SFReview
photo credit: Susie Lacocque
Ayala
This spot is Permanently Closed.
San Francisco is surrounded by water on three of its four sides, and while it seems like that would set the city up to be like Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory for fish, there just aren’t a ton of seafood restaurants that really excite us. Sure, there are a few standout raw bars like Swan Oyster Depot or spots like La Ciccia that make seafood pasta worth crossing town for, but there aren’t many places like Ayala where just about everything on the menu is both creative and delicious.
This seafood spot on the ground floor of the Hotel G in Union Square looks like a lot of other restaurants around here that you’d come to for a business dinner or to play catch up with some friends who work nearby. It has high white walls, big windows, and a pretty bar where you’ll see people studying corporate pitch decks while sipping cocktails. But unlike the places you really only send your boring relatives to who won’t go more than a half-mile from their nearby hotel, Ayala makes unexpectedly great food that’s worth going out of your way for.
photo credit: Susie Lacocque
The seafood-focused menu has clear Japanese, Spanish, and New England influences, all of which blend together to make some of the more interesting food we’ve had in a while. There are some more standard items on the menu too, like shellfish towers and a crudo, but most dishes here have a twist that makes each of them a little more memorable than what you’ll find basically anywhere else.
photo credit: Susie Lacocque
There are raw oysters served with a cooling lime and cucumber mignonette that we could see Poseidon serving as a palette cleanser between courses at an underwater feast. The cioppino verde subs in poblano peppers and tomatillos for the traditionally tomato-based broth, which gives it a nice earthy and tangy flavor, but doesn’t overpower the shellfish in the soup. The whole red snapper is fried bone-in and served with lobster pho broth poured around it at your table - the skin is super crispy, the herbs that come on top brighten everything up, and the broth is light but still somehow packs a ton of lobster flavor. All of this is capped off with the nori spaghetti with big chunks of crab that tastes just enough like the ocean to make you forget you’re actually in a crowded dining room on Geary Street and not by the water. By the time you finish, you’ll have forgotten you had any reservations about going to dinner in Union Square and just be thinking about a reason to come back.
A meal here runs around $85 for an excellent martini or two and a few dishes from each section of the menu (you’ll find things like roasted chicken, salads, and some incredible English muffins here too), so it’s not a place we’d recommend dropping into on a random Tuesday. But if you want to change things up and go somewhere interesting with a group, or get a meal with the visiting clients you always take to Bellota or Mourad, come to Ayala to remind everyone how good a seafood pasta or whole-fried fish can be.