215 Church Street (at 14th Street), SF, CA

I haven’t been to this location of Chow in ten years or so, but not much has changed. TK and I met here for a quick dinner last week and we had a thoroughly enjoyable meal, tasty food that you can order in smaller portions, zippy service and since we were early we had our pick of the tables in the heated outside patio in the back. Probably the only negative was finding parking, but that’s no surprise for the neighborhood.

We started with Baked Goat Cheese with roasted tomatoes and rustic sourdough walnut toast points which were served along with a small handful of buttery and piquant olives

The rich gooey cheese was tart and pungent and nicely tempered by the soft sweet roasted tomatoes

We split the Smiling Noodles with chicken and shrimp, which had the intoxicating fragrances of cilantro, curry and coconut.

It was a thai-inspired sauce spiked with a golden spicy curry and rich coconut milk, but the first flavor that explodes on your tongue is tart lime. It was a fantastic balance of flavors and textures, very rich and satisfying.

We also split the Fusilli with Chicken, Sausage, Tomato and Cream which is one of their signature dishes. It was rich and savory and the pasta was well cooked.

We saved room for the Ginger Cake with Pumpkin Ice Cream and Caramel Sauce, which was the highlight of the meal… The spicy ginger cake was densely moist and sticky and soaked up the buttery caramel sauce and my only complaint is that we were unable to finish everything! Dang I shouldn’t have tried to finish that huge cuban sandwich at lunch…

I’d go back for the dessert alone!

Tagged as: castro, chow