Each year, the Saturday following Thanksgiving, we gather with a group of our long-time friends for an overnight stay in the great city of San Francisco. We walk, shop, eat, nap, eat again, and drink lots of really good wine and most importantly have loads of fun. This year, our leader has made a dinner reservation at One Market Restaurant at the corner of Market Street and Embarcadero and booked a room for each couple directly across the street at the Hyatt Regency Embarcadero. This means a five-minute stroll to and from dinner, and no cab fare, no designated drivers.
We have reserved a table for the five couples at One Market and each of us, as is our custom, brings in a bottle of one of our treasured wines. Corkage fee at One Market is $20 but if you purchase a bottle of wine, the corkage fee is waived. With that in mind, we start off the dinner’s festivities by ordering two bottles of 2007 Merry Edwards Sauvignon Blanc. It’s a little pricey at $65, but no worries for us, we are here to have fun and forget about our tanking retirement funds.
With our order of the Merry Edwards wine, the sommelier appears and is delighted to see that we have brought in such an array of wonderful wines. By the way, none these wines are on the wine list at One Market. The wines are:
The Sommelier enthusiastically opens each bottle of wine and brings us a separate wine glass for each wine. She arranges the glasses in a pattern so we can easily remember which wine is in each glass. The Pinot Noir is served in a Burgundy Riedel glass, and all the others in Riedel Bordeaux glasses. The 1989 Bordeaux, of course is decanted. Within 15 minutes, our table is adorned with 60 wine glasses. What a treat and what an amazing undertaking by the staff.
The dinners our delicious, among the dishes ordered are bacon-wrapped pork tenderloin, braised beef cheeks, and pancetta-wrapped scallops. It is the company, the atmosphere, the wine, and the service that all add up to a memorable evening of joy and fun. The One Market Restaurant certainly deserves their One-Star Michelin rating and, as far as our group is concerned, they should have at least two stars. We will come again.