Foreign Cinema
2534 Mission Street (b/t 21st & 22nd)
Mission District
415.648.7600
| posthoc's Late Night Restaurant Guide |
With reservations made a few days in advance and mandatorily confirmed the day before, we waited only a moment before we were seated inside the large dining room. Far overhead, the ceiling is embarrassingly high for a taqueria neighborhood. The huge bar at the far end of the room is used only by the servers (a smaller bar to the left of the host podium is visited by a few pairs of black pants: drinks in hand, awaiting a table). The interior is extravagant, not so much in ornate decoration but in the amount of space—a bold, moneyed statement’s made by such expanse in San Francisco!
Presented with menus by our clean-cut server and then left to peruse it a bit, I soon found that a good burrito a few doors down could be had for half the price of the least expensive glass of wine here. But Foreign Cinema is not for those interested in filling up their bellies. I started with a seven-dollar glass of Zinfandel and resolved this to be as good a night as any to indulge my heartache with wine and food that I can’t afford.
Even though Foreign Cinema isn’t any sort of haven for vegans, I was able to find a salad and an entrée that could be prepared vegan-style (yes, vegans have style and working tastebuds). My salad looked like a little head of lettuce! In reality, three pieces of lettuce had been placed carefully on the plate to make it look like I would have a healthy serving of leafy greens; it's just a little nibble of a salad. Laura’s nicoise salad of tuna was okay but salty—as though we have enough cash for unlimited wine! My entrée of summer squash ($11.00) had nice presentation but it looked as though I was done with my meal before I even started. Looking around the room, it seemed as though most of the people came for the see-and-be-seen scene of the hip, new French bistro and not for the bistro’s food. The food, for those who do want to know, is small portioned, good-but-not-tantalizing cuisine. The best item is the five-dollar sorbet dessert: one scoop of passionfruit, one of coconut and one of blackberry-chardonnay…mmmm.
I had thought that we’d get a nice free (forget the food and drink bill for a minute) viewing of "La Dolce Vita" on the outside warehouse wall/movie screen. Unfortunately, only outside tables have a view of the film (which changes periodically, so check the schedule); our inside table afforded us zero view of "La Dolce Vita," which was okay until I discovered that the people outside weren’t even watching the film—definitely a shmooze crowd.
While we awaited the check, I checked out the washroom. You can tell a lot about a place by the washroom. Laura said it looked like Foreign Cinema spent all their money on the dining area and forgot about the bathroom. I thought that, despite its utilitarianism, the amount of space makes the washroom (and the restaurant) seem gaudy, in a city where real estate is so expensive, and condescending, in a neighborhood where utilitarianism oftentimes exists due to space restriction.
I was impressed and felt like I was, perhaps, in France some years back when the old-school credit card receipt came (yep, not enough cash)…until the waiter apologized for it—the computers were down. Of course. Foreign Cinema, 2534 Mission Street (b/t 21st & 22nd), Mission District, 415.648.7600, http://www.foreigncinema.com
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