Not that it mattered much: We appeared to be the only customers in the entire bustling, fully packed bar who had ordered any food whatsoever. No one else had purchased even a single lonely bowl of tater tots. Meanwhile, in typical fashion, we’d filled every available inch of our assigned counter space with plates and bowls piled high with braised meats and pickled greens.
Anyway, I get it. The vibes at Viridian are great, and the cocktails are spectacular — and I say this as someone who’d never describe themselves as a cocktail person. The signature Tomato Beef, a magically crystal-clear tequila drink that tastes like the purest essence of a ripe summer tomato, might be my favorite cocktail in the Bay Area. For a change of pace, this time I tried the Cafe Sữa Đáddy, a jet-black iced coffee concoction topped with a thick, fluffy cloud of egg foam. It was dangerously sweet and smooth.
What we’re here to tell you, though, is that you shouldn’t skip out on the food — that, in fact, Viridian is well worth a dinner or after-dinner-snack visit even if you don’t drink at all.
This is at least the third or fourth permutation that Viridian’s distinctly Asian American food program has gone through. When the bar first opened in early 2020, just a month before the start of the pandemic, it served almost exclusively desserts — elegant pandan custard pies and Thai tea tiramisu. It went through a period when the kitchen mostly served fancy reinterpretations of dim sum, and then various stretches when every intricately plated dish would have looked right at home at any three-star palace of fine dining.
The current food menu, which launched just a few weeks ago, is probably the simplest, most bar-snacky edition yet, leaning toward homey diasporic Asian flavors in a way we found especially enjoyable. There was piping-hot “mala spice chicken…
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