I traveled into San Mateo County, California last week for Open Sauce, a science and technology convention that ended this past Sunday. While I’m already in the area, I decided to extend my stay for a few days to try out some nice restaurants in San Francisco. My convention blog post is going to be fairly large and I’m still waiting on some friends to send me photos of me that I might use, but until then, I decided to do some food reviews.

Last night, a friend and I went to Nopa, a New American restaurant focused on using fresh, seasonal ingredients sourced from local farms. We applied my typical strategy for restaurants like this—instead of ordering a main entrée, we ordered a lot of smaller plates to build our own meal and try out a wider variety of available dishes.

For our appetizer, we got Little Gems, made from Star Route Farm lettuce, K&J Orchards Bing cherries, caramel walnuts, and Matos St. Jorge cheese.

This was a very refreshing salad. Each piece of lettuce was the perfect size—not too big and not too small—and each bite had a nice crunch to it. The cherries had a great balance of sweetness while still being subtle as to not overpower any other flavors. The caramel walnuts expanded the breadth of texture in the dish, which I liked. I am usually not a fan of cheese, but the flavor of this cheese was smooth and not excessively cheesy.

For my drink, I ordered a non-alcoholic beverage off their zero-proof cocktail menu called the Influencer, made with Vibrante vermouth, smoked black tea, pomegranate, and peppercorn, topped with an orange peel.

Of course, the reason I picked it was because it was named “Influencer,” and it wouldn’t be a normal day in the world of Adam Parkzer without joking and memeing about influencers. The drink itself was passable, but not that great; it had a flavor profile that I had never tasted before in any other drink, but it was a little bit too bitter for my preference.

Next up was local halibut crudo with Dapple Dandy pluot, pickled G&S Farm sweet corn, basil, and urfa chili.

The halibut was fresh and had a satisfying texture. This was the first time I had ever tried pluot, and I think I like it—I couldn’t really isolate and pick up on its core flavor because it was just an ingredient in a broader dish, but I could still tell that had a good amount of sweetness. The sweet corn was a bit overpickled for my preference, but when added together with the other ingredients in each big bite, it served its role well.

Because of a minor mix-up, my friend didn’t get her drink for a little while, but it eventually came out—she got a pomegranate hibiscus soda. I tried a few sips of her drink, and it was sort of like a sweeter and “purer”-tasting variant of my own drink.

For our first savory dish, we got house-smoked trout with marinated cucumbers, Brokaw avocado, tzatziki, purslane, and crispy quinoa.

This was a bit more cooked than I expected for a dish that was supposed to be smoked, but it was still very tender. I took care to add each ingredient into every bite, and it had a very refreshing flavor with no unexpected aftertastes. The quinoa added a fun crunch, and the very lightly fried oily taste added great balance to the richness of the fish.

Our second “main” entrée was saffron rigatoni with Shasta morels, porcini, Genovese basil, and herbed house ricotta.

We mixed in all the ricotta with the pasta. Usually, I’ve found Italian dishes to come with too much sauce such that the cheesiness and saltiness over­pow­ers the pasta, but this dish had great balance of sauce and pasta. The ricotta had a deep, rich flavor, and the pasta was cooked to be soft and chewy.

Our final entrée of the night was flatbread with Nopa bacon, Rojas Farm white nectarine, Point Reyes Toma cheese, and arugula.

I’m usually not a big fan of bacon, but this Nopa bacon was not too greasy and it was cooked to the perfect firmness where it’s not too hard and not too rubbery. The nectarine added an amazing refreshing flavor to the flatbread—it’s like it took what people like about pineapple on Hawaiian pizza, but toned it down enough that it maintained the crispness and sweetness without being way too watery and tangy on pizza like pineapple is. I couldn’t really taste the arugula, but it added some color and was nice for presentation.

For dessert, we got a blueberry apricot cobbler with a hot sugar crust and topped with frosted almonds and crème fraîche ice cream.

Like the main courses, the cobbler also had a very clean and refreshing taste. The cobbler had a great consistency to it, the almonds had a very deep nut­ty flavor, the ice cream was smooth and rich, and even the edible flowers added a nice touch without being too fragrant.

This is a bit silly, but I decided to include this picture anyway—instead of regular salt shakers, Nopa has a small wooden bowl with rock salt in it. All the dishes were well-seasoned so we didn’t need any salt, but I still thought this was a nice touch to make the restaurant feel higher-end and classier.

Here is a view of the interior of the restaurant. My friend works remotely for an East coast company and operates on Eastern time zone, so we booked our reservation for 5:30 PM PDT right when the restaurant opened, which is why it looks so empty. However, by the time we were done with our dinner two hours later, the restaurant was packed and bustling.

Our table was up on the mezzanine, and you can actually see my chair in the top-right corner of this following photograph. It meant I had a nice view of the restaurant throughout my meal, but the downside was that I overheated halfway through my meal because I was directly above the kitchen and the heat of their cooking rose directly up to me.

A recurring theme across the dishes was that the ingredients spoke for themselves. I don’t think there was any extra seasoning added beyond salt and pepper, and the amount of salt used was small enough that it didn’t overwhelm the dish or make it too salty. Any additional supplemental flavors were added with herbs and other premium ingredients that synergized well with the dish, which made all the food taste pure, clean, and refreshing.

Overall, I was very satisfied with my dining experience. We got a lot of dishes and the bill added up pret­ty quickly, but with all factors considered—supporting local farmers, California’s cost of living, San Francisco’s even higher cost of living, and just the overall quality of the dishes—I don’t think the price was unreasonable.

The dining experience was also very pleasant. This was the first time I had seen this friend in-person in almost an entire year so I was fairly distracted with conversation, but when I did notice the waiter come around, he was available when we needed him and he was attentive to our needs. I also think I got some of the most prime seating in the restaurant, as we were in an elevated and quieter area of the res­tau­rant, and we were able to look down on everyone else, almost as if we could people-watch as en­ter­tain­ment.

If you live near San Francisco or are in town visiting and want a nice meal that is light and healthy but still filling and tasty, I’d definitely recommend checking out Nopa. They have some large plates that may be more cost-effective than what we did, but if you want to experience a build-your-own multi-course tasting menu, their small plates are fantastic.