Food

Dinner @ Kokkari in San Francisco

September 24, 2023 / Comments Off on Dinner @ Kokkari in San Francisco

I’m fortunate that my team at work enjoys food and loves trying new restaurants. They are open to various spots as long as the place fits their diet. A coworker recommended Kokkari, a popular Greek restaurant in San Francisco by the Embarcadero for our belated team dinner. 

Kokkari and SF Location

We work in FiDi, and Kokkari is sort of between that and Embarcadero. The closest BART station would be Embarcadero. 

Restaurant: Kokkari Estiatorio

Address: 200 Jackson St, San Francisco, CA 94111

We enjoyed our 7 minute walk to Kokkari. It was nice, not the dirty and smelly stuff compared to if we went down to Market Street and such. Beautiful area (for the most part), by the Safeway. 

 

Menu on the night we went - 9.21.23. It didn’t quite match with the online menu we saw, but was very close.

Reservations and Menu

We tried to get a reservation online via OpenTable around a couple weeks before our dinner, but they were booked up on the date and time we wanted. I gave them a call and they said they can get us in at 5PM. Said OK and we showed up at 5PM. Early dinner! 

The menu looks pretty good – nice appetizers, soups/salads, and entrees. They have separate drinks and dessert menus that looked really great as well. Prices are a bit high, but not surprisingly considering San Francisco and whatnot. 

Seating and Interior

There are so many tables here! The interior looked really nice – not too formal, but not really chill either. Good light blue colors. Despite so many tables and how all of them get filled up super fast, you can still hear your table convos here. Amazing sound engineering here. 

Time to EAT!

We got some complementary sourdough bread and oil as we browse through the menu. Photos and captions below! Enjoy my Kokkari review and experience.

 

Sourdough bread with olive oil. Delicious.
Tzin Spritz - their version of a gin & tonic. Pretty delicious here! Very strong too. Almost pure gin and some decor in there. I really liked it.
A couple appetizers - Soutzoukakia (grilled lamb meatballs with spiced tomato sauce and Greek yogurt) and a Domatosalada (tomatoes with whipped basil/pesto). Both were really good. The meatballs were smooth and the sauce it came with would go well on so many things. Full of flavor. The tomatoes were really light and refreshing. The basil whip complemented the various tomatoes quite well
A couple more appetizers - Kalamari (grilled calamari stuffed with feta, fennel, orange with black olives) and a fig flat bread like item. The fig item is a Peinirli - bread stuffed with figs and cheese and whatnot. It was one of their specials for the night. The majority of the table enjoyed this as they do like figs. It’s pretty good for figs, but I’m not much of a fan. The calamari was not what we expected, but was really good. Very soft and the stuffed portion was a first for me. I enjoyed it.
Arnisia Plevrakia - grilled lamb riblets with lemon & oregano. Some lamb on the bone! This was really good. Great flavor throughout the lamb and wasn’t difficult to eat. No overly chewy pieces and none was too dry. YUM!

Appetizers Overview

Wow, all that was super delicious. We were all impressed with our various drinks and the appetizers. Everything tasted so good. Immediately, I thought to myself, “wow, I’d definitely come here again and try more of their stuff!”

Arnisia Paidakia - grilled lamb chops with lemon oregano vinaigrette & Kokkari potatoes. Their signature dish!!! I was choosing between this and one of their fish dishes, but wish I got this instead. 3 generous chops of lamb, choose your temperature (medium rare), and so good. My coworker said this was the best lamb he’s had. Now I need to try!
Tsipura - Mediterranean Sea bream. Another fish we got (not pictured) was the Glosa (local petrale sole). Depending on how you want it looked - grilled, or baked or whatever, it comes with different veggies. Both my coworkers that got the these fish said it was really good as well. It looked great and healthy - good amount (whole fish!, mostly deboned) of protein and all those veggies, along with a lemon to squeeze onto the dish.
Ippoglossa - Pacific halibut fillet pan roasted with corn, summer squash, cherry tomato & basil pesto. I decided to try the halibut because I hear about this fish a lot on the various cooking competitions and decided I needed some omega 3s since I’ve had a lot of red meat that week already. I regret my decision. It was a good plate (the veggies were great), but the halibut as a white fish was a bit too dry for my taste. The skin portion was excellent, but would prefer it to be crispier, but the fish itself was way too dry for me. Is this how halibut is supposed to be? If so, I really don’t see the appeal… I thought I had halibut before and it was a bit fattier, flakier, etc., but that might have been something else… darn!
Makaronia- three cheese & pesto ravioli with mushrooms, corn, onions, kale & cheese sauce. A couple coworkers ordered this ravioli dish, and I almost did as well. The menu I saw online had different ingredients in the ravioli and I said yeah, I’d get that, but the actual ravioli was different so I didn’t get the ravioli. Both said it was alright, pretty good.

Entree Overview

I personally enjoyed the appetizers more than the entree! Definitely going with their signature lamb chops next time I go here. Now, time for dessert!

Baklava - Traditional Walnut & honey baklava with vanilla-praline ice cream. Good smooth ice cream, and heavily nut filled baklava. I tried a bite since I can’t have too much walnut without some adverse reactions, but this is a good baklava with a lot of walnuts.
This was an off menu dessert - berry compote with some cream. Very refreshing, great to eat in between bites of other desserts. Served very well as a palette cleanser. I wished there was more cream though… that was great.
Galaktoboureko - Semolina custard in filo and pistachio ice cream. Wow, this was really good! Looks simple, but the filling with the filo was excellent. The ice cream fit in really well here as well. Def one of our fave dessert of the night.
Loukoumades - Traditional Greek doughnuts with honey, cinnamon & walnuts. Walnuts on the bottom, didn’t get any of those thankfully. These donuts were pretty good, but it really does need a lot of that sauce on the bottom for the flavor.

Worth it?

Absolutely! That was a great meal – nice time to catch up with coworkers, and the setting was nice as well. Their restroom was a bit confusing as you had to take an elevator down to get to it, but not bad. The stuff we ordered was just a bit under $100 a person each, which isn’t bad for SF! 

The damage (pre-tip)

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