Thursday, 26 July 2007

  • Cafe Dante

    Pier 39, Map It
    Bldg N, Level 1
    San Francisco, CA 94133
    415 421-5778

    We spent the evening at the San Francisco wharf (around Pier 39).  It was getting late and being in a city by a large body of water, I wanted to try out their seafood.  I didn't want to wait in line too long so we found a restaurant with a few seats free.  It's really busy around the pier in the evening time.

    The patio with much needed overhead heaters to compensate for the cool breeze coming from the body of water:

    Crab cake:

    A flat oily blob of minced fish.  There is little to no visible crab meat.  It's even burned a bit on the bottom.

    Dante's Seafood Feast - tiger shrimps, dungeoness crab, mussels, clams, and garlic bread:

    The crab didn't have much meat but that's expected for this type of crab.  The garlic bread on the left was really tough to chew and burnt.

    Another angle:

    Everything was in a flavourless orange broth.  Shrimps were small and lacked the crisp fresh texture.  The plate had 3 mussles, 2 clams, 3 shrimps, and half a dungeoness crab.

    The service was extremely slow with one person serving 6-8 tables and our tea taking 15-20 minutes to arrive.  The waiter was polite but was not helpful with food suggestions.

    The crab cakes were below par especially for $6 USD and the Dante's Seafood Feast for $24 resembled more like a pile of random seafood. I talked to the waiter about the quality of the crab cakes and he said he wouldn't recommend it and said he couldn't tell me that as it works for the restaurant ("so tell me why I should tip you?").  On my way back from the upstairs washroom, I overheard a patron talking to the manager (I verified it was the manager with the waiter) on the elevator about how the meal was good and the manager replied saying how he's happy to hear that and told her she's one of the minority that came out with a positive experience.  I guess I'm part of the majority that thinks this place is bad.

    As an added note, the restaurant above is called Dante's Seafood Grill and serves the same awful food in different combinations.

    Eric Tummy Points: 1.5 out of 5

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Comments (2)

  • soggy_fries
    both look gross
  • canUhearMe_NOW
    touristy spots in SF don't have the best food. if you want really good seafood in SF go to Sotto Mare on Green street. it's not too far from Chinatown...which by the way, you can never trust those dim sum "shops" there to provide quality food. and BOUDIN'S... the worst ones are at the pier and ones that cater to the tourists but i know more than enough true SF natives that still love the place.

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