http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/28/travel/restaurant-report-lazy-bear-in-san-francisco.html 2014-12-23 21:14:53 Restaurant Report: Lazy Bear in San Francisco The ticketing system at this spot makes sense; a communal, three-hour meal there feels more like an event than a dinner. === More restaurants are embracing online ticketing, with hopeful customers poised to click weeks in advance and pay in full when batches of seats are released. Among those in Lazy Bear Tickets were slightly painful to achieve — competition for prime dates compounded by software glitches — but we eventually procured two to the early seating at 6. Several weeks later, my date and I were ushered to the buzzing mezzanine lounge. The cozy layout and tasty drinks — a lemon-verbena shandy, for example — inevitably led to mingling. We noshed on the first of more than a dozen small plates: I swooned over the duck liver mousse with a paper-punch- size tiny spot of grape jelly and walnut paste. Escorted downstairs, we were assigned seats at one of two long wooden tables next to a Canadian foursome, including a Royal Mountie who contributed a history lesson on New Brunswick. Mr. Barzelay created this communal experience as a way to recall the intimate nature of home-cooked meals of his youth. Diners were even encouraged to interact in the open kitchen as the chef’s team combined unexpected flavors into colorful presentations of dishes that were complex but not fussy. “My flavors are familiar from childhood and would appeal to my grandmother,” Mr. Barzelay said later. Bright orange trout fillets were rolled artfully atop a crunchy rye crumble; a sea scallop was crowned with sunflower petals. Grilled pork, both jowl and loin, was complemented with pine nuts, buckwheat and Chanterelles. Six varieties of dessert included a perfect Earl Grey macaron and a sesame-encrusted dim sum filled with chocolate ganache. Just as one might after a dinner party, we exchanged email addresses with the Canadians before departing.