Thirsty Bear

• Restaurant: Thirsty Bear
• Location: 661 Howard Street, San Francisco CA. SOMA, Around 2nd street. A few blocks from the Metreon.
• Atmosphere: Nice, casual, a bit cool.
• Bathroom: Pretty clean.
• Date of visit: 2007
• Website: http://www.thirstybear.com/

Tapas and beer, ah yes, living the high life. Located near the Moscone center and a few blocks from the metreon, Thirsty Bear offers “nine distinct beer styles on any given day. Seven of the beers are house standards and two are rotating seasonal specials.”

Thirsty Bear adheres to the San Francisco standard of providing natural and organic vegetables in addition to serving “only sustainable harvested seafood, all natural meats free of growth hormones, antibiotics and synthetic additives.”

The atmosphere is casual with a tint of coolness to it. Jeans and a nice t-shirt is sufficient.

The food:

• Seared ahi tuna, pimenton spiced corn, olive & arugula succotash. $9. This dish is simply sliced Ahi tuna that is overly dressed over a worthless bed of olives and arugula. The fish is nicely cooked and fresh. This dish is a decent starter. It’s your typical tuna over a bed of greens.

• Ceviche. shrimp, scallops, calamari, habanero, pineapple, cumin crisps. $10. What a bust of a dish. A big time disappointment. After watching Top Chef over and over, I had ceviche in my head. How can one make ceviche bad? Well, when it’s watered down with b.s. seafood, the ceviche becomes a bust. The pineapples also had no place being there.

• Pork tenderloin adobado, swiss chard & white corn polenta. $10. A great dish. If all 4 of my dishes where like this, this place would be a hit. Pork was cooked perfectly, tender and juicy. The dish went together with the swiss chard and polenta.
  

• Gilled hanger steak skewers, watercress & frisee salad, pasilla pepper salsa. $11. This dish is very similar to the ahi tuna in terms of imagination. Nothing is terrible about the hanger steak. But it’s simply good meat over some worthless greens.

I would return to Thirsty Bear. You don’t go to this place for the tapas, you come here to drink beer. And if you are hungry, they happen to have decent tapas such as the pork tenderloin. But I wouldn’t make a trip just to go to Thirsty Bear. A pre-movie snack before heading over to the metreon seems appropriate.