Pagolac

655 Larkin St
San Francisco, CA 94109

Occasion: Over due dinner with Walter and ordered the 7 course beef.

Beef Carpaccio- 1st Course
Good, but the serving size was disappointing. They don't give you that much meat and its all shredded into pieces and spread on the plate to make the portion look bigger on the plate. That's not cool. This is the smallest portion of beef carpaccio I have ever had at a a Vietnamese restaurant. The flavor was all there; lemon juice, fish sauce, onions, cilantro, peanuts, but there just wasn't enough meat. The pieces were so small, I could barely chew on it.

Spring Rolls 2nd and 3rd Course
For the 2nd course we made spring rolls with beef. We just cooked the beef in a little firepot and then made our own spring rolls. Same goes for the 3rd course. The meat is actually marinated and instead of putting it in a hot pot we grilled the meat to put it in our spring rolls. I dont' really like to touch my food and eat with my hands because it really did cause a mess. I really felt like I had to work for my food. I would have much more enjoyed a spring roll that they had made for me. It would have been much more tasty and nicely wrapped. Oh well, it's all for the experience.

A perfectly made spring roll

Course 4,5,6: Grilled beef sausages, Grilled beef wrapped over scallions and Beef Skewers

The Grilled beef sausages (to the right) ewre wrapped in leaves and were actually pretty good. It was full of flavor, but again there was only two little sausages each for us. Grilled beef wrapped over scallions (to the left) were also very delicious. The scallions added flavor to it! I thought it was interesting how the scallions served as the filling to the beef, where we're usually used to seeing beef as a filling to any sort of wrap. I really enjoyed it. Beef skewers, were again very small in portion. I finished it with three bites. haha.

Course 7-Beef Porridge

The bowl was super small. Broth was really thin. Porridge is supposed to be thicker. It just seemed like rice in a beef broth with a pinch of beef in it. Again, portion size was really small and it didn't have the consistency of porridge. boo.

In the end, I was still hungry. For $16 I would have much rather gotten spring rolls they had made themselves and a bowl of pho. Hey, it was a good experience though.