I Am Not A Foodie

Alfred’s has been an established steakhouse in San Francisco since 1928. As part of Jason’s “steak adventures” dinner series, I went to check out the famous steaks with him and his friend Cathy.

The restaurant still has that 1920s decoration. I heard that it had a major upgrade, but the decoration was still kept the same to keep their charm. All the walls are painted a dark red, with dark red leather booths. I particular liked the sink fixtures in the ladies restroom. It has swans as the faucet and the handles.

Pretty swan faucet.

The soap holder.

Swan handle, and a pretty pink liquid soap dispenser

And yes, I did go into the restroom to take pictures. Good thing no one was there.

We all got drinks to start. I got a vodka martini with a twist. When the server came to serve our drinks, he put down the chilled glass, and he had the shaker in his hand and shook it standing next to our table. I haven’t seen that done anywhere else. It was definitely a nice little show to put on. Jason got a scotch, from their very extensive drink menu.

I ordered the pickled pigs feet to start my meal.

The dish was chilled. It had definitely a bit chunk of the pig’s feet. It didn’t have much meat. Those of you who’s have had pig’s feet, know that it’s all about the collagen. The collagen had been cooked into the pickling liquid, and became jelly surrounding the meat. The flavor was really sour, and salty. The jelly part was almost too much, but the meat part was good to bite into.

For the main course I ordered the boneless ribeye steak, with garlic mashed potatoes and fresh vegetables which included green beans, broccoli and carrots.

The veggies were really tender, and fresh. The mashed potatoes had a good garlic taste to it, at least I thought so. Jason didn’t think the garlic mashers had much garlic to it. I didn’t really like the steak that much. It had too much fat on the edge, and the middle part was a bit too chewy, perhaps because I ordered it medium well. Also, I’m not a pure meat eater, I thought it might’ve tasted better if it had a sauce on the side. I ended up putting on lots of salt and pepper.

Jason ordered the porterhouse steak.

By the end of the meal, his porterhouse had a huge piece of bone left. I think out of the 30 oz total weight for the steak, probably 10 oz of it was the bone. He didn’t like his that much either. He said it was drier than he expected, and didn’t have much flavor. He thought it needed some salt, same as mine.

Overall, not the best steakhouse to go to. They definitely serve a great martini though. It’s probably a fun place to take guests to, but if you want a great piece of steak, there are other choices in the city.