Foreign Cinema, San Francisco

I love an interesting dining experience, especially when a dinner date becomes a movie x dinner date all at the same time. Which is what caught my attention about Foreign Cinema in the Mission, not far from our airbnb too! So the theme of this place was made out to feel like you’re going to a movie, from walking through the front door into the outdoor space where a movie was projected onto the back wall. I believe you have to specially request to sit outdoors when you book. The atmosphere of the place was generally pretty dark but the festoon lights made it look and feel so pretty.

There is one movie on repeat for the whole night and the whole month. When we were there, “A Late Quartet” was screening. To be honest its not easy to catch the movie especially when you don’t necessarily arrive when it starts plus you’d be more occupied by the food and oh your company.

I had no idea what these were, but luckily Alfred did. These are the speakers you’d bring into or hang on the side of the car when you go to a drive-in cinema so you can listen to the movie. This is pretty retro since nowadays you just have to tune into the right radio channel in your car for sound. That helps you tune into the movie in a not-so-quiet atmosphere.

L: Santa Barbara Smoked Salmon, ruby grapefruit, shaved fennel, frisée, farm egg mimosa, creme fraîche

R: Salt Spring Mussels, ale broth, prosciutto, torn croutons, smoky cream

They had light dishes for you to choose from as starters, I believe they were more share dishes rather than entrees because the portions of these were pretty generous.

Seared Monterey Calamari, Moroccan green lentils, onion-mint salsa, cumin aioli

Brined Heritage Pork Chop, soft parmesan polenta, grilled kale, chimi churri, ancho butter

Pacific tuna seared rare, white shell beans, roasted chanterelles, wilted radicchio, hazelnut salsa-rustica

We booked our table through OpenTable before we left Sydney, they had a promotion going on at the time – if you buy a $100 gift card, you’ll get an additional $10 credit. We were pretty certain that we’d spend over $100 that meal so we bought it. We ended up spending an additional $10.24 on top of our final bill after they deducted the gift card from the balance. So the suggested gratuity on the bill appeared less, but really we had to tip based on the overall amount anyways.

There was not a bad dish of all the dishes we ordered, each had its own interesting taste which we loved. I personally liked the mussels and the broth that came with it – which we pretty much had all of. I had the pork chop for my main and loved the ancho butter sauce with it, butter makes everything taste really good right?

We loved our dining experience at Foreign Cinema and is somewhere we’d check out again for their other menus or even for breakfast in the future! Apparently they serve up a good one!