Fino Ristorante & Bar

Patate Frites are delicious although you might not want to kiss anyone after unless you brought mints. The fresh linguine is to die for. Service is prompt and very good. Drove all the way from Berkeley and would do it again any day.

Among the other Italian places close by this is certainly among the best around. Has a close knit, cozy, elegant ambiance without feeling pompous. The service was truly stellar despite being at capacity. We had a samplings from the arugula salad, minestrone soup, margherita pizza and pasta carbonara. Standout is really pasta here. Perfectly cooked fresh pasta without being mushy in heavy cream sauce shows developed technique. Pizza was just ok. I would definitely pass on it, nothing special and the dough was close to ruining it for us but I would be glad to overlook for everything else

This place is a gem and the staff only adds to it. We came in without a reservation and sat at the bar for dinner. This place is pretty small so I’d recommend a reservation or they’ll be full. I have some dietary restrictions and Steve the bartender was so helpful in recomending somethings I could eat without even batting an eye. The meal was really good, even with all the alterations. My friend’s meal was also delicious. The ambiance, staff and food really make this a place not to miss.

This place was amazing! We made reservations (recommended, the place is small) and were greeted immediately. I ordered the scallops and my husband ordered the Veal Milanese. Both were incredible. The service was excellent and the food so, so good.

I came here judging based on the amazing Unilocal reviews, but was incredibly disappointed with the food. My friend and I both ordered pasta, and were unable to even take more than one bite because of how badly cooked the food was. When complaining to the waiter that the pasta tasted burnt, he didn’t try to remedy the situation at all. We had to leave the restaurant hungry and ended up going to a pizza joint instead.

This may be the best Italian place in the area. Really great service, cozy atmosphere, and great selection of classics and modern dishes.
I really have nothing else to add, it is worth a visit– just be sure you don’t look like a tool coming in thru the hotel next door (which has clear signs indicating that it is not the entry to the restaurant) and just walk past it, right to the ally, right again, small wooden door and down the steps.

We opted to dine here because we were going to a theater production up the street. I give stars for location.
The service was fast but it was a little too fast.
In our family we love Italian food and therefore are particular about our pasta. The pasta at Fino was not fresh. My husband had the linguini bolognese and it had way too much sauce that he couldn’t even finish it. This is unheard of for him. I had Ravioli and it was gummy. I would have rather had the pasta from the refrigerator section at the grocery store. Ravioli should never be chewy.
The dessert really ruined it for me. I ordered crème brûlée. It was burned in spots. Once I broke the sugar crust the cream was curdled. It had weird hotspots, some spots were scalding and others were cold. Must have been made days ago and then was microwaved. No other way to explain hotspots.
It had been five years since my previous dining experience here and it will probably be five more.

Ate here last night as a last night dinner with friends before we head back down to Los Angeles. Everything was so great!
Except the server…
I have never gotten such atrocious service in my life. I don’t know how he works at such a high end place with such attitude of that nature. As much as I would like to not pull out the race card. We have done nothing to the waiter from the start that would put him in a sour mood. Nor did we give him any type of attitude or «authoratative» type attitude. We are all just chill people, that love food. So I could only put it as, he placed a pre-​judgment on us that we would not be great guests.
He coughed when I asked for more Parmesan cheese. And loud enough for my friend to have heard it. Another friend across the table asked him for cheese and the waiter set a glass down on the bar and sighed so loudly that one friend asked if he had just sighed and another friend laughed and said yeah he did. He would say things under his breath like there was no tomorrow. Like why are you so mad my friend? He was rude when we were ordering wine as well. For the second bottle he said he had to go downstairs to get the bottle but he said it very rude. I didn’t know such sass could fit in one dull sentence. Never smiled, always looked really angry.
What sucks is. I never had such bad service where I didn’t want to eat my food. And today was the day. I just sucked it up as to not ruin anymore people’s feelings around our table.
The only reason I love this place is because the food was phenomenal. The service didn’t even come close. And I hope the manager reads this and at least corrects the waiter for his bad attitude towards patrons. EVERYONE at our table agreed he was such a rude and angry server.
I ate at table 20 – 21 with 6 people on January 5^th (I may be wrong but at the host stand I saw those two table numbers by my name so I’m assuming those might have been my table. I have been a server for 10 years and at many different establishments, including fine dining. So I know the taste of 200 – 400 dollars a shift with high end clientele. The service was unacceptable. I will definitely be coming back when I visit from LA. But I know if I see that server ever again, I will simply just request for a different server. Maybe then will I be appreciated as a guest.

Our food sojourn started with a mix of flavorful, fresh, and fantastic spinach, calamari, and caprese appetizers. Charles recommended an excellent wine Arme, a California Cab, merlo, and malbec meritage. We then ordered the branzino, sausage pizza, and pasta abruzi. All entrees came out cooked to order and perfect. This was our best meal in San Francisco by far. We ended this adventure with tiramisu and cappuccino. I highly recommend Fino if you enjoy authentic, extremely fresh, and perfectly flavored Italian cuisine. Not only was the food incredible but Charles’ service was exceptional.

Late Sunday night reservation for 4. Good selection of wines. I enjoyed the barberra red. Table size was silly. At one point they moved our side plates to the shelf over the fireplace next to us, out of reach. Linguini was okay. Bolognese sauce was watery. Veal was pretty good but a bit fatty-​rubbery in parts. Vodka sauce was fabulous. Deserts were fine. They had seats during the holiday

It’s a small restaurant located a few blocks away from union square inside a small motel. There’s lots of pasta options so it’s really hard to choose because they all look so good. Both my friend and I are craving for a light garlic white wine sauce and went with the server’s recommendation, linguini with clams and also linguini with pan seared scallops both in a light garlic white wine sauce. We also started off with the parmesan truffle fries. It’s quite interesting and it’s pretty good. The linguini dishes were a bit dry and it’s sticking together so maybe because it’s been cooked and placed on the plate for a while before the server brought it out, but food is still a bit warm. The servers were a bit slow also because it took them a while to approach us.

We usually stop here when we’re waiting for a table at the sushi spot around the corner, but every time we’ve been, we sit at the bar and order ourselves a drink and Caprese Salad. And every time we leave thinking we need to come back for a full dinner. The staff has always been accommodating and you can’t go wrong with their Caprese Salad.

Great place! Definitely recommend making reservations as it’s a pretty small restaurant tucked into The Andrew’s Hotel. Also they don’t seat you until your whole party has arrived so keep that in mind.
We had an early dinner at around 5:45pm on a weekday and the place was already filling up quickly. So first we obviously dug into the amazing bread everyone raves about. It was perfectly warm, fresh and balsamic/​garlic oil is basically God’s tears. Yes it’s that good! But I don’t understand why they don’t cut the loaf all the way though, forcing you to awkwardly and violently tear the crusty bread with your hands, flinging crumbs everywhere. Regardless, it’s worth it.
So on to the real stuff. I’m obsessed with gnocchi so of course I had to order it. But i’m not the biggest fan of gorgonzola so I asked the waiter if I could switched out the sauce and went with the vodka sauce instead. The is a diet burster for sure, but I loved every bite and highly recommend it. My friends both had the Linguine con Gamberi e Capesante (waiter’s recommendation) and enjoyed it as well. All I can say is that there were no leftovers for that midnight snack!
Add this to the list of your must eats in SFO!

Swung by with a friend for dinner on Friday– I was surprised that we were able to be seated almost immediately, seeing as we had struck out at two restaurants (707 Sutter & Cocobang) earlier in the evening.
Nonetheless, it was a nice intimate atmosphere, although it seemed to be geared to a much older crowd. I ordered the Capesante Risotto (I’m a huge sucker for scallops) and my friend ordered the Capesante pasta.
I was a little bit taken aback by all of the vegetables mixed into my risotto. Typically, I prefer heavier/​more rice-​based risottos, so the texture was a bit offputting. The scallops looked absolutely delicious, but unfortunately, tasted a bit metallic.
All in all, this place didn’t really suit my tastes, but perhaps I should have gotten a pasta, as that seems to be what they’re known for.

Likes: bread yum. Calamari good. French fries stack huge. capesante and capesante piccante are both good scallop dishes.
Capesante focuses on the scallops so you have kale salad on one side, four large scallops in the middle, then their pasta noodles on the other side. If you want more of the wine lemon garlic flavor and the scallops to shine on its own then this is the dish to order
Capesante piccante is mixed up dish of veggies, pasta noodles, scallops but it also has some tomato sauce so the flavor is slightly different. I personally preferred this dish because I like the tomato sauce and felt there was more pasta that I could gobble down. Their pasta is homemade and just delicious. I could eat it all week as leftovers and it would still taste good to me
Dislikes: parking difficult. Best to just Bart it over and walk. I also wouldn’t order the French fries stack next time unless a lot of people are there because it’s very filling

Great food. A bit pricy. I love clams. Esp linguini a la vongole. But at $ 30, I decided to have the $ 16 clam/​mussel appetizer asking for only clams. They were delicious. If I could, I would have licked the plate. The wine/​garlic/​basil/​clam combo was… holy shit! How do I get more of that? I had a pizza chaser which was alright. The salad & veal was great too. 2 of us came to $ 96 for 2. No wine, dessert or coffee. This would have been 5 stars at about $ 60. At almost $ 100. 4 star.

3.5
Pretty small restaurant located inside of a hotel. The meal started off great with wonderful service and a delicious bread and this dip they give u — some sort of olive oil and I don’t know what concoction that was so delicious.
The service got progressively worse and was pretty dang bad at the end. We all ordered different meals and some were delicious and some a couple pretty bad. The ravioli I ordered was delicious but the linguine was so awful and the noodles were so undercooked — not al dente, seriously undercooked. My dad ordered a pork chop item that was awful with no flavor at all — he compared it to cafeteria food.
Overall the atmosphere was ok but the service went from great to awful — I would come back for that bread and dip ravioli and wine.

Good but not great. It’s more of a 3.5 stars. I ordered a rigatoni pasta with chicken turkey sausage and vegetables. I think portions were generous and the pasta definitely tasted handmade. I’m not sure what the sauce was but it was garlic-​y and pretty light.
Service was friendly but a bit lacking in attentiveness. I had to continuously request water refills. Total came out to be $ 26 with tax and tip included. I think too pricey for what I got, but maybe I should have ordered something seafood related since that seems to be more of a standout.

Recommend making reservations first since it’s a small place. We came on a weekend evening and there was fortunately one table open. There’s also bar seating. Note they won’t seat you until the entire party arrives. The service was really friendly and attentive.
The dipping sauce they serve with the complimentary bread is delicious. Tons of balsamic vinegar, olive oil, garlic. I loved it!
I ordered the gnocchi in Gorgonzola sauce ($ 17). The gnocchi was dense and the sauce was very rich. It was pretty good but I couldn’t finish the dish on my own since it was heavy. My friends got the Fettuccine con Prosciutto e Funghi ($ 18). The tomato sauce was creamy and flavorful. I preferred their dish more.

I have to say that this was one of the better dining experiences of my life! I was in SF to present at an archaeology conference and after my successful presentation, some of my archaeology friends took me out. We found this place by chance and it was such a pleasant surprise!!!
First: Wine and cocktail menus are AMAZING! We got several of each and thoroughly enjoyed everything that we tried. The fresh fruit for some of the cocktails was a nice touch too.
Secondly: THE FOOD was SO GOOD! the pasta was fresh. It had to be. It was so wonderfully delicate and perfectly cooked. We each got a pasta for our dinner– I got the seafood one, which had mussels, scallops, shrimp and salmon on it. I couldn’t finish the whole thing, but it was fantastic. The helpings were a little big. My friends finished theirs but I just couldn’t.
Dessert! We got two desserts to split with the three of us and we ate everything. The chocolate cake was amazing! I sincerely think everything we ate was the best thing ever!
The most amazing thing about this experience was the service we received. My friends and I, being archaeologists, aren’t the best dressed group. Which is putting it mildly. One friend is constantly mistaken for being homeless. At any rate, the service was seriously impeccable. Our waiter did everything perfectly– never came to the table to ask us how things were before we even had a chance to try it, made sure our drinks were never empty and offered to let me try different wines (I LOVE wine), knew to serve from the left and to not remove the plates from the table while someone was still eating. Seriously, that guy rocked. He deserves a raise!!!
I want to come visit again!!!

Das Restaurant fanden wir über ein anderes Bewertungsportal. Glücklicherweise lag das
Restaurant in der Nähe des Union Squares, wo auch unser Hotel (Hotel
Diva, super, siehe andere Bewertung) lag.
Wir wurden sehr freundlich empfangen, mussten aber rund 20 min auf einen Tisch warten (wir waren donnerstags dort).
Wir
hatten sehr freundlichen und aufmerksamen Kellner. Bei diesem orderten
wir Parmesan-​Pommes Frites mit einem Dressing und eine Fl. Weißwein
(28 $). Wasser gab es kostenlos zu.
Die Parmesan-​Frites waren
aufgetürmt und schmeckten super vielleicht auch dank des Frittierens
und des Knoblauchs und der Petersilie.
Danach hatten wir den Salat
Fino (8 $, als Hauptgericht etwas zu wenig) und die Nudeln Puttanesca
(15 $, Linguine mit fr. Tomaten, Kapern, Sardellen, Knoblauch — eine
unschaffbar große Portion, aber perfekt!!!). Zum Anschluss gönnten wir
uns einen Grappa di Gavi, der mit 16 $ allerdings zu teuer war.
Insgesamt
zahlten wir 92 $, aber das Essen und Ambiente stimmten einfach. Wir
können das Restaurant ausnahmslos empfehlen, allerdings ist eine
Reservierung sinnvoll.