We were trying to get reservations for French Laundry for our trip to San Francisco back in September 2021, but those were hard to come by. I think we even tried 2-3 other restaurants before we finally made our Saison reservations. The fact that you could easily book a table isn’t a good sign for a 2 Michelin star restaurant.
I thought I had blogged about this already, but I guess I hadn’t so I’m going from memory from the pictures. The restaurant was a medium sized restaurant and it was a bit noisy if I recall. All the wait staff were in suits, so you do get the Michelin star service. The food, looking back, wasn’t that bad. The only thing I didn’t like was that the main dish was like “everything of the duck” meaning I think the picture with the leaf was the duck heart. I forgot the other pieces; I just know I didn’t care to be eating those parts of the duck in a 2 Michelin star restaurant.
At $288 pp for the meal and the $188 pp wine pairing (def wasn’t worth it, but I do know they were generous with the pours since I remember having 3 glasses of different wines in front of me at one point.) If a couple shares a wine tasting, you’re looking at $1000 out the door. YIKES! And it looks like we only got about 8 courses for our meal. Clearly the value just isn’t there and that explains why it was so easy to get reservations.
Pictures
We found Saison very disappointing. We got a reservation the day before, which seemed surprising for a Michelin star restaurant. None of the dishes were memorable, and the two desserts (both iced/cold desserts in the middle of winter) were almost inedible. Never again.