1 post tagged “potrero hill”

Thee Parkside has been a weird place. It's located in a little known but surprsingly convenient location down the street from San Francisco's indie rock mainstay, Bottom of the Hill (the hill being Potrero Hill). It's a nice little bar with an outdoor patio and free ping pong, also specializing in local bands. It's sort of like BoTH's less popular moody skate punk sister. I discovered it a couple of years ago, sadly a year or so after Johnny Cash made an appearance in its 60-ish person capacity stage room.

On nice days (it's in one of SF's sunnier microclimates so there are plenty) it's a great place to hang out. On weekends there would be oysters grilling in the beer garden, alt-country on sound system and pints of beer flowing down hipster gullets. Much to love about it.

The problem was the inconsistency. It was closed more often than it was open it seemed. The kitchen served my favorite fish tacos in town, and I loved to go there for lunch, except it was only open for lunch in what seemed like infrequent 3-5 day spurts. There was some sort of ownership turbulence going on that I read about in one of the weekly papers. Eventually one owner bought out the other and half the staff quit or something like that.

It seemed to be closed for a couple of months recently, but it's back open now. The ping pong table looks like it was pushed down poor man's Lombard Street (aka the southern end of Vermont street, the real "most crooked street in San Francisco") (which is my excuse for why I got schooled by a pregnant woman), and there seems to be some sort of problem with the guiness distributor, but all in all it's still a nice down-east style indie rock joint. The major change is definitely on the positive side though. They rebuilt the kitchen and installed a new chef.

I wouldn't normally use the chef moniker on a dive-bar cook, but this guy (I think he said his name was Tom Wei) is good. We had a delicious papaya salad and soup (with mint, garlic and thinly sliced pears) and fresh spring rolls with sweet rice. It was as good as any thai food I've had in a fancy cloth napikin restaurant. It was really good! Trust me, I only had one beer (unfortunately not a guinness).

He said he's going to start doing brunch on Saturdays and Sundays. We'll definitely be back to check out what he has planned for that. Hopefully it'll be consistent fare.