Food review blog from San Francisco.

Restaurant: Gordon Biersch (San Francisco)
Food description: Ravioli stuffed with goat cheese and ricotta, topped with sauteed mushrooms, pine nuts, spinach, shaved parmesan, and rosemary, in a brown butter sauce
Food rating: 7 out of 10
Times ordered: 1

This is a rare moment for me that I can actually review a vegetarian dish that I liked enough to order again. Of course whenever there's cheese involved, I'm willing to make some compromises on the meat factor, but only if it sounds really enticing. Plus, I'd already had the wings and wasn't all that hungry, so it was the perfect opportunity to try something a little lighter. When the pasta arrived it had very little sauce and looked a little on the dry side. Surely enough, when I tasted it, the ravioli without any mushrooms or spinach on top were too dried out. However, the ones that were not dry were delicious. The sauteed mushrooms were buttery and had a rich steak-like flavor. The spinach wasn't overcooked and was sauteed in just the right amount of garlic to bring out the spinach flavor, not overpower it. The pine nuts added some texture and complemented the spinach and goat cheese nicely. I didn't really taste the rosemary at all, which was fine, it didn't really need it anyway. I liked how they didn't want to drown the ravioli in the butter sauce, but it could have used just a tad more to prevent them from drying up. So aside from some minor details, I thought they did a pretty good job, particularly for a vegetarian dish.