Sorrel

This was a fun tasting menu experience, in a romantic venue. The lobster dish was my favourite, and we found the chicken wing to be unique for a tasting menu of this stature. The somm's suggested wine went well with the meal, and overall we were happy with the meal.

Came here for a work dinner and we all had a great time! I have been flip flopping between 4 and 5 stars...all of the dishes were very tasty but none of them made me go WOW so that is why I am rounding down to a 4 (since this a Michelin star restaurant).Our group opted for the 5 course menu with the duck supplement. We started with the yellowtail which was refreshing and yummy. The second course was an interesting combo of a root vegetable/chorizo/sweet onion which was unique yet still delicious. I thought the dumplings were just okay because the skin felt a bit thick. We were also served this warm, fluffy bread in the middle of our service, which was paired with 4 different types of butter - all delicious! The halibut was also pretty good. I enjoyed the flavors of the duck, but felt that the meat was a bit tough. Dessert was this thai tea with black sesame ice cream/cake which was yummy but a bit sweet (although that is to be expected with thai tea I guess).In terms of service, I thought everything was at a Michelin star standard. The wait staff coordinated their entrances when they came in with each dish.

Visited Sorrel at the end of October. The atmosphere was perfect for couples looking for an intimate dinner spot. The dishes were not only refreshing but beautifully presented, making each course a visual treat as well. What really stood out was their mocktail selection - offering healthy, alcohol-free options that were both delicious and not overly sweet. They genuinely tasted like the real deal without the alcohol content.We dined around 6pm, which was ideal as it wasn't crowded, allowing for a more personal and relaxed dining experience. Sorrel certainly lives up to its Michelin star reputation with its creative and thoughtful menu. Highly recommend for anyone looking for a special dining experience in the area.

Sorrel is a beautfiul dining space and offers excellent service to their customers. Chef Alexander Hong has been curating delicious dishes for nearly a decade, and continue to create interesting dishes. My favorite items from the 5-course menu were their freshly baked sourdough foccacia bread with black truffle butter. The star of the show was the chicken stock of the halibut and the pour over the rabbit raviolo dish. The sauce has warm hearty gorgonzola. Both excellent flavor profiles. Their birthday treat is a floral marigold ice cream bar. I'd define check out their tasting menu again in the future.

Michelin Star rated restaurant and my friends wanted to come here for their birthday, they've been here years ago but it was my first time. My friend made a reservation for 5 in advance, I think online. We had a 530 reservation and it took about 4 hours for our entire meal. There's street parking and we all got lucky with finding our parking. They also can take your coats and bags. They greeted us with a birthday card on the table. We started with a bottle of French red wine for our table. Our servers were super kind and friendly. All of the courses were different and really good. We added an additional caviar savory cheesecake and a duck leg and shared it. We were surprised with the palette cleanser, birthday ice cream bars, and chocolates at the end. They had some bar seating not sure if they needed reservations. They also have a larger private dining area in the back. Nice cozy inside and outside vibe of the restaurant.

My house made a reservation here for my birthday and we both really enjoyed it! The restaurant has really quite warm and nice atmosphere. The servers were professional with their work and food. We had our 5 course menu and added dozen of oysters and caviar with cheese cake and they were amazing!Please please do add the oysters! The foods don't need any explanation of how amazing they were. We both loved every single bite but spring bounty with yogurt was a bit meh. On the menu, you only see 5 courses but there are more foods included (sour dough with butter was my third favorite, and the sherbet) I highly recommend this place and would definitely go back for the lovely dishes. Ps. I also really enjoyed with their unique plates. Love the ceramic oyster plate!

Went here for a work dinner, and we had reserved the back private room, the Oxalis room, for a group of 10 (which last minute turned into 8). The room would've comfortably fit 10 in my opinion though. The service was attentive and everything else you'd expect from a Michelin star spot. Constant refills of drinks, everyone is served around the same time by multiple servers and same for dishes being taken away, new utensils with every course, etc. I think we had a sommelier help us pick our first bottle of white wine, and then a coworker selected a bottle of red. I believe they enjoyed the selections. I don't drink so can't speak to that.The ambiance is very dark and a little moody because of that. But it was very modern.I chose for our group to have the 5 course tasting menu but with an added Wagyu course. We have one vegetarian in the group, one who doesn't eat pork, and one who doesn't eat seafood, and the chef accommodated all restrictions which was really nice because I always worry about those people's special dishes not being as good, but they all gave great feedback, even the vegetarian! Every dish we had was delicious, but my favorites were probably the striped bass and the A5 Wagyu courses. Every dish had beautiful presentation, and even though the starting courses were a little small, I was SO full by the end of the meal. In addition to the 6 courses we had on our menu, there was an additional homemade bread course with 4 types of homemade butter, an extra dessert/palate cleanser, and little candy/chocolate desserts at the end. I would definitely come back on a future date night to experience the food in the main dining room.

TL;DRA solid option if you are looking for a nice upscale spot and you like Californian cuisine. It is a pretty unique dining experience in the bay and you likely will find something you have not seen before here. The standard tasting menu is not a lot of food and you will most likely get add-ons. I had an overall positive experience but would not go out of my way to come back.--------GeneralWe made a reservation the day of for a party of 4 on a Saturday. A reservation is required for the tasting menu, but they do take walk-ins at the bar and you can order a la carte. Bar seating is limited but, from what I have seen, it's pretty empty throughout the night. The dining area was pretty full on a Saturday night.I am a huge fan of the interior design. It's a little reminiscent of RH Palm Court vibes, with huge marble stones and a gigantic plant in the middle of the restaurant. It's a cute spot for date night and a nice upscale spot to catch up with friends and colleagues. I don't think there is a dress code and while there are some people who are dressed in suits, people also show up in pretty casual clothing. --------FoodSorrel is a New American / Californian-inspired restaurant with Italian influences. Seasonal, locally & organically grown produce is a large focus of the menu, and the courses certainly felt like a stroll through a summer garden. The Californian inspirations are prominent. The summer tasting menu is an eight-course tasting menu at $185 per person, before add-ons, wine pairing, tax, and tip. Something to note is that it's very unlikely that you walk away with an $185 bill. The $185 tasting menu is really the basics, and even though it does contain two meat courses (chicken wing and black cod), the meat servings are small and it's hard to consider them entrées. The signature dry aged duck is a separate add-on, with $65 for a half duck and $120 for a whole duck to share amongst the table.All of the course are small portions, including the two meat dishes. Overall it was not a lot of food (compared to other tasting menus) if you stick with just the standard tasting menu. The dishes are complex and many of the sauces are served tableside. The presentation is beautiful, and there were definitely things I have not seen before. Overall it felt pretty different from all the other Michelin / Californian restaurants in the city.The courses leaned light, perhaps to go with the summer theme. Few courses felt rich / creamy / fatty. That being said, a few courses were too salty for me, and the black cod was under salted. However, the texture of the black cod was absolutely perfect. My least favorite course was the lacto fermented potato. The dry aged duck was delicious and definitely worth getting if you like duck. We got a half duck to share among 4 people and there was a total of 7 slices. I would say that it's plenty to share among 2. While most of the dishes were tasty, I cannot pinpoint a favorite dish or something that was done so well that I was really impressed by. I also felt that the dishes that I found were memorable were more because of the presentation rather than the taste. The bread course was very cool. We got four different "flavors" of butter: dill, honey, anchovy, and pork lard.--------ServiceOur waiter was really nice and service felt welcoming overall. However, there was a noticeable lag between some of the dishes in the second half of the meal, to the point where we were wondering if they forgot about us.

This review was almost a 4-star because of the beginning of our night, but the food speaks for itself and it's truly unreal; the food alone deserves 5 stars and more. We were about 20 minutes late to our reservation and they had given our table away by the time we arrived. This honestly put a bad taste in my mouth because: 1) we called them continuously from approximately 8:12pm until 8:48 (our reservation was at 8:30 and we were stuck in heavy traffic driving through SF on Lunar New Year -- I checked my phone after dinner and I made a total of 20 calls to them between that period of time) and not one single person picked up the phone. I understand being busy, but not picking up a single call between 20-30 minutes makes no sense; 2) I've never been to any high end restaurant (or Michelin starred establishment, for that matter) that doesn't call before giving a table away; and 3) their reservation site or email doesn't say anything about grace periods (or anything helpful at all, really), which is sorta stressful. Anyways.. We made it there. Waited for a little while and got seated, so we let it go. My partner has been trying to take me to Sorrel since the before the pandemic. We've made multiple reservations but something had always come up that made us/them cancel so I've been eager to eat here for a while. We finally made it last night for an early valentines dinner and I couldn't be happier with the dining experience. We started off with the maitake potato dashi which was really good. It was so flavorful and umami, I could have eaten a whole bowl of that and been happy with my evening. Next up was the buñuelo, which was just alright. This was probably my least favorite item on the menu. I just didn't like the taste of the sweet and savory combination so I could have gone without this dish. Very pretty tho! We then received sourdough focaccia with different kinds of butter -- the bread wasn't on the menu but man was it a pleasant surprise. The honey butter was the best butter I've ever tasted in my life. I wanted to take a whole batch of that home with me. Again, if this was the only item on the menu, I'd be ecstatic.Next up: tortellini. Mine was vegetarian while my partner got the regular dungeness crab. I got mine with fresh black truffle and it was so so good! It brought a delicious, earthy flavor to an already very flavorful pasta dish but none of the flavors clashed and it delicious. What's interesting is that my first bite wasn't that good, but with each bite of the dish, it got better and better. What's great is that it was also very filling considering the other items were on the smaller side. Next we received our entrees; my partner got the branzino and I got the vegetarian option which was celeriac. I didn't know what to think of this because I had never tried celeriac before, but the chef brought it out to show me what they'd be cooking it in and it looked like an actual dinosaur egg. It was really good - granted I have nothing to compare it to but it was a good dish. Rather small compared to my partners fish, but I also don't know how much of it I'd have been able to eat if it was any larger. We then got a palette cleanser that they called a "pre-dessert." I have absolutely no clue what was in it, but I can still taste it and it tasted phenomenal. It tasted like salted caramel gelato on crushed cookies of some kind? I don't know but I'd eat 10 of them if I had the option. Last up was the actual dessert and it was truly out of this world. I've never had anything like it. The flavors melted together so well - it was so delicate and creamy, not too sweet but sweet enough to know you're eating a dessert. I truly wish we could have ordered some of it to go, that's how good it was. Afterwards, they brought us some little sweets to end the evening. I think one of them was a dark chocolate and the other was some kind of gummy? I'm forgetting because at this point I was in a food coma, but needless to say, this meal went above and beyond. The verdict is in: Sorrel is worth the hype. We will be back!

Food quality is excellent, but wouldn't recommend for lactose intolerant folks. I'd say there's a lot to miss out on. Tasting menu experience was solid. Oysters were fantastic and so was the duck liver. They have an option for adding truffle on the ravioli, don't get it. Not worth the 40$ markup, doesn't add much to the experience. I would however recommend the wagyu steak upgrade. For the same price you can switch out the halibut, which my partner got, for a steak and braised rib. Great upgradeOverall it's a good experience. Considering the cost to experience ratio, I wouldn't go back but I enjoyed spending Valentine's Day there