As is the case with many restaurants in the Mission, I’ve known about Garcon! for a while and have never gotten around to going. More’s the shame since it’s a short walk from home. I was on a date one night having some drinks down the street from Garçon! when the chef and bartender came in after closing up for the night. The girl I was with knew them (being a regular both at this particular bar and the restaurant, her office being between the two) and introduced us. I love chatting with chefs and other folks in the food industry. Now I was determined to eat there, and it just so happened that I was looking for a place to take a good friend from out of town the following Saturday.

So we had dinner there, and I enjoyed it so much that I suggested it the next week as a spot for dinner with Suzanne and a couple friends that publish Whore! Magazine (who I shall refer to using their twitter names). Also, I was so engaged with catching up that I forgot to continue taking pictures after my appetizer. This then is the result of two dinners at Garçon!

On my first visit, I had the special of the day appetizer: grilled calimari panzenella. Both the squid and bread were grilled very nicely. The reassembly of a squid tube and tentacles on top of the salad was a crowning touch. I had gone on to have the pan roasted salmon for my main course, which I enjoyed very much.

Our table of four (on to the second visit now) had a total of three appetizers as two of us made the same selection.

Suzanne went with braised lamb , mint gnocchi, english peas, pearl onion, lemon confit, natural jus. She commented later that this was rather heavy for an appetizer, and that the lamb was slightly dry.

@Whore_Magazine had caramelized veal sweetbreads, potato puree, caper, lemon, grilled endive, beurre noisette. I’m no real sweatbread fan, but he seemed to enjoy them. I will say that the presentation was great.

Both @Princess_Whore and I had grilled albacore tuna nicoise, braised fingerlings, olive, haricot vert, egg, lemon aioli. Big juicy chunks of tuna, fresh greens, crisp beans, and very tasty aioli.

@Princess_Whore was meeting friends for pizza later in the evening so limited herself to the nicoise. Suzanne chose a halibut dish on a bed of quinoa topped with cucumber and a meyer lemon sauce. Once again she found the fish to be on the dry side, which I concur with based on the sample I had of it.

@Whore_Magazine and I had the steak frites. This was reasonably good, but nothing exceptional. I’ve had better steak elsewhere, and fries are … well … fries. Truffle butter on the steak was a nice touch, though.

So overall, the first meal I had at Garçon! was far more impressive that the second. For the price I’m confident we could do better.

We had some potatoes and lettuce left from a previous produce delivery, some eggs left from saturday’s brunch, some tuna from the fancy food show. And so, after a quick grocery run for a few things we were missing (like anchovies, nicoise olives, etc), Suzanne made Salade Niçoise tonight, loosely based on this Tyler Florence recipe from the Food Network.

The tuna we had was in oil with Jalapenos so it gave a slight heat to the salad. Unusual but nice. It turned out fabulously. Here it is in all it’s glory:

Salade Niçoise

Vinaigrette:

• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
• 3 tablespoons red wine vinegar
• 1/2 lemon, juiced
• 1 teaspoons dried thyme
• Sel gris and freshly ground black pepper
• 1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil, including some from the tuna and anchovies
• jalapenos from the tuna, chopped

Salad:

• lettuce
• some small red new potatoes, scrubbed and halved, boiled
• 3 large eggs, boiled and quartered
• 1/2 pound haricots verts or French green beans, stems trimmed, steamed
• bottle of Tonnino tuna, with oil, chunked
• 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
• Sel gris and freshly ground black pepper
• 1 pint teardrop or cherry tomatoes, halved
• 1 cup nicoise olives, chopped
• 4 anchovy fillets, chopped
• capers
• green onions, chopped