ac33 "finding good food for an east coast palate!"

Good food, lovely surroundings and fun, if a little slow, wait-staff. Some of the food was very good while other dishes were trying a bit too hard. The descriptions are beautifully worded on the menu but you do not know what you are going to get until it arrives on your plate. For foodies, this place is hit or miss. But if you are not a gourmet then the lucky hits combined with the atmosphere are worth the trip. Being within easy walking distance to the Castro doesn’t hurt either.

Speaking of food, their Mahi-Mahi was heaven on a plate, perfectly seared in garlic and unbelievably moist while the chocolate gelato with orange slices- and you must eat it with the orange slices- was very satisfying. The tempting sounding yam cakes fell surprisingly short, with every bite the obvious experiment of a risk taking chef. This dish was so off in fact that it made you wonder if the chef had even tasted the finished product. My girlfriend’s appetizer, the sashimi tuna, was a similar unpleasant experience-oily and hard to eat, yet our entree’s were terrific. So what you get seems to depend on the night, the menu and your luck but for a tasteful escape from the noise of the Castro, you just can’t beat it.

Rainbow note: Tangerine is mostly frequented by gay male couples and a few straight ones. My girlfriend and I were the only lesbians in sight, but we were treated beautifully by the staff and felt right at home.

I had heard such great things about Delfina, as well as how hard it is to get a table, so when I stumbled upon a 5:30 reservation, I grabbed it. My friends and I showed up excitedly looking forward to a fabulous dinner. When we got to the door, we were seated quickly with a generous serving of warm fresh bread and soft butter. The interior was pleasantly upscale casual while the wait staff was cheerful and attentive.
But the food itself? Not that great. None of the dishes were bad but they weren’t wonderful either and I left the restaurant thinking I could probably make the same things at home.

That being said, three dishes did stand out as worthy of the hype, the fennel sausage, the rabbit and the lovely calamari. (see below)

Despite the mostly just-okay food, my friends and I ended up having a great time, laughing and talking the night away. Much to Delfina’s credit, they never rushed us to leave our table and let us stay as long as we wanted, even with crowds of people jostling to get inside as the night wore on.

Delfina is a very nice restaurant. My friends and I had good evening. They serve genuine Italian dishes ( ie. read very fresh ingredients) at reasonable prices combined with a casually upscale vibe that is sufficent for the average Jane’s lovely evening. However… if you are a genuine foodie searching for inspiring culinary delights, I would recommend looking elsewhere.

Unfortunately, later that night our party encountered another problem with the so-so food. Early the next morning, my friends and I were all sick with food poisoning.
6 AM found us slumped over our toilets, exhausted from throwing up and uh.. other things. To be fair, mild food poisoning can happen at the best of restaurants, despite what they tell you, but it is never fun and certainly wasn’t from my end- both of them.

It should be noted that we did not try any of the pasta dishes or the ribs, two meals that have gotten great reviews by other writers on this site. Perhaps if we had tried those dishes and managed to avoid our early morning vomiting marathons, this review might have been a little different. :)

ADDITIONAL NOTE: After I called the restaurant about our party getting sick, both the manager AND the Chef made sure that they got in touch with me personally and apologized profusely for the mishap. They couldn’t have been nicer and sent me a gift certificate for the full amount of the meal. While this is standard practice when a restaurant’s food makes you ill, they were very gracious about it and I think that is worth noting here.

Once you walk in the door, you may not know it but you’ve entered another world- the raw world. It looks like earth, it sounds like earth but oh, it’s not… Staffed by almost..almost annoyingly positive people, these dudes and dude-ettes really walk their talk- the raw food way! While you may find yourself snapping cynical just to balance all this quirky happiness, Cafe Gratitude really is a mood lifter, if a bit heavy on the New Age mojo.

While I love going to eat here, I think it is important to understand that raw food is it’s own very particular type of cuisine and just can’t be compared to cooked food.
That being said, the raw meals here are good, with some dishes being shockingly tasty considering what is or.. isn’t in them.

Service note: happy they are…fast they are not!
They are especially slow with take out, so if you are ordering to pick up, get ready to wait.

NUT ALLERGIC PEOPLE – BEWARE! Many of their dishes, and all of the cheeses, are made with lots raw, soaked organic nuts. Most of these nut heavy dishes are very hard to digest and will stay in your stomach in a heavy congeled ball even hours after the meal. So if you are not used to digesting large amounts of nuts, (and unless you’re a squirrel or a raw foodist -you’re not ) be wary of ordering any meal that has nuts or seeds as the main ingredient.

Another dietary note to be concisous of is that these are NOT calorie light dishes.
To make up for taste and low protein content, a raw food diet tends to be heavy on nuts, salt and oil. While all the nuts, salt and oil used at Cafe Gratitude is organic and of the highest quality, there is often a lot of it. But fear not, they are ever helpful and will leave off oily dressings or suggest a low fat dish if you are watching your weight.

A big part of ‘eating raw’ is learning how to combine foods, something that unfortunately, Cafe Gratitude doesn’t do that well. Seasoned raw foodists will have to request substitutions when they order but the rest of us really won’t notice.

An unexpected surprise is their raw, cold pressed, organic expresso. Apparently, it is so good it’s almost touching the divine and has many non-raw foodists totally addicted and swinging by every week to pick up their organic caffeine fix. A little goes a long way, so get some of this super rocket fuel for your programming friends and save another soul from slumming at Starbucks.

Good dishes-
Chocolate pudding- very yummy, tastes just like the real thing but richer.
Faux Miso soup- also very good and warm but make sure to ask for the shitake mushrooms and sea veggies- it’s too plain without them.
Live pizza- as long as you close your eyes, it tastes surprisingly like the real thing, but very filling- you won’t be able to finish it.
Thai noodle- does not taste like that Thai place down the street, but is good as it’s own dish.

Bad dishes- Live sun burger- heavy and dry.
Live fudge and live chocolate truffles- totally gross. My raw friends disagree with me on this, but these nasty brown nuggets remind me of those cardboard flavored carob thingys that my mom kept bringing home in the 80’s and never got eaten. They are not only cement dry but they are stuffed to bursting with dates. As well as date flavor, date sugar and eau de date essence. ( I have since found out that dates are like crack to raw food people. And no, I don’t know why.)

So do not believe the beaming dread-locked girl who tells you how great the truffles are.
Run. Run away fast.

Cafe Gratitude is a fun place and eating there is definitely an experience worth having. It’s like being back in time at the height of hippy love-sixties, just repackaged for the new millenuim. For that unique expierence alone, it is worth it to go- at least once, just for the atomosphere that harkens back to what I imagine the Haight was like at it’s prime. Even if the idea of raw food goes against every fine food belief you have ever had -go-soak in the eco-friendly vibe, get a coconut smoothie, sit back and be, man…. just be. :)

Rainbow note: are you kidding?! Of course it’s gay friendly here! – It’s so gay friendly that some of your straight friends will probably experiment after a few hours of hanging out at Cafe Gratitude- it’s THAT liberal and accepting. :)