SF: Dinner at Liholiho Yacht Club

 

I had such a fun weekend in San Francisco a few months ago. I ran into LA friends all over town. And when I walked up to the bar at Liholiho Yacht Club, I sat right next to a couple of friends from Orange County. We shared quite a few dishes at the bar.

I knew we had a night tooling around the local bars so I only tried the Bitter End this night. It’s a refreshing drink that went well with food. If I had more time, I would have also gotten the Pineapple Peat (Scotch, vermouth, pineapple, lime) and/or The Skipper (Rhum Barbancourt 8 year, Skipper rum, Lazzaroni amaretto, pineapple, lemon),

The Bitter End – Koloa Hawaiian whiterum, falernum, grapefruit, lime, Angostura bitters

 

 

 

I didn’t think I could go wrong with a couple of my favorite things; squid and tripe. However this dish was mostly peanuts and it was hard to find the squid and no one really enjoyed the crispy tripe but me. It was a very generous portion, especially when you have to eat it by yourself when 3 guys rejected it.

 

The Southerner in me (in a past life) came out when I wanted the fried green tomatoes. These were so interesting with the Hawaiian/ Asian touch. The fried green tomatoes, iceberg wedge and beets were served with a shiso ranch.

 

The tuna poke was served on thick nori sheets, almost like a modern tuna tartare. In fact, I do believe poke has taken over the former space occupied by tuna and avocado often described as tartare. This was a nice appetizer.

 

I really liked the hopper shrimp with broken avocado, walnuts, golden nugget mandarin oranges and miso.

 

Our enthusiastic bartender talked about the spam musubi so we got that. It turned out to be spam over rice. At first I was calling it a deconstructed musubi but it’s really just spam (housemade!) and rice. It was so good!

 

Then our crazy Cornish game hen arrived in a half pineapple. I ate quite a bit of it as well as the broccoli. I wished I had a fridge to save the leftovers but alas, I did not.

 

 

The other great rice dish was the bay shrimp fried rice. There’s also spam and abalone mushroom.

All the dishes had fresh and exciting sauces. Liholiho is high on my list for a return visit when I’m next in SF. I would like to check out the downstairs bar as well.

Liholiho Yacht Club

871 Sutter St., San Francisco, CA 94109  —  (415) 440-5446

 

 

© The Minty 2017