Kokkari Estiatorio
Greek, on a Jackson Square corner. Three meals here across twenty-five years, and this is the first one we photographed.
200 Jackson Street at Front
See the meal Get Early AccessThis Time We Brought a Camera
We first ate here around twenty-five years ago, before we owned a digital camera. We came back once about seven years ago, and again this August. Three meals in all that time, and the reason is not one thing. A lot of those years were spent on the road, eating somewhere else. But the plainer reason is that this is not a casual dinner. Two of us, ordering generously, came to close to four hundred dollars with the tip. That is somewhere you go for a reason rather than somewhere you drop into. Nothing survives from the first two nights except knowing they were good. This time we brought a camera. The room looks the way we remember it.
The Room
It runs off the corner of Jackson and Front, with a wood-burning oven at one end and copper hung over the open kitchen. Wine racks go floor to ceiling along one wall. An antique rug hangs the length of another, above a red banquette. Every place is set with a hand-painted fish plate. The photographs here were taken after the last table left, because that is the only time the room is still, and it is not what a Sunday at a quarter past eight actually feels like.
What We Ate
Two of us, a glass each to open, four things to start, two mains and two puddings. The kitchen works on fire and lemon. Cheese seared hard in a pan, smelts fried whole and eaten with their bones, octopus off the grill, a sea bass brought out entire. The goat arrives braised in the dish it was baked in, with orzo underneath. None of it is delicate and none of it is trying to be.
To Start
Two glasses arrived fourteen minutes before the first plate, then four things off the mezethes list, more or less at once.
The Table
Two mains between two people. A whole fish, and a pan of goat that came out of the oven it was baked in.
Dessert
Two puddings and a Greek coffee, which is where a long meal here is meant to end.
The Room
Photographed after the last table left, which is the only time it is still.
- Book further out than you think. We wanted to come back for years and the table was what stopped us
- The mezethes are the point. Four between two people is not too many
- Order the whole fish. The lavraki comes out entire and is laid out with its vegetables
- San Francisco employer mandate appears as its own line on the check, around six percent, before tax
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