Bar Tartine

While we were out in California, Ken and I met up with one of my friends from kindergarten for dinner at Bar Tartine. Julia and I have stayed in touch and always pick up where we last left off – for a while, she was living in New York after college and we used to always go swimming at the Y together (what a long time ago!). She moved to California for graduate school and decided to stay there (but hopefully she’ll decide to move back to the east coast some time soon!)

Julia lives by Bar Tartine and I wanted to go there because I love their bread and pastries and thought their food might be delicious as well. We started out with their porridge bread, which you order for the table, and an order of butter with kefir:

The porridge bread has the most delicious texture ever; the innards are really soft (almost so soft it’s porridge-like) and the crust is crispy and has a light sesame flavor.

You can either order a la carte or order their tasting – Julia suggested we order a la carte and Ken and I were on board. We started with the beef tartare:

The beef tartare came on Tartine’s bread and was accompanied with tonnato and dried tuna – the tuna flavor threw me off a little but otherwise it was a really delicious dish.

We also had the carrots with sumac yogurt and sunflower tahini:

The carrots were flavorful on their own and the yogurt was a nice refreshing flavor but I thought the sunflower tahini flavor was too thick for the otherwise light dish.

Next we had the chicories salad with feta, sweet potato and avocado:

The salad was way too overdressed and heavy, plus the combination of feta and avocado made the salad a bit too mushy for me.

Finally, we ordered the sprouted lentil croquettes with kefir and coriander:

Me and Julia after dinner:

We enjoyed catching up and thought the food was okay, but the flavors weren’t as bright and fresh as I thought they would be – everyone speaks so highly of the restaurant and while I thought the food was good, I didn’t think it was that memorable or worth another visit. Maybe the pre-fixe is better, but none of us were wowed with our dinner.