Slanted Door Visited 5/9/2011 4 Forks

Slanted Door 1 Ferry Bldg, San Francisco, CA 94111

I had heard so much about Slanted Door before I even got there. Its' one of those restaurants that's well known outside of its city.  After reading several reviews I was torn if I really wanted to go. On one hand, it's located in the Ferry Building, which is one of my favorite places in SF.  But on the other hand, I generally have an aversion to overpriced, fancy Asian food.  I came to SF thinking that if I ended up going that would be great but I wouldn't make a huge effort in trying to make it there.

We did the night tour of Alcatraz (which was AWESOME and I highly recommend) and it dropped us off at Pier 33 at 9pm on a Sunday. We were pretty exhausted by then and I really had no idea of what was open for dinner in that area.  So we just started walking down the Embarcadero with the intention of trying to catch a cab back to our hotel.  Since we were so tired, we wanted to head back to the hotel and just grab something around there.  Unlike NYC, where there is a cab on every corner, we didn't see a single cab.  So after walking for 15 minutes, we ended up at the Ferry Building, so I just had to check to see if they had room for us. 


Luckily they had a few tables open and we were seated immediately.  Everyone says that the view from the restaurant is great, but to be honest, it was so late that we didn't get to really see anything.  But the overall decor of the restaurant was very clean, sleek and modern.  So totally different than my preferred Asian decor. We got the cellophane noodles, imperial rolls, and chicken in clay pot.  There were a lot of other great sounding dishes, but it's hard to order a lot of food when it's just 2 people.  The imperial rolls ($10) were your typical shrimp and pork fried summer rolls served with lettuce, mint and rice noodles and a side of plum sauce.  They were perfectly crispy and not oily at all.  Great but nothing I haven't had before.  Next came the noodles ($19), which was a 7x7 recommendation.  Honestly I know it's probably not hard to make but it was really really delicious.  You could see the chunks of crab and it was just really fresh tasting.  I could have ordered another order just for myself.  The chicken claypot ($19) came out next and it was was chicken in this very strong, dark ginger caramel sauce.  We had to order a side of rice in order to really get the full experience.  The flavors really just hit you in the face.   We were pouring the sauce over rice even when we were done with the chicken.  In the end, I really did love my food.  But I will agree with all the comments that it's DEFINITELY overpriced and you could probably just as good food in a hole in the wall Asian place.  Maybe it's because I was on vacation or I'm just used to New York prices or maybe I was just too exhausted to care, but I wasn't that upset then the bill came ($98 with tip and tax for 2).