I was strolling up and down Haight street on this early Saturday night looking for some food. I was hungry but nothing in the neighborhood seemed inspiring to me when the BF suggested the Alembic up the street. I had been there once before a long time ago to have a couple of drinks.

We walked in and it was buzzing, not super busy but the bar was full. You have to understand that this place is a bar-restaurant and due to it’s location and the size of the restaurant, I would say that people don’t go there for the food but probably for the long list of cocktails.

We asked for a table for three and we were asked if it was a problem for us to squeeze on a 2 top (table for 2). I lived in Paris for 20 years so for me this is no biggie. The restaurant only have few tables and I can understand the need to make the best out of it.

I glanced at the menu and saw: tongue, boudin noir, scrapple, I am already in love.

We order a couple cocktails and decided to start nibbling on the Za’atar potato chips, served with a nice lemon zest creamy sauce. Nice! Then got an order of the Goat cheese croquettes with romesco. I could have popped a couple dozens of those but as I am looking at the menu, I see a lot of thinks that are tickling my palate. I need to try all this food.

The couple next to us left and I asked if we could add the table to ours so we would have more room. Our waitress accommodated us right away. Cool!

I am sipping on my Negroni and the BF is delighted by the cocktail he ordered: the Southern Exposure, nice and fresh with a bit of celery juice, very unique!

The restaurant part of Alembic is more of a Tapas joint, small plates to share. I love the idea, the menu is small enough to avoid confusion, but still offers a wast array of dishes.

Our waitress explains the night special and talks about Boudin and then Scrapple (a cake like savory dish made with pig’s scraps and trimming combined with polenta and pan fried). She says pig and I am excited, anything with pig is good. We order one of each. The Scrapple is topped with turnip greens and a poached egg, perfectly cooked. The boudin served on top of roasted potato with a basil sauce. The waitress bring us our boudin noir and Jordan Grosser, Co-executive chef, comes and tell us a bit about the scrapple dish. I think he is wondering who’s ordering all that food. ME!!! He talked with us for a while and went back in his kitchen. The two dish are so good that we wave our waitress and beg her for a second round.

In the mean time our Kobe beef tongue sliders and Roasted bone marrow are coming to our table. I am so in love with this place The food is excellent, everything perfectly executed and such a unique menu! I am having a foodgasm with the bone marrow, my eyes are rolling in the back of my head, this is heaven, served with a garlic confit and capers.

Our second round of boudin and scrapple came like the the icing on the cake. We’re all in ecstasy at this point.

I have nothing bad to say about this place! everything is perfect!

We ordered dessert, I had to try them. A young girl came to the table and brought us our desert, I understood she is the pastry chef but I couldn’t catch her name. She brought us the Eagle rare chocolate pudding, the Hazelnut cake, and the Brandy napoleon. Everything was delicious, but if you have to order only one, I would go for the hazelnut cake, my favorite.

Chef Grosser came back to our table at the end of the meal and I made sure I thanked him and his staff for this excellent meal. This was one of my top 10 meal in the city! The service was great, and not only to us but I saw the rest of the staff in the restaurant and felt it was an overall good service. The only thing that I would “criticize” though it’s not really a criticism, the music was a bit off for me. I understand that they have to have the music for the bar and the restaurant being so close kind of suffer a bit from that. It gets a bit loud. But nothing that would have diverted my attention from the wonderful food.

Chef Jordan Grosser and Ted Fleury have wowed me with their food. It’s creative, unique, the flavors are bold and intense. I am so happy to see them taking the risk to serve such uncommon food as bone marrow, tongue, pig’s scraps and trimming, blood sausage. Chapeau! And the execution of each dish was perfect. I am very impressed by those young guys! Keep the good work and I will be your fan forever. Thanks again for such an amazing meal!

Summary: What can I say? Stop everything your doing and run over there right now!! This has become one of my favorite spot in town. The food is excellent, the service great. Yes, the restaurant space is a bit small, so no big groups, but if you can find a table, you’ll be on for a great food adventure! Bill for 3: $182.68 (not including tip, but including about $80 worth of cocktails, wine, and dessert wines and a LOT of food)