Ti Couz is a perfectly good little restaurant in the middle of San Francisco's most urban decay hip neighborhood centered around 16th Street between Mission and Guerrero. This means a few things: parking is nearly impossible, you will be hit up for donations or drugs, you can buy nearly anything stolen from your apartment in a "sidewalk sale" and the good restaurants will be impossibly crowded.

Ti Couz is also a ridiculously popular restaurant -- they don't take reservations and you can expect a 30 minute wait, even on a Tuesday night. Fortunately, there's a nice bar across the street, Dalva, and the wait staff will gladfully fetch you from there when your table is ready.

My friend Gina and I ordered a savory crepe -- carmelized onions with mushrooms, and the shrimp-couscous special. Both dishes were delightful and incredibly tasty. The combination of the carmelized onions with the savory mushroom sauce was truly music in our mouths. The shrimps were seared, spiced and succulent -- the couscous was filled with all sorts of tasty morsels and was alive with flavor and texture.

Everything was going well until we ordered a flaming dessert crepe with banana and vanilla ice cream that tasted strongly of bad grain alcohol and didn't really finish our evening on a high note. This was a surprise for me because I usually like their dessert crepes. However, I'll definitely go back to Ti Couz ... when I have the time to wait!

Parking is a huge problem. Park at the 16th & Hoff public
garage, take BART or plan to drive around for at least 30-45
minutes looking for street parking (at the risk of getting your
windows broken).

Copyright 2000 Jennifer R. Accettola. Originally published on http://www.planetx.org/~jenn/



Recommended: Yes