700 Post St., corner of Post and Jones. This is supposed to be one of
the best Indonesian restaurants in the Tenderloin, and it certainly gets
my vote as one of the better places I’ve eaten lately. We started with
the Pangsit Goreng Ayam, which was small pieces of chicken wrapped in
dough and then fried, with a sweet-and-sour sauce that was opaque and not
as glutinous as in other restaurants, even though to me it seemed like
ketchup cut with vinegar. For the main course we had Bakmi Goreng, a
fried egg-noodle dish with chicken and vegetables. I don’t know what it
is about Indonesian and Malaysian food that makes it taste so distinctive,
but these noodles compared favorably with Nasi Goreng, another favorite
dish of mine (and also on the menu). The total damage was around $16 with
tip — pretty good, all told.

Next time I go (and there will be a next time), I’m going to try the
rendang curry, which I have heard is excellent. This place would be
great for a meal before seeing a play at the ACT or before a movie at
the AMC Van Ness. If you have lots of extra time, you could go there
for a meal before the Symphony or Opera, although it’s a bit of a hike.

Corner of 16th and Sanchez. I have only been here for brunch, so I can’t say anything about the dinner menu, but Tangerine is at worst an ok restaurant. It is certainly a place you might go to for the ambiance rather than the food, it seems, although the food is not bad, just bland.

Billing itself as a sake bar, Tangerine seems to tip its hat to Asian influences — the meal I had had nothing asian about it. I tried the macaroni, corn, and parmesan pancake, topped with a fried egg, leeks, and oyster mushrooms. All mixed together, it was a somewhat filling breakfast, but the mushrooms were too weak to counteract the dullness of the macaroni. It came with an arugula salad, which was a good light counterpart to the heaviness of the pancake. Ann had gingered shrimp with a scallion-potato pancake, which was hardly a pancake — more of a breaded mush, but flavorful. The shrimp were pretty tasty, I thought, although Ann was not so impressed. Each entree was under $10, which is not bad for a nice-ish brunch place.

All in all, I might go here again, but at happy hour rather than for a real meal. But it might be a good place to go for a date — the food sounds interesting, in any case, and maybe the dinners are better than the brunch.