Incanto, San Francisco

I decided to come to San Francisco for a week during my winter break to obviously hang out with my sister, but also sample some of the best food San Francisco has to offer.

My first stop on my culinary adventure is Incanto; a rustic italian cuisine in the heart of Noe Valley. Incanto is famous for their Offal cuisine headed by Celebrity Chef Chris Cosentino. Cosentino is famous for his Offal style of cooking which is best described as cooking the "nasty bits" of animals or essentially the parts that fall off the animal during the butchering process of different animals.

There were a few specials of the day including a terrine of porchetta, housemade chorizo, and veal tongue.

We started off with Pig Trotters which are essentially braised pig feet formed into a crispy cake.

The dish was pretty amazing. It was fatty, salty, porky goodness formed into a patty accompanied by pickled red onions, arugula and snails. Everything came together very nicely and made a great start to the meal.

The next dish we had was one of the specials which was the Veal Tongue. The tongue came braised atop some greens to cut the richness of the tongue.

The tongue was melt in your mouth tender with a slight crunch to it. The flavor and texture wasn't offensive the least bit and it was very nice.

The first of two entrees was the hanker chief pasta with a rustic pork ragu.

The pasta was super fresh and very delicate. The ragu was perfectly seasoned and posessed the perfect amount of "porkyness". For people that are too apprehensive of trying anything out of their comfort zone, this is the perfect dish.

For the final entree, I ordered Oxtail and Sweetbreads. For those who don't know what oxtail is, its basically the tail of a cow. Most of the time the tail is braised to make it super tender. Sweetbreads may sound like something sweet, but they are actually the thymus gland or the throat of a cow.

The braised oxtail was very reminiscent of braised beef in a stew, but fattier and more flavorful. The sweetbreads weren't offensive at all; crunchy, chewy and prettyflavorful.

For dessert, there were a few familiar options, but we opted to order the Lamb Mincemeat Turnovers with rum caramel and spiced ice cream.

The turnovers were filled with mincemeat which is basically lamb heart, kidneys and anything else mixed with figs and sugar. When the turnovers combined with the caramel and ice cream, it was pretty outstanding. There was only a hint of lamb in the turnovers, mostly tasting like a fig newton.

Overall I was very impressed with Incanto. Although they are famous for their Offal cuisine and certainly shine in that area, their other more simple food is just as good. It's impressive to see a Chef treat usually unused and undesirable parts of animals and make them into something familiar, approachable and downright delicious.