SFReview
photo credit: Spencer Cotton
SPQR
Included In
SPQR is one of those restaurants where you’re idly chatting with your companions until the first plate hits the table. At that moment, the phrase that comes to mind is, “whoa, these guys are for real.” To quote ourselves (who better?), “Good lord.”
In fact, if we had to pick a word to describe this place, it’s ambitious. Every dish feels like a miniature Jackson Pollock, sweated over for months. These pieces of art are ferried to your table with astonishing regularity and consistency. In SF, this “every detail matters” vibe is something that’s missing at a lot of places, including many of our favorites.
Which is okay! But sometimes you want to get out of beet-and-goat-cheese-salad mode and into saffron-rigatoni-with-white-anchovy mode. Or maybe you don’t. But we do.
That’s a nice segue into the pastas, which are generally bloody brilliant. They change seasonally, so you can’t really count on any of them being on the menu, but we’d recommend going with something really seasonal - we had a corn ravioli that done changed the game - and something that sounds a little crazy. Duck casonsei, persimmon, amaranth? We only know one of those four words, but, f*ck it, we’ll do it live. Also, if the smoked fettuccine uni carbonara is on the menu, you must order it.
The prices are what a more euphemistic observer might call “commensurate with quality.” We would say they’re pretty high. This is not an every-week restaurant unless you’re in finance and just moved from New York, or sold your startup for some of that juicy pre-IPO equity.
But is it worth it? For sure. The vibe is a little east-coast cramped, but buzzing, and SPQR is one of the few places in town that makes a run at the pasta crown. And that is a crown worth having.