Title: March 7, 2014
Author: jean komatsu
Last saved by: ENU

Pied Piper Bar & Grill @Palace Hotel (formerly: Maxfield's; those reviews are attached below)
Two New Montgomery St., San Francisco, CA
http://www.sfpalace.com/Pied-Piper
Review date: March 2014

The historic SF Palace hotel is one of the great classic buildings from the post-1906 SF Earthquake building boom. The rooms are small (periodically remodeled, thankfully) but the public spaces are grandly expansive, reflecting a city that exploded twenty times its original size within a two year period during the Gold Rush boom. The Palace originally opened in 1875 to be the most luxurious hotel in the West (and supposedly fire- and earthquake-proof, which turned out to not be true).

At one time there were several dining rooms; now there's two. One is the justly celebrated Garden Court, at one time the carriage entrance for the hotel, now the hotel's breakfast and lunch restaurant. The magnificent stained glass panels for the hotel's public rooms were made by United Glassworks, a local competitor to Tiffany and John La Farge. Like most grandiose spaces, one goes for the experience; the food has always been barely above mediocre.

I've always had trouble imagining the Garden Court as a carriage entrance, so in doing some Googling on this review, I ran across a great historic photograph site, http://cprr.org/Museum/Palace_Hotel_SF/, which shows what the original 7-story-tall carriage turnaround looked like. The current Garden Court (its real name is the Palm Court, but no one calls it that) was created with a lowered ceiling and additional arched side panels, added by United Glassworks to its original skylight design, when the hotel was re-opened after the '06 earthquake. 

What is now the hotel's bar was originally the Buffet Room. When the Palace reopened in 1909, it became the Pied Piper Bar, noted for the Maxfield Parrish 16-foot mural of the Pied Piper.  This art was specially commissioned by the hotel to celebrate its reopening after the earthquake. Parrish was paid the then-generous sum of $6,000 for the painting.

Originally the smaller restaurant near the Market Street entrance was The Grille, and was the men's dining room open only for lunch. The women, of course, enjoyed their own separate Grille. These fell out of fashion and favor, and prior to WWI the men's Grille was turned into the Pied Piper restaurant. The Palace went into a long slow decline in the '60's and '70's. Finally the entire hotel was closed from January 1989 through April 1991 for a complete renovation. When it reopened, the restaurant was renamed Maxfield's, limping along for twenty years before The Great Mural Controversy occurred in early 2012

Back in 2001-2003 I worked in the area, and was fond of lunching at Maxfield's. I enjoyed the occasional burger and salad. The food was never fancy nor was it especially remarkable, but I loved the dining room itself for the classic architecture and fine detailing, simply because such things are rare and have so often been lost to urban renewal. Carlos and I visited for dinner in 2008 and had an adequate but unexciting meal, although the service was fine (not often true in sibling Garden Court).

Ever since I discovered the Pied Piper/Maxfield restaurant, I've preferred it to the Garden Court. What it lacks in size – the Court is over two stories tall with a wide-open expanse of space, whereas the Pied Piper is merely a modest square anteroom (the bar) serving as the entry into a slightly larger rectangular dining room – it makes up for by being a charming little jewel-box. It's all gleaming wood-paneled walls, heavily coffered ceilings worthy of a European palace, with three triptychs of the same type of yellow and white stained glass ceiling panels that are in the Garden Court restaurant. And of course, that intricate mosaic floor, over which I waxed enthusiastic back in December 2013 when I wrote up a review on the SF Holiday Lights and Chocolate Tour. This is a marvel of hand-laid small tiles, of which there are darn few examples left in San Francisco.

In 2012 the proposed auctioning off of the Pied Piper mural by the hotel's Honolulu owners, Kyo-Ya Hotels & Resorts/Starwood, created a firestorm of controversy. People who hadn't set foot in the Palace for years, saying they'd rather be dead than caught in so stodgy a place, became outraged about the possibility of losing a unique piece of local history, despite the fact most of them could barely remember what the painting looked like. 

The hotel owners hastily backtracked, sent the painting out to be restored, and on August 22, 2013, the bar and restaurant were reopened amidst a blaze of publicity. The SF Chronicle ran an article with photos for the reopening: http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/Restored-Pied-Piper-returns-to-namesake-bar 

Popular once again for the after-work crowd, the bar is standing-room-only these days, the restored painting re-hung where it was before. Reservations are no longer taken for the restaurant, with the exception of groups over six, which I personally find irritating. In December we made an attempt to dine at the Pied Piper, but the restaurant was being used for a private party so our party had to dine elsewhere that night.

Carlos and I came into the city early to see if we could get into the Pied Piper restaurant for dinner. The hotel, having decided to restore the Pied Piper mural, also put some money into the dining room. Happily, we were able to get a booth, which are now fully upholstered in dark green pleather. At one time they were just plain dark-stained wooden shells, with only the bench cushion upholstered, but thankfully these extra-tall booths have all been handsomely updated and are very comfortable. 

The booths line the long walls but are free-standing, so tonight I noticed both sets of middle booths were replaced by long antique-style sofas with tables and additional chairs. Normally there's only three or four booths on each of the two walls anyway, so we were fortunate to have gotten the last available one. We saw a small stage set up in the center of the restaurant towards the back, indicating there was going to be yet another event going on later in the evening. It made us glad that we prefer dining early – we probably wouldn't have gotten in otherwise.

The menu isn't long and stays with the recognizable. Carlos and I agreed to share the chicken wings with blue cheese dip and hot sauce. To our surprise, a sizable plate of eight good-sized chicken pieces appeared, lightly floured and moderately salted, deep-fried to a crisp golden brown. This is exactly how we prefer our chicken wings but seldom find them, and we were delighted. 

The dips were both very good, but the dip container was too narrow – it was hard to get any sauce on the wings except at the ends. The blue cheese was excellent, being real blue cheese mashed with some milk, as opposed to the usual use of a thinner blue cheese salad dressing. Good as it was, we both aimed at the hot sauce. It was very simple but very good: Tabasco sauce, a bit of sugar, and some chopped raw green onion.

It was a fine dish, but it turned out to be much too generous. Both the entrées were sizable portions, so a starter like this would be much better shared between four or even five people!

Carlos ordered the lamb shank shepherd's pie. A good-sized oval gratin held a tasty mix of shredded lamb, a good au jus made with stout, and diced carrots and peas under a topping of not-from-instant mashed potatoes. It was hearty comfort food, nothing fancy but satisfying. 

I opted for the "1909 special of pork schnitzel", a special that is on the menu which celebrates the original grand re-opening. The description is: "Pied Piper Niman Ranch Pork Schnitzel: Herb Spaetzle, Braised Red Cabbage, Lemon Caper Jus $19.09. A special dish inspired by the Pied Piper restoration and priced to commemorate the year Maxfield Parrish created the beloved masterpiece for the Palace Hotel."

The plate is very generously sized. It has two breaded pork cutlets, and although each is cut thin, this makes for a very generous plate. If the pork hadn't been overcooked and somewhat dry, it would have rated even higher than the shepherd's pie. The red cabbage was excellent, lightly tart without the excessive sweetness many restaurants are adding these days, and the pan-browned spaetzle was the small, slightly chewier commercial type that Carlos actually prefers to the softer housemade kind.

The Palace's long-time pastry chef Beat Wirz has finally retired. From Switzerland, he used to have a "secret" chocolate mix, which he refused to share with anyone. We don't know if he passed it on to the new Executive pastry chef, Renee Cade, but the dessert we tried didn't quite taste the same, although it was a good quality dark sweet chocolate.

Carlos chose the chocolate pecan tart with chocolate ganache, mocha cream and coconut, for us to share. This was a little too sweet, but fine with coffee. The serving was generous although not overwhelming, perfect for two people.

I had an iced tea with my meal, and we ordered coffee with dessert. The regular was decent, but the decaf was exceptional – low acid, strong, and freshly made. Carlos dislikes decaf, but he admitted the decaf was a better blend than the regular coffee.

The food at the Pied Piper Bar & Grill was exactly the level we expected. Again, this is not a destination restaurant, unless you only want to appreciate a gorgeous old-style dining room. It's B-level food, approaching a B+ only at brief moments. 

But the dining room is as beautiful than ever, and we'll probably come back for at least one more visit, for lunch next time. It's a classy place, the Pied Piper, and we only wish the hotel would care just a little bit more about offering food that would better match such incomparable architecture.

Two people, dinner: one starter, two entrées, one dessert, three beverages, with tip was $111 – and it was honestly enough food for three people.

Maxfield’s Bar & Grill at the Palace Hotel
New Montgomery @ Market St., San Francisco
http://www.sfpalacerestaurants.com/maxfields
Review date: December 2008
 
Just a note that we had lunch with some friends there during Christmas week. This time the hamburger disappointed; mine was overdone (first time that’s happened) and thus too dry. 
 
Maxfield’s is one of the last old-time dining rooms left in the City. The Pied Piper Bar has a genuine Maxfield Parrish mural above it – you see it when you walk through the bar to get to the dining room. Although it shares the kitchen with the Garden Court Restaurant, I’ve always found the food a bit better, the waitstaff much more attentive. With its intricate mosaic tile flooring, two story-walnut paneling, and stained glass ceiling panels, it’s a beautiful place to dine for lunch or dinner.

We started with a shared order of Crab Nachos. It came three to a plate, on thin rounds of deep-fried wonton skins. Big hunks of sweet fresh Dungeness crab, barely held together by some sour cream and scallions, garnished with tomato dice and slices of avocado. With crab season just started, it was perfect timing, and perfectly done.
 
Carlos had the NY steak with bearnaise sauce (which they forgot, but he waved it off, saying he didn’t need the extra calories!). It wasn’t Prime, maybe just barely Choice grade, but it came medium-rare with a good brown crust. 
 
We of course had dessert – our friends are devoted chocoholics, and Carlos and I had been impressed with the chocolate dessert we had tried when we came for dinner last year.
 
They had two chocolate desserts: a chocolate marquise and a chocolate brownie with ice cream. Both were intensely chocolate, the brownie being the sweeter. It was a fudge-y brownie with a chocolate glaze, served with a scoop of ice cream in a fragile circular tuile.
 
The marquise was more to my liking, being a mocha mousse with a bare hint of cinnamon served in a “coffee mug” made of a sheet of chocolate with a chocolate “handle”. A spritz of barely sweetened whipped cream atop, and a Kahlua caramel sauce drizzled on the plate, completed a dessert that had to be shared by at least two people, even ones with a chocolate craving. Rich, but quite wonderful.
 
When we came previously for dinner, we had asked the waiter if he knew what kind of chocolate, or anything about the recipe, that the dessert chef used, because we were so impressed with it. His reply was that the dessert chef had worked for the Palace for decades, and has refused many requests to reveal his secrets. Pastry chef Beat Wirz is from Switzerland, and other reviewers have also remarked that the food is good/okay, but the desserts are always raved about.