Food review blog from San Francisco.

Restaurant: Firefly (San Francisco)
Food description: Slow braised beef short ribs and oxtail adobo with jasmine rice, sauteed long beans, quail egg, and spicy banana condiment
Food rating: 7.5 out of 10
Times ordered: 1

This dish was pure deee-li-cious-ness! It's one of those dishes that you savor each bite v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y to the point that you're still eating it when it's cold, which is basically torture since you really just prefer to inhale it. It'd be totally worthy of a higher score if the short ribs weren't tragically overcooked. I really think that overcooking stuff is a big no-no for a restaurant of this caliber, but luckily, everything else about the dish was a big yes-yes. So now that I've gotten the ugly part out of the way, let's talk about the luscious sauce. The meat was braised in a wonderful adobo sauce, which was really my favorite aspect of the dish. It was just the right consistency, not runny, nor thick, and wow--what amazing flavor! It was as if you cooked 10 steaks and reduced the drippings down into a concentrated beef gravy and then stewed it with the meat for several hours. After combining the sauce with the fattiness of the meat, you've got yourself some impressive flavor. As for the meat, the oxtail was so tender it just fell apart with one touch. It was flavorful and fatty, but the fat was marbled so it just dissolved without needing to be trimmed. The short ribs were less fatty and didn't have as much flavor as the oxtail, so regardless of the fact that they were overcooked, I would've preferred another oxtail instead of the short ribs.

Given the heartiness of all that red meat, you'd think it'd be heavy, but it wasn't, especially with the side of plain jasmine rice. I was literally eating it well after it had gotten cold. As far as the other sides are concerned, I barely paid much attention to them. The quail egg was interesting, but it didn't seem to fit, and the beans were pretty tasty and cooked to a nice al dente. The banana "condiment" was oniony, and I'm assuming was to cut the saltiness and fattiness of the meat, but it just wasn't for me. Given how tasty the meat was, I didn't really need much else to be happy--except of course that they overcooked the short ribs! Fantastic otherwise.