Foreign Cinema
(Californian, Mediterranean)
2534 Mission Street between 21st and 22nd Sts. (Mission)
San Francisco, CA 941
415 648 7600
BART to 24th Street

Foreign Cinema seems to always creep into conversations with friends as the kind of place you have to go to at least once (film classics projected onto the wall during dinner, part outdoor-part indoor space, etc.), so I figured I’d give it a try for brunch this past Sunday while in San Francisco for the weekend.

To my surprise, there wasn’t a wait for a table for two for brunch at 12:30pm. A friend and I sat down immediately at a table inside, tucked into an area adjacent to the fireplace which is centrally located in Foreign Cinema. The menu is extensive for brunch, including an impressive raw bar with a wide selection of oysters. There are plenty of egg options, as well as heartier lunch-type options, like chicken or even carpaccio. And, they even have the light eater’s fruit options.

To start, we ordered a half dozen Kumamoto oysters and a red endive and little gem salad with buttermilk-herb dressing. The oysters were as good as the average good Kumamoto, and the salad, albeit tiny, was delicious. It was fresh, tasty, tiny, and surprisingly over $8. The dressing is lightly-tossed so if you like a zestier salad, be sure to ask for additional dressing on the side.

Afterwards, my friend enjoyed a Croque Monsieur with cornichon and salad, and I had Dungeness crab from the raw bar. The sandwich was everything a Croque Monsieur should be, nothing further, but nonetheless, a good sandwich. A Croque Monsieur is what I like to call grilled cheese with ham in my non-fancy lingo. It was a large sandwich considering what I was expecting. The salad accompanying the sandwich was obviously the younger sibling of my salad. It was basic and tasty like my own but about the size of the cornichon sitting besides it.

The Dungeness crab, I warn you, is served as-is. You crack, you search, you find your own food for this 20+ minutes of eating. If I had known that the restaurant wasn’t doing any helpful cracking beforehand, I would not have ordered such a messy and intense dish (intense = focused = no conversation with friend for all 20 minutes). Basically, it was like eating all the tiny legs of a lobster without the satisfaction of a claw or a tail. A piece of meat about the size of my pinky nail was grounds for rejoice.

Alongside our meal, we had fresh-squeezed lemonade and pink grapefruit juice. The pink grapefruit juice was stellar and the lemonade would have been, too, if it were not for the seltzer added to dumb down the tartness of the drink. The bread basket is generous and with great fortune since the bread was delicious and the portions were smaller than I had anticipated.

Overall, Foreign Cinema met my expectations. It was a reliable brunch, the menu had great options for even the fussy diner in your party, and it was a pleasant venue. Be warned: the price tag isn’t pretty for an I’m-hungry-in-an-hour brunch.