Town Hall

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Town Hall has made itself a permanent home in the San Francisco dining scene.  Their Downtown location makes it a popular place for happy hours as well as business dinners.  Its one of the few restaurants in the Bay Area that serves up Southern style food.

Normally, I would have never looked twice at this item on the menu, but I'm still attempting to knock off some of the items off the 2013 7x7 list (see post HERE).  Faith's warm ham and cheese toast with a poached egg and jalapeno cream doesn't exactly sound like a dinner item.  The white glob served on a white plate wasn't very eye catching either, but this dish ended up being the best dish of the night.  The "toast" drenched in the jalapeno cream (not spicy) just barely blanketed the bread making for a biscuits and gravy effect.  Its soft and creamy bites oozes flavor with fried okras adding some much needed crunch. 

I need to eat biscuits when I'm at one of these restaurants.  The biscuits are served with prosciutto di parma and red pepper jelly.  With a giant pile of prosciutto, its hard to figure out if you should eat the proscuitto on the side or make a sandwich out of the biscuit.  That being said, the proscuitto was just an afterthought compared to the tasty biscuits and red pepper jelly.

The buttermilk fried chicken here is their to die for dish, but I found this a little underwhelming considering all the delicious fried chicken I've eaten in the past couple years.  The batter is underseasoned and fails to give the exterior any crispy crunchiness.

As a noted Southern style restaurant, they had jambalaya on the menu.  The best thing about the jambalaya was it was served as a side order so I didn't have to miss out any main attractions.  Smokey, spicy sausage along with cajun herbs made this jambalaya one of the better ones I've had in the Bay Area.  I do prefer mine a little drier, this one is served almost as a thick soup.

One of the most popular desserts here is the butterscotch and chocolate pot de creme.  The size of this dessert is quite large (the size of a regular bowl) and a good sharing size.  Automatically, when I hear butterscotch, I think of something sickening sweet, but smoothness of the pot de creme and the blend of chocolate keeps this dessert light.  The toffee like pieces of butterscotch are a nice contrast from the creaminess of the dessert.

updated - Working my way through the 2013 7x7's SF big eat 100 things

 

Address:                  Town Hall
                                 342 Howard St.
                                 San Francisco, CA
 

Type:                        American/Southern

Popular chomps:      fried chicken
                                  butterscotch and chocolate pot de creme
                                  duck

Chomp worthy:        butterscotch and chocolate pot de creme
                                 cheese and ham toast