Vegan fine dining at Millennium in San Francisco.

Well, it seems no trip to San Francisco (at least as a vegan with money to spend) is complete without visiting Millennium (580 Geary Street, San Francisco, CA). I’ve heard only good things about it, and I know it’s on the “To Eat” list for many vegans, so I had to take the opportunity to see it.

Sunday – Wednesday they have a prix fixe ($39/person), with an optional wine pairing($12/person), so I made reservations for Sunday night, and went with a fellow PPKer. It’s in the Hotel California, and looks like any other fine dining restaurant, but still has a comfortable casual feel. It seemed to rely on natural light, so as the evening progressed it became more difficult to take pictures of the beautiful food.

This was the Cornmeal Crusted Fried Green Tomatoes, with a lovage remoulade, picked green cherry tomato & cucumber salad, topped off with tarragon. I liked this quite a bit, but my dining companion got the Salt & Pepper Coriander Crusted Oyster Mushrooms (with a nectarine-kaffir lime lemon grass dipping sauce!!!), and they were AMAZING, but I didn’t get a picture.

My friend got the Buckwheat Dosa. It had an eggplant & zucchini masala filling, smoked cardamom & toasted cashew korma (which was delicious), coconut mint chutney and a methi(aka fenugreek), melon & purslane salad. Sure, this isn’t what I think of when I hear dosa, but it was beautifully presented, and tasty. I was glad to get a few bites of it.

I ordered the Sesame Seed Crusted Tofu, which I was really pleased with. It had a yellow coconut curry with roasted corn on one side, a Japanese eggplant, Napa cabbage & Constata Romanesco squash on the other, a big helping of Bhutanese red rice, and a Thai basil-carrot-cucumber salad. Each of these remained distinct and of course complemented each other. The tofu was crispy on the inside and flavourful throughout.

Then it was time for dessert. There is always room for dessert, so that’s why between the two of us, we ordered four different ones.

First of all we got the Chocolate Plum Parfait and the Hazelnut Tartlette. I don’t think either of us expected the Parfait to be as good as it was, but it was amazing. The Grant Eddie “Port” cream was just ridiculously good. And the tuile. Oh, the tuile, it looks like just a simple decoration, but it’s so much more. There were also pieces of smoked chocolate brownie and Mariposa plums.

The Hazelnut Tartlette, filled with a mocha cream filling with a side of fig-coffee gelato, and a touch of vanilla bean creme. Neither of us could get over how perfect the crust was on this tart. Flaky, and buttery with a touch of crispness.

Chocolate Almond Midnight, had an almond cashew crust,, a mocha chocolate filling, drizzled with a raspberry sauce and a very heavenly white chocolate mousse on top.

Sweet Endings was an assortment of house-made cookies and truffles. We had a lemon-poppy seed cookie, a chocolate mint cookie, a coconut chocolate truffle and there was one cookie that almost brought me to tears it was so good. That innocent looking peanut butter cookie was incredible.

Then it was time to go home. We ended up paying for only one extra dessert (since two were included in the prix fixe deal) because our server “supported what we were doing.” It was a great experience, and I would definitely go again.