Dear Inga - Wine & Spirits Magazine

Restaurant Review

Dear Inga

review by Luke Sykora • March 5, 2020

Nick Elias

The now-shuttered Bar Tartine used to be the place where San Franciscans could find dishes that playfully referenced Eastern Europe, with feisty Croatian and Hungarian wines to match. Now, Dear Inga fills that void. Executive chef (and Nopa alum) David Golovin partnered with Liholiho Yacht Club chef Ravi Kapur and Lihiliho/Nopa co-owner Jeff Hanak to bring San Francisco a menu that leans heavily toward smoked meats and fish, paprika and fermented vegetables. Some dishes, like the rich and smoky housemade kielbasa, are straight-ahead Austro-Hungarian comfort food. Others, like the scarlet runner-bean croquettes with sour-plum sauce and a cultured-cream aioli, are more influenced by California. Either way, wine director Nick Elias can help parse his list’s many Eastern European wines—Slovenian rebula, Croatian plavac mali, Slovakian kadarka—for those who are unfamiliar. And if you are familiar, and know you’re in the mood for, say, a Georgian amber wine that’s relatively light on tannin and funk, he’ll know exactly what you mean.

3560 18th St.

Eastern European

415-829-2125

Luke Sykora

Longtime senior editor at Wine & Spirits magazine, Luke now works for the Stanford Technology Ventures Program.

This story appears in the print issue of February 2020.
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TAGS California Eastern European Restaurant San Francisco W&S February 2020

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