So Ralph and I are in food coma. Dinner was quite satisfying. I dare say I might have eaten too much, but it’s hard to tell when portions are served in courses. But after we left Sezmu (which i keep typing as Sexmu), Ralph, Cody and I returned home to play a little bit of Guitar Hero II…the game I bought as a Christmas present for Ralph but had to give to him early because he was like a little kid, begging to be able to play with it “now.” I lasted 2 whole days of listening to him hint and cajole before I gave in. Eh, just means I only need to wrap coal for him and I’m done.

Okay so we had dinner at Sezmu tonight with Cody. I called it the company Christmas party since Cody is one of the people I’ve farmed out work to (he’s the only local one). So it was kind of a decadent dinner. Fortunately since we had to wait for our table for a little bit (honestly, it didn’t feel that long because we ordered our drinks and were talking), we got two of the snacky foods for free (the house-marinated olives, of which there were at least 4 varieties of olives and the sweet potato chips with a chipotle seasoning). For drinks, Cody started off with a Mandarin Cranberry, I drank Passionnés and water all night and Ralph had Pom Collins all night. By the end of the evening Cody was having a Pom Collins as well.

For appetizers, Cody and I both got butternut squash soup with cocoa mascarpone and carmelized onions. Ralph got the fried calamari with pickled vegetables and thai basil sauce. All were excellent. The thai basil sauce was better than the typical marinara/cocktail sauce you normally get with fried calamari.

For secondi’s, Cody and I got the seared scallops with some kind of puree and grilled king mushroom. Absolutely excellent and I don’t even care much for cooked scallops. i prefer my scallops raw, spicy and in a maki handroll. Ralph got porkbelly and lentil soup which was just as excellent. I bet if they didn’t call it pork belly, it would just appear as a nice fanned cut of pork.

For our main dishes, Cody and I got hapu-upu-u (or something like that. a hawaiian sea bass) with sweet potato gnocci, green beans and a few swishes of a green sauce (that looked like the thai basil sauce, but didn’t have as much flavor). It was tasty, though cody and I would have preferred more of the sweet potato gnocci and Ralph’s made tastier chilean sea bass at home. However this was still very good. Ralph got the veal osso bucco with chestnut spaetzle and some kind of greens.

Dessert. YUMMM! Cody got quadruple chocolate cake which was REALLY GOOD, and came with two mini scoops of two types of chocolate ice cream and a chocolate malt. The malt was tiny, but it was nice to have a dessert with three separate items. I got the burnt caramel pots de creme garnished with these crispy melted sugar tubes that also came with chocolate chai with homemade vanilla bean marshmallows, also very tiny. I know, i know, why didn’t i get the chocolate? because Ralph’s favorite dessert that I make is also caramel pots de creme and I wanted to see how different theirs were than mine. Flavor-wise, not different at all. Texture-wise, there’s was a little firmer. Kind of like mine if mine ever have the chance to sit over night and firm up, which they never do. They’re usually eaten that same night or even right after the 2 hour chilling minimum. Ralph got the cheese platter and a glass of tawny port. He was in absolute heaven with the blue cheese. it was very nice. I didn’t find it over-powering at all. The cheese plate came with two other cheeses, lavosh and a tiny bit of what they called “honeycomb” but it was really honey from comb (thicker than store-bought honey, but no wax honeycomb, which ralph and cody were both looking forward to).

It wasn’t a cheap meal by any means. Not something you’d go to fairly often, which is a shame since it’s within walking distance of the house, but they were fairly packed for a saturday night. Service was excellent and almost worthy of a fine dining restaurant. The only things that prevent it from being so was the waiter faltered a bit when reciting the 4-course chef’s choice special and, now this is being even pickier and really inconsequential but it usually makes me so happy when the servers at 4th St. Bistro use them, they didn’t have crumb sweepers. No bread was offered anyway. Oh yeah, and one of the orders of drinks for ralph and cody took a bit long. But one of the waitresses offered to take our photo when she saw me taking pictures of cody and ralph, which I find to be rare.

The menu supposedly changes weekly, but don’t rely on the web site as the menu on there is totally different than what we saw tonight. The food is considered “New American.” Ralph and I thought the wine was way too pricey, so we didn’t get any. All in all, we were all very happy with the experience, but it’s not something that can be indulged in often. It is wonderful, however, to see a hip, tiny restaurant, worthy of S.F. in our neighborhood. It’s even better when that restaurant obviously has a slight leaning toward seafood. Without taking price into consideration, I’d give it a 4.5 out of 5 stars.