Food review blog from San Francisco.

Restaurant: Stelline (San Francisco)
Food description: Salad of fresh tomato, mozzarella, and basil drizzled with extra virgin olive oil
Food rating: 6.5 out of 10
Times ordered: 10+

If I'm at an Italian restaurant, you can bet money that I'm ordering a caprese salad. It's also really easy to make yourself at home (try using buffalo mozzarella and tomatoes from Whole Foods). Since it's such a simple recipe, a successful caprese salad really depends on the quality of its ingredients. That being said, the caprese at Stelline is often good, but sometimes not so good. I order it every time I go to Stelline, which is pretty frequent, being only a block away. This time the caprese was having one of its not-so-good moments, but I'd say the good times still outweigh the bad times. I realize tomatoes are out of season, so they were a little bland this time. At it's best, the tomatoes are usually ripe, red, and sweet. Now the mozzarella: I'm pretty sure they don't use buffalo mozzarella because it doesn't have that certain bite to it, which is a shame (plus that's the traditional recipe). It's typically above average--creamy, flavorful, and soft. This time though, it was really bland, and needed quite a bit of salt to get it going. The texture of the basil was slightly tough but nothing to complain about because it was very tasty. The olive oil was fine, but nothing really noticeable about it. So although this caprese is not really authentic and the kind I make at home is 10x better, I still think it's tasty enough to continue ordering again (though maybe I'll wait until spring this time).