Gitane

After the craziness of moving countries, and flying off to another state barely a week after I arrived in San Francisco, I finally have a chance to sit down at my computer to something other than work. There are a few terrible meals not worth mentioning and I'd much rather start with delicious dinner fare accompanied by great cocktails.
An impressive dinner in a gorgeous restaurant, it turned out that the lighting wouldn't be the best for my food outing in San Francisco. We're all more interested in good food rather than good photos though right?

Gitane
The menu has a decidedly Spanish feel and doesn't suffer from choice overload. There's a nice range of meat and vegetarian dishes for both appetizers (what I know as entrées), and entrées (what I know as mains). We sipped on cocktails while we mulled over the choice of dishes.

Smoking Lady
As I'm not a fan of sickly sweet drinks, the Smoking Lady with its heavy-hitting combination of akvinta vodka, amontillado sherry, laphroaig, honey, lemon and sage was right up my alley.
To kick off our meal, we had a couple of entrees of share.

Cuello de Pato
The Cuello de Pato was a succulent combination of crispy duck roulade, duck confit, pine nuts, mustard greens, English pea puree, fava beans and sour cherry jus. An almost perfect mix of fatty meat and crunchy pine nuts, with a combination of flavours that was just brilliant.

Canalones
This was a sizeable dish of pasta filled with roasted veal breast, lacinto kale and tetilla cheese. Not a dish I would usually order, I was glad that my dining companion chose this as most of the dish was morishly good. This bits that weren't good were the pockets of undercooked pasta that resulted in odd crunchy textures.
Having finished my cocktail by this stage, a second one was ordered that was just as impressive as the first.

Bitter Forrest
The Bitter Forrest was a heady combination of new amsterdam gin, aperol, zibenz, citrus, bitter lemon soda topped with a sprig of rosemary. Strong in its herb taste, I could almost pass this off as delicious medicine.

Conejo y Caracoles
Neither of us were particularly hungry for some reason, so decided to share a single main. The Conejo y Caracoles, with its interesting combination of pancetta wrapped rabbit loin, morcilla blanca, braised snails and smoked marble potatoes had to be ordered. The dish was texturally interesting with the comforting flouriness of the potatoes offset by the slightly odd squishiness of the snails. I would have preferred larger serves of both the rabbit and the sausage, but that's just me being greedy for the rich flavours of the dish. Pancetta really does make everything taste better.
Gitane is perfect for an intimate dinner, and while the food is certainly good, the cocktails are unique and outshine even the food. Next time, I'm bringing more friends and trying even more dishes and cocktails. The food is on the pricey side though, so maybe I'll have to leave it for a special occasion.
Gitane 6 Claude Ln, San Francisco
Mon-Tue 530pm-12am, Wed-Fri 530pm-1am, Sat 530pm-12am