server had engaged us about why we were there (clearly not ex-pats) and whether or not we’d been to Australia. But no such luck.

Bonus points to South for serving Antipodes sparkling water. That, in and of itself, was almost enough of a reminder of our time at qualia to make for a lovely evening.

South Food and Wine Bar
330 Townsend St. (at 4th St).
San Francisco

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