Straits Cafe & Unleavened Heaven
Written: Nov 30 '00 (Updated Jan 04 '01)
|
Product Rating:
|
|
|
Pros: Sing it with me kids: Roti Prata, Roti Prata, Roti Praaaata, Roti Prata
Cons: Seating is tight, service is not.
|
|
|
| Mr.Eyore's Full Review: Straits Cafe |
For a couple of years, Straits Café was the place where my friends and I went when it was somebody's birthday. The food is excellent, but that it has become the birthday spot has as much to do with the fact that Straits is more enjoyable when you've got room to move than when you've got to sit at a small table for two that's way too close to other tables. We gotsta have their grub, but we want it under optimum conditions.
Transportation and Parking
Straits is out in the Inner Richmond, so if you're heading there from the tourist areas (Union Square) the cab ride won't be cheap. Perhaps $12.00. On the other hand, it is located on Geary, which is the primary artery through "the avenues" and tons of busses, including expresses, run down this street all day and night. They're some of the cleanest busses in town, too. If you're going to drive, parking during weekdays is pretty easy. During weekends, you may drive around for ten minutes or so, but it's one of the easier neighborhoods to park in.
Have-a-Shota-Mango
One of the first things you'll notice when you walk in to Straits, aside from the other people waiting to be seated, is the small bar with huge glass jars containing white liquid and funny-lookin' stuff. The funny lookin' stuff is either giant skinned ginger roots or giant spears of mango. The liquid is Vodka.
If you're one of those people who drinks those new fangled flavored Smirnoff's or Stoli's, don't try the stuff in the jars, because you won't go back to the swill you've been ordering. You like that swill, and you won't be able to get to Straits every time you want a drink, so don't ruin it for yourself. For the rest of you: Get a shot of the mango infused vodka. In fact, order one of those mango vodka girly drinks. Or if the wait is long, have a few shots of the ginger infused vodka. It's all overpriced, but you should have a real infused vodka at least once. Plus, some of the girly drinks go really well with the food.
The Decor: A Little Slice of Paris [Casino]
This is the weak link in an otherwise awesome experience. One side of the interior is set up like a facade of a Singapore backstreet. I don't doubt that it's an authentic view, but it reminds me too much of those Vegas Casinos, like Paris or Caesars, that try to create the outdoors inside. In Vegas, at least it's cheesy. Here, it just doesn't work for me.
But it's easy enough to ignore the facade. What is somewhat less easy to ignore is the fact that Straights sometimes packs the tables a little too close. If you're a party of two, they will sometimes sit you at what is essentially a four person table, but they pull the two small tables that make it up apart by about 3 inches. That's just too close for a romantic dinner, which is a shame, because were it not for the closeness and the resultant noise, this would be a perfect date restaurant.
Unleavened Heaven and ‘Splosions of Flavor
I have two words for you: Roti Prata.
Let me say it again: Roti Prata.
Ahhh, that felt good. Roti Prata is bread, but not really.
Webster's defines "manna" as: (a) food miraculously supplied to the Israelites in their journey through the wilderness (b) divinely supplied spiritual nourishment (c) a usually sudden and unexpected source of gratification, pleasure, or gain (d) the sweetish dried exudate of a European ash (especially Fraxinus ornus) that contains mannitol and has been used as a laxative and demulcent (e) a similar product excreted by a scale insect (Trabutina mannipara) feeding on the tamarisk.
Some of these things scare me, especially that excretus of scaled insect thing. But the divinely supplied spiritual nourishment and sudden and unexpected source of gratification or pleasure thing ... that pretty much describes the Roti Prata. Plus, since I'm, you know, an Israelite, and I discovered this stuff while I was wandering through the be-wilderness of law school, it qualifies.
So yeah, it's a bread. Specifically, it's a round flat bread that's a lot like Indian Nan but it's a hundred times better because it comes with a dippin' sauce of special love-filled Singaporean curry. Get at least one order of this and ask for extra sauce.
There's also a dish called Murtabak, which is the same thing except it has beef and onions inside, and that's actually what I usually get, but I've talked about bread too much already, so I'll leave it at that.
And yeah, Straits is a Singaporean Restaurant. For those of you who don't know, Singapore is a tiny island nation in South-East Asia where everyone is beautiful and smart and generous and carries around magical trays of sublime Sino-French-Indian-Malaysian-Indonesian fusion cuisine. Mainly I say that stuff because Hanski introduced me to the Straits Café, and she's the only Singaporean I know, even though she's Canadian, and her mom once carried some genuine Singaporean Roti on her lap all the way from Singapore to San Diego just so I could have it. So Singaporeans are great people, even when they're Canadian citizens.
My other favorite appetizer at Straits is this little puff pastry upside down top hat thing with julienned vegetables and prawns inside and a delicious tart and spicy sauce on top that I love even though their menu says they're "dainty." But seeing as I'm drinking girlie mango martinis, (or "mangotinis" as I think they call ‘em) The dainty thing doesn't bother me so much.
Among the other appetizers are delicate steamed mussels, your standard satay and delicious samosas that don't have that overly flaky and doughy no flavor having thing that a lot of lesser restaurants' samosas have.
My favorite entree at Straits is salmon filet steamed in banana leaves [$14.95]. I want to say it's so tender it's almost like a pudding, but that makes it sound like it's not good, which it is. Their menu says it's served with pureed fresh onions, chiles, garlic and lemongrass, but I don't remember all of that stuff; just soft pink gooey goodness.
I have also shared the lamb shank [$14.95] a few times, which is as soft as the best osso bucco you've ever had, but it's also drenched in a delicious light curry sauce. But don't think Indian when you think Singaporean curry. It's just as good, but it's a whole different animal.
Their Tandoori Beef Kabobs [$15.95] are almost as tender. They're served on long skewers, frequently rising out of a big spikey spear of pineapple. Tandoori ovens just seem to make everything more flavorful. But don't eat the pineapple. It doesn't go well with the beef.
Pookie and Mayflower John pretty much swear by the Chilean Sea Bass with ginger and Shiitake mushrooms [$17.95], but seeing as there's no such thing as a Chilean Sea Bass*, I always boycott that dish when people order it. But it smells really good, even though it has mushrooms and ginger in it.
You can order from a large selection of soups, noodles and rice dishes to go along with your entrees, all of which are delicious. But they serve such a nice aromatic plain white rice, it hardly seems worth it to waste more gullet space on more dolled up carbs. Instead, I highly recommend their delicious green beans, which have been perfectly cooked and dressed each of the dozen or so times I've had them.
I have tried the duck breast and leg confit.[$17.95], the spicy Basil Chicken [$9.95] and several of their other meat, fish and poultry dishes, and I have yet to be disappointed with a single one. You simply cannot go wrong by ordering their fish special, whatever it is. I should note that Straits also has a very wide variety of vegetarian dishes, from tofu to eggplant to an assorted vegetable platter. I can't speak for these, since I like my meat, but the chefs here really know how to wake up almost any food without overwhelming any of it's inherent characteristics.
It's likely that my descriptions don't do justice to the food at Straits Café. It really is a unique place, with unique food, other than the fact that there's another Straits Café now in Palo Alto, so now it's only almost unique. Chef Chris Yeo is an extraordinary talent, though when the Palo Alto restaurant opened, professional reviewers began to insinuate that the S.F. branch's food was suffering for his occasional absence.* I haven't noticed a bit of difference.
The food can frankly seem a bit pricey, considering the quantity you get. But so many of the dishes are clearly labor intensive, requiring either multiple cooking methods or extensive prep work, that the prices seem justifiable. The service is uneven, which is to be expected (though not excused) given how tight and busy the place frequently is. Go with a few friends, or family, so you can sit against a wall, and you won't mind the occasional disappearance of your waiter. The more people you have with you, the more of their dishes you'll get to try.
*Look it up.
*[See, e.g. The 12/8/00 S.F. Chronicle review, which royally pans the place]
Recommended:
Yes
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
Mr.Eyore
|
 - Top 500 |
|
Reviews written: 129
Trusted by: 299 members
About Me:
I come for the pervasive sense of elitist self-importance and semi-witty expressions of faux camaraderie
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.