Tenderheart Restaurant Opens on the New LINE Resort in Downtown San Francisco

Sizzling on the heels of the lengthy, lengthy-awaited reopening of Kin Khao on the Parc55 Resort and the debut of La Société at Hyatt Regency San Francisco Downtown SOMA comes the rise of yet one more downtown San Francisco dinner hotspot. On September 30, Tenderheart begins pushing out plates of candy and bitter quail, corn agnolotti, and lionhead meatballs on the bottom flooring of the brand new LINE SF resort, perched on the tip of the wedge the place Market and Turk streets meet. The menu comes from chef Joe Hou, who’s overseeing the meals throughout all of the resort’s retailers. For Tenderheart, the chef says he drew inspiration from each Northern California’s bountiful native substances and his id as a first-generation Chinese language American.

Tenderheart will start serving breakfast, joyful hour, and dinner Friday and is among the resort’s first meals and beverage retailers to open. The all-day restaurant affords each indoor and out of doors seating on a small patio off Turk Road. Later this 12 months downtowners must also be capable to stomach as much as Darkish Bar within the resort foyer and a brand new rooftop bar and restaurant Rise Over Run, opening October 14, amongst their eating and ingesting choices. The primary Bay Space outpost of LA-based Alfred Espresso additionally opens on the resort in the present day.

Tenderheart on the LINE resort in downtown San Francisco

Hou, an East Coast native who beforehand cooked at Angler and Le Fantastique right here in San Francisco, says the Tenderheart menu represents an eclectic mashup of “issues that I take pleasure in in my life.” The son of two Taiwanese American immigrants, Hou says dishes reference substances he grew up consuming — however with a chic and at occasions playful twist. A kampachi crudo, for instance, pulls within the flavors of fermented black beans and sudachi to reflect a steamed fish dish he ate along with his mother and father as a child. He additionally applies French approach to Chinese language lionhead meatballs, reinterpreting the dish as an infinite pork crepenette delivered to diners on the bone “as a result of why not.” A smattering of Jimmy Nardello peppers provides the entire thing a distinctly Northern California sensibility.

Hou expects the candy and bitter quail may grow to be a menu staple. He needed to do a refined model of the neon red-orange Chinese language American traditional, substituting native quail for rooster and pairing the sticky sauce-covered chicken with slices of fermented pineapple. “Who would not like a fried chicken that’s principally all darkish meat?” the chef jokes. “If you happen to do not like that, I am sorry, I am unable to enable you.”

A white plate with fried quail over thin slices of fermented pineapple.

The meals comes alongside a cocktail menu from skilled barman Danny Louie, a San Francisco native who was born and raised within the Richmond District. On high of launching canned cocktail firm Gāmsāān Cocktail Co. in 2019, Louie additionally spent greater than a decade behind the stick on the Alembic on Haight earlier than serving to launch the cocktail program at Mister Jiu’s. For Tenderheart, Louie infuses drinks with international flavors together with bitter melon, rau ram (additionally referred to as Vietnamese coriander), and white truffle. The Take Oaxaca, for instance, marries agave spirits with sherry, ardour fruit, black pepper, and cilantro, whereas the New Usual riffs on the traditional with a rye-bourbon base over banana, winter melon, smoky Sfumato amaro.

Hou says when Darkish Bar opens in “just a few months” there might be a small meals menu for that outlet as effectively, although the staff’s nonetheless engaged on what the collection of mild bites will embody. “I might love to make use of that as a spot for all of the cooks right here to strive issues out to take probabilities,” he says. There may also be a wholly separate menu for the rooftop bar and restaurant Rise Over Run, the chef says, an effort to make sure that even when visitors by no means need to step foot exterior of the resort, they’ll have entry to a variety of meals and beverage choices. Hou, who lives only a few blocks from the resort (near late-night Korean meals vacation spot Cocobang, to be precise), says he needs to take probabilities with all three of the LINE resort’s restaurant menus. “We’re not making an attempt to vary the world,” he says. “However this neighborhood deserves to have nice meals.”

Tenderheart on the LINE SF (33 Turk Road in San Francisco) opens September 30 and might be open each day for breakfast from 7 to 11 a.m. Pleased hour might be from 3 to six p.m. Monday by means of Friday, and dinner might be served Tuesday by means of Saturday from 5 to 10 p.m. Reservations can be found by means of OpenTable.