Birdsong

We celebrated our anniversary at Birdsong couple of days back. The food, presentation, synchronized service - everything was impeccable! The restaurant was so thoughtful to also gift us a hand written anniversary card. Perfect for celebrating your special occasion!

This was my first time in a dining experience like this and it was beyond amazing! Celebrated my birthday here and was blown away. From start to finish everything was well thought out Carefully put together menu. The plate were absolutely beautiful. We enjoyed and we're impressed by all the wait staff and how in unison they were. It was fun being able to see into the kitchen and watch everyone working together to prepare our dishes. Intimate experience very impressed with the while experience. Cannot recommend this fining experience enough. Seriously worth the price.

Hands down one of the best meals I’ve had in SF. The uni cream puff with fermented shiitake and savory butterscotch was life-changing, and is alone worth the price of entry. A close second was the cornbread with caviar. Service was outstanding, and was a pleasure to watch the food preparation from the kitchen counter seats. The interior is spacious and places guests in the middle of nature. Absolutely worth the visit.

I recently visited Birdsong for the second time and once again, I enjoyed an absolutely fantastic dinner experience!

This restaurant is extremely clean, professional, organized, and beautiful throughout.

The chef is world class and a real salt of the earth gentleman! All of the food is presented beautifully and cooked perfectly!
Several unique dishes made with very high quality products that are treated with respect, and prepared very thoughtfully, in order to highlight them properly. What comes to mind is a very high level of cooking with a delicate touch. The main ingredients always seem shine. In my opinion the chef has a very intelligent approach and excellent judgement when it comes to the way he uses ingredients and seasoning.

The staff are very well trained and completely focused, both in the kitchen, as well as in the front of the house. A great team of quality people!

The beverage pairing has been very enjoyable on both of my visits.

I was honored and privileged to have had an opportunity to be given a tour of the entire restaurant by the chef/owner and was so impressed by this immaculate and perfectly organized, every single square inch of this restaurant space was.

It would certainly be a mistake to not visit Birdsong, any time you are in the area.

I’m currently planning my next visit, and really looking forward to returning with friends and family!!!

My favorite restaurant in the world. Warm and welcoming, unpretentious, consistently perfect, playfully serious food and impeccably elegant service, detailed and thoughtful without feeling affected or contrived... The whole experience feels clean and modern and sumptuous and surprising and and and. Every time I leave I know I'll be back soon, and I'm already looking forward to it. Check out some of these pictures from my last visit on 6/29/23. It looks like art and tastes like nothing I've ever tasted before or elsewhere. Utter delight.

Out of all the Michelin star restaurants I've been to, this is by far the best one.

I highly recommend the chef's tasting menu with the wine pairing.

I'd recommend coming in small groups (2-3 people) and sitting at the bar. It takes the culinary experience to a whole new level as you see the teamwork and dedication of each person in the kitchen due to the open kitchen model.

The tasting menu can be curated to accommodate any allergies if you can communicate with the restaurant prior to your reservation. I'm allergic to red wine, and the sommeliers made other selections + even printed a whole new menu on the spot!

On top of the tasting menu, my husband and I HIGHLY recommend adding coffee and chocolate chip cookies to end your evening. They have decaf as a choice for all guests who may be more sensitive to caffeine. Enjoy!

It’s clear chef and their amazing staff have thought out every detail.
The evening was elegant, seamless, and plentiful.
Can’t wait to return!
btw the pics doesn’t do justice

I visited Birdsong in July of 2021. Today is August of 2023. Why the long wait? When I visited I had only been to a few other Michelin starred restaurants. I had no clue how to compare it to other dining experiences I’d had. I’ve now had enough experience to feel that I can do this review justice.

Headline: Birdsong is a sublime experience and worthy of its accolades.

Michelin star restaurants are a unique experience. Tasting menus are always going to be a mixed bag. Something's just not going to be to your taste. If you are lucky, other dishes are going to be out of this world. The Menu at Birdsong is no exception; which is good.

For me to give 5-stars to a Michelin restaurant there must be something on the menu that is life changing. Let’s face it you’re fighting for a reservation and paying a fortune; if there isn’t something you will carry for the rest of your life it’s not worth it.

Peas. I’m not a huge fan of peas. Yeah I like split pea soup, but mainly for the ham. If I see them on a plate I might give a taste if they are vibrantly green. But I’m never going to be swayed to order a dish because it features peas. In fact I’ll probably avoid a dish that features peas. And yet I will remember the peas I had here until the day I die. Unbelievably cooked so they are still crunchy and yet they aren’t raw. Peeled and the skins fried. Added on top of the dish for crunch and texture. But so few!!! My life is incomplete for not enough peas.

I don’t remember the wine. I remember the bread and squab. Excellent.

It was one star when I visited. It earned its second that fall. Why not three? Atmosphere. Every three star restaurant I’ve visited leaves you feeling like you are on an island enjoying your experience at a safe distance from your neighbors. Birdsong is a little crowded, a little cramped. You’re too close to your neighbors to get that 3rd star. But their loss is our gain. 3-star food for a 2-star price.

Highly recommended unless you need the intimate atmosphere to focus on your date.

Phenomenal food, service and atmosphere. Definitely an experience you won’t forget. The cornbread and caviar had us scratching our heads at first but it was our favorite dish of the night! Would highly recommend, but just a heads up - this location is very questionable especially after hours. The hostess was kind enough to make sure we had an Uber close by before leaving for the night. Didn’t take away from the restaurant itself but just beware.

The best tasting food I've ever had in my life. The corn bread and caviar was by far my favorite. You can tell each recipe has so much effort and thought put into it because not a single flavor or seasoning is off by even a minute degree. It's perfection. My mouth is watering as I write this review. I really loved my experience and I highly recommend!!

Vibrant atmosphere, amazing service and dishes of true culinary perfection that’s pushing towards 3 stars if you ask me. Chefs table was the perfect seating allowing for a direct experience of the buzz of where all the magic happens. If you sit on the left end side of the table you get to see the chef live, orchestrating it all and ensuring the kictchen runs like a swiss watch. This is definitively a restaurant worth visit when in the SF area and I’m going back as soon a I can.

I had the luck of being able to get a last second reservation there recently and was completely blown away by the experience. The food alone had me wanting to replicate the dishes and techniques at home, even the glazed carrot dish was an artform. The staff were amazing in attentiveness and even the vibe made me forget I was in the middle of a major city.

Everything was absolutely delicious. We did the prix fix menu as we sat at the chef's table. It was a special day for us and they thoughtfully congratulated us for our anniversary on the printed menu.

Some favorites of mine were: their take on the fish and chips, their take on bacon and eggs. My absolute favorite was the trout custard. It was like nothing I had ever tasted before. The textures were amazing and the flavors worked so well together. It was mindblowing.

The duck courses were delicious. I am so glad I got to try this restaurant before it went big. I truly think that what they have there is worth a Michelin star.

The service was great. People there were friendly and cordial. The chef himself came by our seats at the end of our meal. A truly wonderful experience.

Wonderful experience with unrivaled food. For me the food, just got better and better as the courses went on. The sommelier was also great and recommended some really good wines that were reasonably priced. They also had an amazing collection of wine and we were able to get some of our favorites from Australia. The service is just exceptional from start to finish - fine dining at its best.

Not the restaurants fault but it’s a long experience so next time I’d wait until I could have got an earlier booking (we had no choice for the day we were in the city and had the last sitting) as finishing at 10.30pm was a little late for me personally.

Wow, this place did not disappoint. My husband and I share a birthday and go to high-end restaurants to celebrate our day. Birdsong was recommended by a few people and let me say, it lived up to the hype. The food was thoughtful, creative, interesting, and extremely flavorful. Highlights were the "fish and chips", the BBQ carrot (yes, it was the best carrot i've ever had), the trio of lamb, and the thyme ice cream. Holy moly, the ice cream. It was not too sweet, and the thyme, while subtle, was very apparent. The wine selection is extensive and interesting. The service was attentive but not overbearing. The only thing that was a bit strange was the order in which the first 5 dishes came out. They were delivered one at a time but often came while we were still eating the previous bite. It broke up the experience a bit so this needs to be refined a bit. But otherwise, everything was great.

The Birdsong family gave us a show to remember. The service and food were immaculate. The team's effort shined in all the little details. Chef Chris's menu is first a local Pacific Northwest ingredient driven menu. Secondly, the yarn of ingredients were expertly threaded throughout our dinner with whimsy, nostalgia, and surprise. The blend of open kitchen fire smells, Santana music, and the dishes evoke a rustic cabin atmosphere. With all the birds and wood around, I almost thought I was in the forest habitat of Wingspan. We wanted to keep rolling the dice for more food all night long.

Standouts on the food include the sea urchin cream puff (a sweet and savory umami bomb) and the caviar cornbread prepared elaborately in front of us. The wonderful dry aged quail had me giggling with calls to banh mi, French dip, and Peking duck.

For a wonderous night out, experience it at Birdsong.

Wow! Great 16 course tasting menu. Hard to put a finger on my favorites: pommes souffle, trout skin sandwich with roe and horseradish, pork belly caviar, sea urchin cream puff, duck with grilled innards. They we're all really good. Our plates did leave our table free from any evidence.

Service was very good. Atmosphere was quite relaxed. Had to meet Chef Chris to figure out where all this good was coming from.

One of the most extraordinary dining experiences I've ever had. The initial bites start off as a showcase of their ability to take intense flavors and translate them into delicate constructions that magically blend in the mouth and on the tongue into perfectly balanced representations of the larger dishes that could have been the flagship course at any other restaurant. Take, for example, the "Fish & Chips" but looks like it is a slice of cured halibut laid upon a puff pastry. The whole item goes into the mouth and as you bite down, delicate but strongly flavored cream gushes out of the pastry which you discover is made of potato creating a creamy blend of crispy potato, sour cream, chives, and fish. In an instant, it becomes apparent that when they say "fish & chips" they mean it but not exactly how you would expect it. Many restaurants attempt this sort of play on classes dishes and flavors but none quite as successfully as Birdsong. Their ability to take an ingredient, like carrots, and transform it into something wholly new and unrecognizable is nothing short of astonishing. The lobster mushrooms stuff with lobster is nothing short of inspirational and be sure to sop up the lobster sauces (made from the head and brains of lobster) with the delicate and perfectly baked Parker House roll. Each dish is meticulously plated with precision and care; an activity they eagerly allow patrons to witness with the largest open kitchen I've ever sat at. There is no mad rush or frantic clanging of pots and pans as cooks race to complete dishes. Instead, the sounds of the kitchen are replaced by quiet determination and steadfast practice of skills honed to the top of their craft. Occasionally, the kitchen (and restaurant) reverberate with the sound of a new table's order being fired or a new course to be prepared "fire four lamb" is practically whispered and "fire four lamb" echos in unison from the lips of the chefs and cooks. The experience is almost magical. What is life-changing is their Peruvian purple cornbread which leads one to fully re-evaluate what cornbread could be (and should be).

Not only is the food top notch, but the service is friendly and attentive without being stiff or stuck up. There is a genuine affection for the dishes they are serving and pride in the ingredients that comes through with each and every staff member. As of August 2019, their cost of the full tasting menu (titled "Journey") is $200 for a weeknight and $215 for the weekend. At this price point, there is no other meal that can even compare to this experience. If you are considering dining here, I strongly encourage you to stop reading and just make a reservation. Now.

Seriously such an amazing experience! Try to get a spot at the chef’s table, where you can get a glimpse of the chefs working in the open space kitchen. However, even if you don’t sit there, the restaurant is intimate enough (without feeling stuffy) that you can see everything that’s going on. Love the ambiance and classy yet casual decor. Food was amazing and I left feeling so full!

Wow! What a meal that was. But also... wow that was expensive! Still 5 stars because you know what to expect when going to such a fancy place. Every course was fantastis, the wine pairing was delicious and the staff was perfect in every way they could. Highly recommended for foodies who want a delightful experience, but it's definitely not for everybody; you neee to really value that kind of menu.