Well Fed On the Town

Following the opening of a friend’s art show near San Francisco’s Union Square, we popped into nearby Biscuits and Blues for a bite of dinner. Biscuits and Blues is probably known internationally as the place to go for a good blues show in San Francisco. But how’s the food?

Well, it’s Southern, naturally. Biscuits, cornbread, fried chicken, and catfish are all on the menu. Strangely, so are Swiss chard with bacon and cranberries. Cranberries are a distinctly northern fruit, growing in the cold climes of Vermont and upstate New York, not the sweltering bayous of Louisiana. But this is, after all, San Francisco—a tendency towards fusion is to be expected.

We ordered the salad with bleu cheese, apples, and spiced candied pecans. The salad was refreshing and dressed with just the right amount of tangy vinaigrette. The pecans were a nice touch, they were crisp and sweet, although a bit under spiced. A little chili powder on the pecans might have kicked up the salad.

Next, we had catfish “fingers” fried in a cornmeal batter. These were delightully crisp on the outside, and perfectly cooked on the inside. The fish wasn’t particularly seasoned, but a little dish of dipping sauce added flavor. I wasn’t excited by the sauce, but my dining companion liked it.

For our main course, we both shared a plate of fried chicken with cole slaw and mashed potatoes, along with a biscuit and a side of cornbread. The fried chicken was the highlight of our dinner. Brown and crisp on the outside and perfectly moist and tender on the inside; this was fried chicken as it should be. The coating actually stayed on the meat when you cut into it, filling your mouth with a delicious contradiction of textures. The black pepper in the batter was the perfect foil to the fried coating. Black pepper is conspicuously absent so often from fried chicken I’ve eaten here in the Bay Area. It occurred to me that a splash of hot sauce would go nicely too. To their credit, Biscuits and Blues stocks each table with its own little bottle of hot sauce.

Unlike the chicken, the mashed potatoes were not much to write home about. The puree was nicely seasoned with a hint of horseradish, but its texture was more pasty than creamy. Biscuits and Blues’s cornbread was undoubtedly the most peculiar version I’ve ever eaten. That it was sweet and contained corn kernels did not surprise—remember, this is San Francisco. That it was baked in a loaf pan, sliced into marble cake-like slices, and then reheated was positively bizarre. The result was an oddly moist, sweet, almost cake-like thing that wasn’t appealing. A nibble or two left me hankering for a hunk of warm, crumbly cornbread made of coarsely ground meal moistened by a sexy pat of melting butter. The warm biscuit was a reasonable substitute for a savory carb, but alas, there was no butter, only a mystery spread that tasted of margarine.

For dessert, we ordered a peach raspberry cobbler with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. Biscuits and Blues might consider seasonally changing the fruit used in the cobbler. The peaches were obviously not fresh, and it showed. But more unsettling was the metallic baking soda flavor I detected in the crust that clashed with the sweetness of the fruit. It finally occurred to me that the crust was made of biscuit dough, rather than pie dough. An interesting idea, but one that requires tweaking so that crust and fruit are harmonious, or at least not entirely dissonant. The vanilla ice cream, however, was quite good.

We finished our meal just as the show was about to start. Sadly, we couldn’t stay for the music, but we do plan to return.

If you go to Biscuits and Blues for the music, check out the extensive drinks menu. A had a nice beer on tap that tasted vaguely of papaya. Cocktails are available too. And definitely order the fried chicken.

Biscuits and Blues
401 Mason St. at Geary
San Francisco, CA 94102
(415) 292-BLUES
see website for hours