Urban Tavern: A downtown tavern with good food...and free parking!
Everyone loves a bargain, but two-for-one deals and discount coupons aren’t offered by most quality restaurants. There’s one downtown San Francisco restaurant, however, with both excellent food and an excellent bargain. Urban Tavern (equal parts restaurant and bar) gives all lunch and dinner patrons free validated parking at the adjacent Hilton Union Square garage for up to five hours. That puts $15-$30 in your pocket before you even order.
No one chooses a restaurant based solely on parking considerations, but Urban Tavern offers much more than a juicy parking space. The food is good, too, and the portions are anything but “Compact Only”-sized. The “gastropub” menu is best described as comfort food with a Green Cuisine twist. This is no mere “diner”; the Urban West décor (with a life-size horse sculpture made of antique tractor, car and motorcycle parts) is matched by an equally contemporary nod to sustainability, with most ingredients locally grown.
Starters range from traditional favorites like French Onion Soup to creative concoctions like the popular Sausage & Pretzel, combining a grilled beer sausage with a housemade soft pretzel, and the Crawfish & King Trumpet Turnovers, two spicy and hearty pastry wedges. Featured entrees include the bone-in Baby Back Ribs (beer-braised for 18 hours), Charlie’s Chicken (pan-seared with a vegetable ragout) and Sweet Onion Vegetable Stew (using seasonal vegetables on grilled polenta).
The lively tavern level just above the restaurant—where you can dine if the restaurant and private dining rooms are full—is spacious, with an 18-seat communal table carved from a fallen cherry tree, a marble bar and comfy seating. There’s a rich choice of wines, which emphasize wineries that follow sustainable practices, and a cocktail list highlighted by a Maple Bourbon Sour with fresh lemon and maple sugar.
Located in the commercial heart of San Francisco, the Tavern attracts a high percentage of women who drive in from the suburbs for lunch and then shop afterward at nearby Union Square, knowing they have five hours of free parking. That’s a far better bargain than they’re likely to find at Macy’s or Saks.
HelloSanFrancisco Tip: For dessert, try the housemade Peanut Butter Cup (with a brittle stick and peanut ice cream) or Banana Trifle Jar (a banana-caramel-cream mousse in a mason jar). Yum!
Posted by Bob Cooper
