Jonathan Kauffman hinted at his feelings for Hibiscus in his recent response to Bauer about fusion cuisine, and this week his review drops. Much like Chrissa Ventrelle at the Tribune, he loved the dungeness crab and grits (no longer on the menu) and could do without the “excruciating” service. Also, he goes hyperbolic about the fried chicken. “It’s a dish with its own gravity, one so good you orbit it on the menu, pretending to be tempted away by other dishes until the waiter takes your order. It’s a dish so good that [Chef Sarah] Kirnon will be damned to repeat it until the end of her days.” [SF Weekly]
True to form, Reidinger says as much about the setting and design of Ironside as he does about the food, describing the scene outside, in South Beach on game nights, and compares the view to a Fellini film, “faces, body shapes, clothes, shoes, conversations, emotional fields, all drifting past like fish in a huge aquarium.” He also calls an arugula salad a “modest masterpiece” and proceeds to admit an apparent crush on his server one evening: “Our handsome young server could have been an extra from Milk. I hadn’t seen such evocative facial hair since those long-ago days when actual clones roamed the earth. He thanked us profusely for everything. As Joan Crawford might have put it, just whom is thanking whom here?” Oh Paul… we’re blushing. [SFBG]
