But the menu isn’t stuck in the Old World. Elements hail from Georgian, Greek, and Armenian cuisines from the heritage of Persian, Jewish, and Arabic traditions and from the vast Mediterranean jewel of Turkey. There's a velvety garden-toned lounge and a chef’s counter bordering the open kitchen.ĭalida’s menu isn’t exactly Turkish, it’s Istanbullu, flavors from a cosmopolitan capital city that’s been a crossroads for communities from Central Asia to Eastern Europe for centuries. The bar stretches out with cane-backed chairs beneath a gold-painted ceiling. In the main dining room, featherlight woven fixtures float over oceanic velvet-and-leather banquets and Douglas fir tables reclaimed from a defunct historic building. The Presidio seeps in through windows lining two sides of the restaurant its bright flora and birdlife is captured in hand-painted murals and custom wallpaper by Oakland artist Emily Parkinson. The Presidio is drenched with fog the evening I arrive for dinner, but inside Dalida it’s like a warm summer evening. The bright interior of Dalida brings the Presidio indoors in its hand-painted murals and custom wallpaper. They’re doing something no one else in SF is-and they’re doing it really, really well. The chef power couple (formerly of Noosh) is braiding the familiar and exotic into something unexpected, with flavors that are balanced, approachable, and objectively delicious but also bold and palate-pushing. That’s Dalida, the modern Eastern Mediterranean restaurant from husband-and-wife team Laura and Sayat Ozyilmaz, that just opened in the historic red-brick barracks lining the southwest corner of the Presidio’s Main Parade Lawn. What was beginning to appear black and white suddenly ignites with color. When you can have oysters, organic farm-fresh produce, and grass-fed meats any time you want them, the extraordinary becomes ordinary.īut then, one day, you sit down at a new spot and it's like waking up in the Emerald City. I know I’m not the only one who, eating regularly at the kind of restaurants most of the country would kill for, sometimes forgets just how privileged I am to live in the Bay Area.
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