Food review blog from San Francisco.

Restaurant: NOPA (San Francisco)
Food description: Bolognese sauce over creamy polenta with parmesan and wilted greens
Food rating: 9 out of 10
Times ordered: 1

I'm really bummed my picture didn't turn out that well. I really should have taken the time to take several artistic shots but frankly the smell of this dish was too delectable for me to do more than take a hasty snapshot and then dig in. NOPA is famed for their nine hour bolognese (featured in this recent SFGate article) so of course I had to try it when I finally got a reservation for dinner here. This is seriously one of the most delicious dishes I've ever eaten. It is the perfect embodiment of comfort food, the bolognese truly tastes like someone has slaved over it for nine hours. To create the sauce, different cuts of meat (it can be anything but at NOPA usually is beef, pork, lamb or pancetta) is first stewed in milk for three hours, then wine for another three hours and then tomatoes for the last three and then voila, bolognese sauce. And it only took nine hours! The result is delicious. The sauce was rich with flavor, at first you tasted the meat and then the tomatoes and then underneath it all the subtle hint of creaminess that comes from the meat being stewed in the milk. It's not often you get to experience such sublimely multi layered flavors in one dish. Heavenly. It's served with a creamy polenta which is a perfect complement to the robust sauce. I'm not the biggest fan of polenta but this one was cooked very well with a smooth not grainy texture and cooked to a creamy consistency. I could eat this every day for weeks and not get tired of it.