Food My dinner last night.........mmmm, pig face!!

Last night the wife and I went to 'Girl and the Goat'. It's a relatively new restaurant that has already been nationally recognized as being very creative and having world class food. The owner chef won 'Top Chef' this year, and is critically acclaimed on a national level. You kind of have to be a foodie to enjoy it, since a lot of the stuff may not sound appetizing to people who aren't willing to try almost anything. But if you enjoy that sort of thing, and have the opportunity, I highly recommend it. It was probably the 2nd-3rd best meal I've ever had.
The place is booked out 3-4 months' in advance. We had got a reservation a while back, but had to cancel. However, they say they keep a couple tables open for walk-ins (and the wait can sometimes be 3 hours), and they serve the full menu in the bar, so we decided to chance it and try to get in. They open at 4:30pm, so we figured the best chance was to get there early. We got there just after 4:00pm and there were already 6 people in line ahead of us. By 4:15 there were probably 40 people in line. By the time the doors opened, there may have been twice that many people lined up. As it turns out, they have only two tables for walk-ins. They both sat 8 people and are communal. So basically we could've sat at one of those with 6 strangers. We've done that before at a few places, but we opted to sit at the bar instead. The bartenders were very cool, and very knowledgable, so it was a good choice.
The food is served in a small plate/tapas style. For those unfamiliar, you basically order a couple courses at a time, and keep ordering more until you are full. Most dishes are a couple of servings, and they were priced from $8-24 each. Usually people will go through 3-5 dishes each for a meal. Because I'm a food nerd, I kept track of everything we ordered.
Goat carpaccio with goat tongue in olive vinaigrette with smoked roe and fried capers.
Wood fired oysters with horseradish and bacon.
Smoked goat rillette empanadas with tuna ailoli, celery, and tomato salad.
Apple smacks bread with ginger butter and pistachio jam.
Green beans in fish sauce vinaigrette.
Seares scallops in pumpkin brandade, fried brussels, pomegranate, and spiced pecans.
Oven roasted pork face with a sunny side egg on top and tamarind, cilantro, and potato stix.
Pork ribs in tomatillo-mushroom slaw and grilled scallion vinaigrette.
For dessert we had:
Pork fried doughnuts with honey yogurt, caramelized figs, lemony eggplant, and potato chip steusel.
Chocolate bouchon with foie fluff, salted toffee, milk chocolate sorbet, and gooseberry compote.

It was an incredible meal. The fried capers on the goat carpaccio were pure awesomeness. The ribs were the best I've had in my life, the rub was out of this world. The pig face was so tender and so good. I've never had empanadas that even came close to how great those were. The only things that were less than world class to me were the green beans (though my wife loved them) and the doughnuts. The vinaigrette was just a touch strong on the beans and the figs were too over the top for my taste on the doughnuts. I would order everything else in a heartbeat, though there are other dishes I saw I wish I'd have been able to try, but I was too stuffed.
We definitely want to go back, and would probably do the same thing again and just get there early to sit at the bar. It's obviously not a restaurant for everyone, because some people wouldn't be willing to try stuff like raw goat, or pig face, which is understandable I guess. But for people who love trying new things, and are willing to experiment with new flavors and textures, I highly recommend it if you get the chance. The only place I've ever been that I would claim was clearly more impressive was Charlie Trotter's, and that is far more expensive than Girl and the Goat.

 

That is what I would assume, but I'm not sure. I know it wasn't a made up name, that it was actually from the pig's head, just not exactly where.

 

I forgot to mention, when the bartender gave me the bill, I saw that it said my server's name was 'Susie'. I looked at him and said "you don't look like a Susie". He said 'actually my name is Sue, but I go by Susie'. I'm like "are you serious?" He said he was, that his parents were huge Johnny Cash fans. He was the nicest guy, and he was kind of small (reminded me of a young Eddie Veddar kind of look, but with a bit of a beard). He said he got in lots of fights as a kid because of it. I kind of felt sorry for him, but on the other hand it was obvious he'd been through about everything you can be through for having a name like that and still ended up a pretty cool and funny guy.

Here are a few pics. I didn't take the food ones, they are off of the restaurant's website.


Our bartender "Susie" aka "Sue".



Scallops:

Oysters:

Pigface: