Aziza

aziza-sf.com

Wow.

Aziza just entered my top 10 SF restaurants list (for this price range at least).

Came here last night with Jason and Lindsay. The food was rich, flavorful, spicy (not hot) and cooked with great care.

We started off with the spreads (pictured here) and spinach appetizers. The spreads came with nicely grilled pita triangles and 3 kinds of spreads - roasted eggplant, red piquillo pepper - almond, and cucumber-dill yogurt. All were delicious, especially the red piquillo pepper, which was very spicy, sweet and nutty. The spinach appetizer resembled the standard spanokopita with spinach, feta and pinenuts except it was a cylinder shape (kind of like an egg roll) and was fried instead of baked. I think it was ok, but I couldn't really stomach it because the feta was made out of sheep's milk and was incredibly gamey (most people would probably like this, but I don't do lamb, goat, goat cheese, or sheep cheese).

For my entree, I had the duck with hon shimeji mushroom and thyme-ras el hanout. It was SO amazing! The duck was juicy and most, cooked to a perfect medium rare. On top, it had a decent-sized layer of fat, seared to a medium-dark brown color. It almost had a foie gras flavor to it. Came with a sweet, reduction sauce (the thyme-ras el hanout?) and I could have sworn the mushrooms were chanterelles, but the menu said hon shimeji.

Jason had the beef with couscous, carrot-tomato stew and brown butter. I only tried a little bit of it because I was too entranced by my duck, but it was also fantastic. The beef was incredibly soft and tender, fully infused with spices and flavor. The rich, brown butter sauce was generously poured all over the top and the couscous was very well flavored. Only complaint was the portion size was too small, especially for a psycho eater like Jason!

Lindsay had the couscous with lamb stew, chicken and prawns (pictured below). Didn't try the lamb stew of course, but I did have a bite of the prawn which was cooked perfectly! It was sweet, with a lobster-like texture and had a nice grilled flavor.

I highly recommend this place. The decor inside is really nice and festive and has "romantic" lighting (which I actually don't like because I can't see my food, but other people seem to like that kind of ambiance.) It wasn't cheap, coming out to about $46 a person, including tip (no dessert, with belgian beer) and is pretty far out in the Richmond, but I think it's definitely worth it for a special occasion.