Last weekend we took a trip up the coast for a short weekend getaway to Point Reyes where we stayed in nearby Olema and enjoyed some great food. We made a reservation for a Saturday night dinner at Sir and Star, which my bf heard about a while back on SF Gate. If Michael Bauer thinks it’s good, I usually do too.
A very nice man at Sir and Star
The Saturday menu is a prix fixe for $75 per person (not including drinks). The theme of the food is “hyper-local” with nearly the entire menu procured from the surrounding area in Marin. The restaurant itself dates back to the 1800s and is decorated accordingly as a sort of upscale lodge with old, creaky hardwood floors, high ceilings with intricate crown molding, candelabra, and a myriad of taxidermy birds displayed on the walls.
As for the food, everything was amazing. There were seven courses; I will go through each with the accompanying photos.
First Course: Puffs of local toma. These little puffs of bread were soft and warm and made with delicious toma cheese. Good start.
Second Course: Warren’s radishes, butter and sea salt. This course threw us off. The waiter set a dish of radishes and butter at our table and didn’t give us any clue what to do with them. Was the butter for the radishes? Do we just eat them whole? It was a bit weird. But, we did indeed eat them whole (efforts to slice them in half threatened to fling radish across the room) and we put the ridiculously light and creamy butter on them. Apparently I’m the only person on the planet that did not know that radishes were a bit spicy. I have since learned this odd fact.
Third Course: Local smoked halibut and a brushstroke of stinging nettle encircled with a soup of coastal fennel and young garlic. Yes, this is as amazing as it sounds. This may have been my favorite course. No. Yes. I don’t know. The halibut was soft and tender and melted in your mouth, with a flavor so salty and succulent, a spoonful-size serving was almost tortuously tiny. The soup was rich and flavorful and went perfectly with the fish. Delicious.
Fourth Course: Long leaves of arugula draped over a pudding of sweet delta corn and, thanks to Marin Sun, crisp sweetbreads. This tiny salad was very good. And, I have a secret… I ate the sweetbreads. If you don’t already know, sweetbreads are not bread, they are the throat, pancreas, and other innards of a calf or lamb, a sub-category of offal. I have seen them before served as they were at S&S: lightly spiced, breaded, and fried. The reason I ate them is because they were from Marin Sun Farms, a farm just up the road from S&S that practices sustainable, natural, and humane farming.
As my beef with, well, beef (and other meat) is generally factory farming and inhumane animal treatment, there’s no reason that I technically object to sustainable, local, humane meat production. However, it’s a bit of a slippery slope, so I think I’ll keep to those few bites of sweetbreads for now. At least until I go back and actually visit MSF. (I will say they were delicious, however.)
Fifth Course: Choice of Tenderloin chop of lamb last seen grazing on local grasses, now amidst a medley of smoked marble potatoes, roasted onions and farmers’ market favas, or A bouillabaisse of all things green and gold gathered from local gardens with a very stirring stick of focaccia and aioli. My man friend ordered the former, I ordered the latter. He said the lamb was tender and delicious and the bouillabaisse (typically made with fish stock, but this one wasn’t) was so good. So. Good. The sauce was incredible, and that little stirring stick of bread and aioli? Amazing. I was actually pretty full already, but ate every bite of the main course. Good vegetables are just the best.
Sixth Course: A duet of the best AKA Andante Dairy cheeses, largo and tomme dolce, with figs on a mission. I love the phrasing on the menu, it’s funny and cute. And cheese! Yeay! The good-looking cheese (in the middle) was also the best-tasting cheese, and the figs (barely visible in my photo — the sun had gone down) were sweet and yummy.
Seventh Course: Vicki’s strawberries extraordinaire with almond dipping cream and chocolate. Now, typically, this does not constitute a dessert for me. I need more chocolate, or at least more sugar. But these little sad-looking strawberries were the perhaps the sweetest I’ve tasted. And the dipping creams had me wishing they had provided a spoon… I used my finger until the waiter took the plate. Yeah, I’m not from Marin.
Overall, the meal was amazing. Everything was expertly executed, the flavors were rich and delicious, and we were stuffed when we left. I’d like to try their regular menu as well sometime, but, alas, it’s hard to get up to Olema during the week. I’m just glad Sir and Star is up there, waiting for us should we decide to escape the city.
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