Prospect is another location I’d visited on my Burger Hunt, and it was definitely a place I knew I wanted to return to. I had actually been back one day for lunch, where I had a fairly decent fried chicken sandwich, and my husband had come here by himself one night and had an excellent meal. So on our last night in our old apartment nearby, we found ourselves needing a place for dinner (as all of my cookware was packed), and we discovered that Prospect was doing several $40 bottles of wine after happy hour so it seemed like a perfect time to check it out.
The $40 wine list was bigger than anticipated which was nice, although a lot of the wines were fairly recent vintages from the last few years. However, we did find a 2010 French wine on the list, and we knew immediately that was the wine for us. It turned out to be an amazing choice and ended up being something we hunted down to have at home! We also decided to start the meal with a couple of small plates, including some deviled eggs and a homemade French onion dip. For a main course, I ordered the bavette steak frites (mostly because I’m obsessed with the French fries here) and my husband ordered the truffle polenta. We also decided to get some sprouts on the side to complete the meal.
The starters were very tasty. The homemade dip was fantastic, and it’s always nice to get a homemade chip at a restaurant. The deviled eggs were tasty as well, and my husband was definitely a huge fan of them. Prospect definitely seems like a place to come to share some small plates and drinks if that’s your thing!
The mains looked great when they came out, but my husband’s was definitely the winner. While I’m not the biggest fan of polenta, this one was cooked really well and had a fantastic truffle flavor throughout (and the giant pieces of truffle didn’t hurt either). The steak was nice, and the fries were superb as usual, but overall, the steak wasn’t something that I felt was better than I could do at home. I probably should have just ordered fries on the side. The sprouts were really tasty, but the persimmon on top was a bit too citrusy, which unbalanced it a bit. I’ve had sprouts with citrus before, and it worked well, but whatever they pickled or preserved for them just was a bit too powerful.
At this point, dessert was definitely on the table for me, and the only one that didn’t have chocolate in it was a citrus tart, so I ordered that, plus some ice cream on the side. (Which then came with a chocolate chip cookie, oops!) Both were nice, but I wasn’t really excited by either, so perhaps choosing a few more sharing plates over dessert is a better choice here.
Dinner at Prospect was definitely something I enjoyed overall. The food was fairly tasty, but not perfect. But there are definitely some winning small plates, and with that amazing deal on wine, it really made my last night in our old neighborhood a great one. It’s still close enough that we’d probably go back, especially if they repeat the wine deal!
Score: 4/5
Recommendation: French fries (they really are very good) and deviled eggs!
Prospect
300 Spear St
San Francisco, CA 94105
