Aliment

Reviews 4

TR

Travis Ridlehuber

With an empty stomach and high hopes of a good meal a friend of mine and I attended Aliment hoping for a night of good eats. Though the place is small, it does have a rather nice ambience and the staff were friendly at the start. We waited entirely too long for water, but the waitress who was watching our area was quite busy so that was understandable. Once we placed our order, the brussel sprout appetizer came out quickly which was really quite good. Unfortunately, this was the last thing that went right with the meal. While Im not usually a burger guy in an establishment such as this, my friend told me that hed had it before and it was a great burger. I generally go off suggestions from those with experience, so we both ordered the same burger for our dinner. 20 minutes after ordering our waitress returned to let us know that they were "Out of burgers." WHO runs out of burgers?? We substituted our second best choice as wed seen a nearby diner receiving it for her meal, so thought it might be a good substitute. Once the Korean Style Fried Chicken arrived, I was disappointed to find out that the only thing "Korean" about it was the incredibly spicy BBQ sauce that it was drowning in. Trying a few bits of the bird that werent doused, I discovered that the sauce was the only thing providing it with flavor as there was no real spice to the batter the bird had been fried in. While my friend decided to settle for what was already in front of him, I decided that I wasnt going to punish myself by trying to finish this poorly executed mess. I politely went and found the waitress standing with one of her coworkers and explained that the meal was both too spicy and not something I could eat, and asked if she could please remove it from the tab. She suggested I take a look at the menu for a replacement, and I settled for my third choice of salmon cakes. Sigh... Honestly this just isnt a well thought out dish. While the salmon cakes were ok, there were a lot of things going on with the dish that didnt seem to really have any connection to any other item on the plate. The small mushrooms were fine, but seemed an odd pairing with the fish as they werent prepared together or in the same fashion. There was an interesting starchy root vegetable that was plated with this, but it was cold compared with the the rest of the ingredients and seem to only serve the function of visual interest, while totally lacking flavor or preparation. There were huge wedges of what smelled like smoked beets but tasted like something dumped straight out of a can, and all of this sat in a lukewarm puddle of sunchoke sauce, which again seemed to be in no way related to anything else on the plate. Unfortunately the hopeful name of Aliment is a complete misnomer. In this case Ailment is much more apropos. Theres a lot of great food in San Francisco. If youre looking for a nice meal, and you pass this place, do yourself a favor and keep walking.

SH

Sherry Li

Upon a recommendation by a friend, I dined at Aliment in a group of six, which turned out to be the perfect group size. We got one of each of everything except the burger, salads, and the butcher board. We also got extra of fried chicken bits, brussels sprouts, and steak, because they were our favorites of the night. To go along with the food, we got a bottle of the Samsara pinot noir and (I think) the Alexander Valley cabernet sauvignon. Both were wonderful and went very well with each of the dishes. Service was great and everything was wonderful. Highly recommend Aliment for a tasty dinner. Recap of dishes below: MUST HAVES: - Fried chicken bits: Small pieces of fried chicken. Not dry, lots of flavor, great crust. I also loved the pickles. - Riblets: Yum, so delicious! So juicy, tender, and flavorful. Arguably my favorite dish of the evening. The collard greens were great as an accompaniment. - Steak: Perfectly medium rare. Loved the chimichurri sauce and carrot puree. Portion size is pretty big too. - Pork belly: How can anyone turn down delicious pork belly? The kimchi was a great topping and I loved the crunch rice ovalettes. - Foie gras meatballs: Yum yum yum. Texture was soft and theres lots of flavor. The salad on the side was extremely lackluster though. - Brussels sprouts: JUST OKAY - Mussels: Compared to the other dishes, I thought this was just okay. It was yummy but not as interesting as some of the other offerings. - Pastrami short rib: I think the rest of the group would disagree with me and put it as a must have, but I didnt think this was as great as the other dishes. The concept was new and interesting, but the other meat dishes were better, IMO. The egg was awesome though. - Trout cakes: Kinda like crab cakes. It was delicious, but was slightly fishy, so thats why I didnt put it in the must have category. WOULD SKIP - Arctic char roulade: This was perhaps the weakest dish of the evening. The fish was overcooked and there wasnt enough flavor. - Gnocchi: Theres probably better gnocchi elsewhere. - Lamb: Its not bad, but also didnt stand out. I would skip this and save room for the other meat dishes.

LI

Lizzy Burl

I was really disappointed with this place. I had passed it many times and it looked like a neat place to eat, the menu looked good, etc. We ordered two appetizers, the potato leek soup and the brussel sprouts. Now the sprouts were very tasty, albeit a bit oily. Definitely, if you are eating here, get those. The soup was very disappointing. It was just very... bland. We only ate a few bites before giving up on it. It needed more salt for sure. (We actually sent it back and the chef agreed, but at this point we just didnt want more of it) We also got the gnocchi. The consistency of the gnocchi was not good. It was too soft and just kind of came apart in your mouth. The sauce was also a bit bland. There were nice bits with the garlic and smoked onions, but the nice flavors didnt go throughout the sauce. You had to really get lucky to get a good bite. I only ate about half of mine. For the price, this place is just not worth it. We paid (10 (soup) + 10 (sprouts) + 17 (gnocchi) + 21 (gnocchi with meat addition) + 5 (tax) + 12 (tip) = 75. For $75 in San Francisco, you can get MUCH tastier and higher quality food.

SA

Sameer Ansari

Brussel sprouts were delicious and service was good. Unfortunately, the rest of the food was not tasty at all, for the cost of the food and slightly fancy looks of this place, the lack of quality was surprising. For appetizers we ordered leek soup, which was bland and had an oily texture, missing salt (the chef agreed). We also ordered brussel sprouts which were delicious and flavorful, if slightly oily in parts. For the main course we had gnocchi with pork belly. The gnocchi was overcooked (like mush) and bland, every so often wed taste a bundle of garlic and butter which would have been great if it was in every bite, missing salt as well. The pork didnt have much flavour either. This would have been understandable if the cost was 1/2 of what it was, the restaurant seems like its still trying to figure out its style, if they could bring the quality of the food up to the levels expected from the cost, then this would become a 4 star place easily