Garlic Condoms at the Stinking Rose!
Written: Aug 04 '00 (Updated Jan 19 '03)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Cute decor; some unusual food choices
Cons: Too much garlic
The Bottom Line: Unless you adore food heavily seasoned with garlic, this is not the place for you.
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| jo.com's Full Review: The Stinking Rose |
This is my 4th in a series of reviews from my trip to San Francisco.*
The Stinking Rose is on Columbus Avenue in the North Beach section of San Francisco.
I might not hate this restaurant if my husband and I hadn’t gotten sick the day after we ate here. Relatives who live in San Francisco mentioned it as “the place to go.” Well, it’s the place to go all right, if you want to stink and have a not so terrific meal.
We waited 15 minutes (Reservations cannot be made.) on a Friday night to get seated and I had a chance to look around. There are several rooms, all decorated differently. The first floor is noisy and crowded but the décor is charming.
There is an area where you can buy a variety of items. Some of the items being sold were:
garlic condoms, garlic potato chips, cookbooks (with garlic); and t-shirts that say “We season our garlic with food.”
The restaurant is cute. It has a lot of ambiance. There are garlic vines hanging everywhere. Actually there is garlic everywhere. By the time we were seated I had just about enough garlic to last a lifetime and I hadn’t even eaten.
After we waited in a crowded area we were pleasantly taken upstairs. There appeared to be no elevator so if you are not ambulatory you would eat downstairs.
We ate upstairs which I would recommend if you want a little breathing space and a little more quiet. Upstairs is cute also with walls painted with...what else...garlics doing all sorts of things. Let’s see, we have garlic people in boats, garlic people dancing, well you get the picture, I’m sure.
The service was excellent. We were waited on right away and the waitress was pleasant. In spite of the crowd I felt not at all rushed to leave.
There are vegetarian meals and some do have a no-garlic option (not many). On the menu were roasted rabbit for $15.50, roasted garlic potato onion soup for $5.95 and ..get this..garlic ice cream for $4.00. Doesn’t that sound just yummy?
I had the neon ravioli which had ricotta cheese, potato, carmelized onion, mozzarella cheese and of course garlic in a cream sauce for $12.25. It was good. It tasted like ravioli with garlic. No salad came with it so I just had a bowl of pretty colored ravioli.
My husband had the lasagna which had mushrooms, mozzarella cheese, spinach and garlic in it for $12.50. The dishes were generous but really would have been nicely complimented by a salad.
In conclusion As I said, the next day, we both felt ill. It really has potential. The ambiance is nice and the location is terrific. They just need to cut down on the garlic or have more non-garlic options. Maybe a new name like “The Not So Stinking Rose” would be better.
Links to my San Francisco series are below:
Haight Ashbury
National Car Rental, Do The Driving Yourself
I Am A Rock, I Am An Island: Alcatraz Island
Muir Woods, An I Wood Do
From Chinatown To North Beach
The Stinking Rose Restaurant
American Airlines
Santa Cruz Boulevard
Neptune's Palace Restaurant
Recommended:
No
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