Hawthorne Lane
22 Hawthorne Street
Tel: 415.777.9779
SAN FRANCISCO's Hawthorne Lane is a truly civilized dining experience. The noveau California cuisine is served in a beautifully decorated building. You know someone with an eye for detail was responsible from the moment you walk through the leaf & vine wrought iron doors and as you pass the maple bar and warm wood booths. The food is just as delicious and comforting as the restaurant's warm appearance.
Last December (1999), my manager let me pick the location of my birthday lunch -- I picked Hawthorne Lane for a splurge. Eight of us were seated around a big round table and fought over the contents of the superlative bread baskets served at Hawthorne lane. The last time I lunched here was with my cousin Bud in July -- the summer menu was equally as impressive as the current winter menu.
Our group started with appetizers, including:
* Shrimp spring rolls (8.50)
* Seared rare peppered tuna with sticky rice salad and sweet ginger vinaigrette (8.50)
* Spinach and dried pear salad with buttermilk blue cheese and toasted hazelnuts (8.00)
* Spicy chicken satays (8.50)
About half the group got the seared rare peppered tuna -- it was a tuna kind of day, I guess because we were all suprisingly consistent on our lunch entrees -- I think that four or five of us selected the grilled rare tuna (14.00). The tuna never disappoints at Hawthorne Lane. However, being in San Francisco, no restaurant has any excuse for serving poor quality tuna.
The salads are also extremely tasty and well prepared -- creative combinations with delicious, light vinaigrettes that don't weigh down the greens like some dressings do.
I'm a vegetarian at home, but I eat some seafood when I go out. Other entrees reported as tasty included: herb crusted Atlantic salmon(14.00), grilled spicy chicken breast (13.00) and grilled pork tenderloin (12.00).
DESSERTS:
Our favorite part of the meal (well, next to the four or five bottles of wine we went through over the course of the 4 hour lunch... oops! team-building exercise!). We ended up getting a wide range of desserts and passing them around the table ("take a bite, pass to the right") -- I highly recommend the Meyer lemon tart with raspberry sauce (7.50), and the espresso creme brulee (8.00) is also very nice. We all enjoyed the dark chocolate coconut mousse with coconut sorbet and chocolate truffles (8.00) -- it was simply to die for. The sorbet dish was very delicious (Meyer lemon, mango, strawberry & grapefruit, 7.00) as was the apple tart/fruit crispy thing. The REAL winner was the warm chocolate truffle cake with macadamia crunch ice cream (8.00) that I ordered -- by the time it made it around the table once, I was lucky to have two bites!
Hawthorne Lane is a great place for business lunches, large groups or romantic evening dinners. A bit on the pricy side but well worth it for the high quality of food and service.
Jennifer R. Accettola
Originally published on http://www.planetx.org/~jenn/
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