When we were in San Francisco some ten years ago, we stopped for lunch, or was it dinner, one day at Gordon Biersch and were introduced to their addicting garlic fries (which we later chowed down upon at a Giants’ game). Not realizing they’re a chain now, Chris grew quite excited when we walked past one of their restaurants on 9th street yesterday, on our way to the National Archives. No matter what else happened the rest of the morning, he made up his mind that we were having lunch there that afternoon.
So of course, after touring through the Air and Space museum, we hoofed it back up to Gordon Biersch, arriving about 12:55pm to face a 20 minute wait for lunch (the place was packed though the upstairs was empty – guess they don’t seat up there during lunch time). It didn’t matter that we had a 3:00 appointment at our representative’s office, back down by the Capitol, we were waiting for lunch.
Luckily, it only ended up being about a ten minute wait.
I’m not going into a lengthy description here. We started with an order of the garlic fries, that while good, did not ring true to the memories we had from San Francisco all those years ago. Since Chris couldn’t get a burger rare (they insist on cooking to 155 degrees – chain restaurants!), he had fish and chips (i.e., garlic fries). I had the pulled pork sandwich, Sammi had fried calamari and Becky a Caesar salad, everything was fine – not outstanding, not bad, just fine.
For dessert, which took longer to get than our entrees (and forced a mad dash to the Congressman’s office; we were about to give up on them when they arrived), we had the apple bread pudding (because if you know me, I can rarely resist an apple-based dessert, or bread pudding, so the two combined is like nirvana – especially when drizzled with a warm caramel-nut sauce), and chocolate-peanut butter pie, both delish.
So would I eat here again? Probably. Would I go out of my way to eat here again, probably not (but it’s getting rare to find the places I would go out of my way for).
