"BEST STEAK EVER...PERIOD - I live in Dallas, TX, where we certainly have some great steakhouses. For years I have told people to come to Bob’s for what I believed was the best steak in the world. When making the reservations for a group of customers I was a little apprehensive about choosing Bobo’s because there happens to be a Bob’s in San Francisco. It turns out that this was the best decision I could have made and my customers were in awe at the flavor of the steak. I truly believe that I have now had the best steak in the world and will eagerly await my next trip to San Francisco...unless you want to put one in Dallas!"

-- Customer email

"I just wanted to follow up with a thank you from my family and me. We thoroughly enjoyed our dining experience. The food and service were excellent and our seating was perfect for our large group. It worked out great for the kids, too. I will definitely pass on my recommendation to friends and family. Thank you."

-- Michelle S.

"Last Saturday night a friend and I were driving around the city looking for a comedy club. I thought that Bobo's was an interesting name and a cute little place so instead we decided to pop in. Much to our dismay, the dining was by reservation only but we were promptly accommodated with a great table in the bar by the window. The food was amazing. This was truly the best steak I've ever had in my life. The atmosphere was joyful and romantic, and also very fun. The service was impeccable and the waitstaff was incredibly delightful. I've been recommending it to all of my friends and we will definitely be back and next time we'll get reservations!  Thanks for a fantastic dining experience."

-- Customer email

"Per the high recommendation in the 1st Annual Best of Northside SF (thanks for the high praise and you're absolutely right in your assessment!), I finally splurged and sampled the $38 prime filet mignon with bone steak at Bobo's. All I can say is the double cut, medium rare steak was heavenly and exceptional! I've never sampled tastier or finer! I nearly ate the whole 14 to 16 oz. chop! The four to six weeks of dry-aging surely makes a huge difference in the taste and texture of the beef! I hate to admit, but a twenty-one day aged prime steak purchased from Bryan's isn't going to cut it anymore! Needless to say, you're getting me spoiled!"

-- Customer email

"...we were lucky to stay at a hotel nearby and were told about Bobo's. It's excellent-we will never find another place like yours-EVER!"

-- Wendy from Minnesota

I just wanted to say Thank You so very much for the excellent service and food last Saturday evening. My friends and I thoroughly enjoyed the dinner and appreciated the fantastic service. Kudos to Veronica (our fabulous always smiling and always accommodating waitress), Felix (our very helpful and happy busboy), Joseph (who oversaw the dinner) and all the staff who attended to us and made my 'Special Occasion' even more special. It was a joy all around and your Restaurant will be highly recommended by all in my party and me. Thank you again.

P.S. Feel free to use this accolade as you wish. You deserve it. I believe all service performance stems from the top, so the praise goes also to you for your good management."

-- June from Elk Grove, CA

Boboquivari's

Some meals stay with you long after the bill has arrived, and only a handful of them will leave an indelible impression. They usually aren't the ones in the 4-star restaurants with the paycheck price tag. More often a memorable meal comes down to the food you yearned for at that point in time and how the dish satisfied an "inner craving".

We all have our own favorites -- I can still remember the comforting feeling of a roast beef dinner with mashed potatoes in a pool of gravy after an afternoon of pond hockey back in New England, and the tasty crunch of fried clams with tartar sauce at a seaside shack on a familiar drive many summers ago. Or the first time I had Veal Picatta with something called "lemon caper butter sauce" and discovering there was more to Italian than spaghetti & meatballs with "gravy".

Now you may say "you were only a kid and didn't know any better." I say baloney.
You can go a long time between these kinds of meals, and Boboquivari's (aka Bobo's) bone-in filet ($36) now joins those ranks and tops my personal short list of great steaks I've enjoyed over many years of beef consumption. Rather surprisingly, this fine piece of meat is served in the stylish yet unpretentious setting of a smaller boutique style steakhouse -- on Lombard Street of all places.

The restaurant's décor matches the theme of its namesake; Boboquivari is a Venetian court jester of comedy & entertainment. A glassy green lit bar invites you into the playfully elegant restaurant, described as "Cirque de Soleil meets Old World Venice" -- a tapestry of carnival marionettes and plush booths with black and deep red stripes throughout. This novel combo is a cool blend of style and colors, and it whets the appetite for the treats to come.

Whatever the science of grain vs. grass fed, dry-aged vs. wet-aged, Bobo's has found the formula to fabulous steak (Grazie to Chef Andrea Froncillo). Ours arrived with a beautiful, dark brown-crusted "bark" that belied the tender, medium rare beef within. The rap on filet mignon is that because of the leaner cut, it's somewhat less juicy and flavorful than the macho, well-marbled ribeye or Delmonico. Bobo's bone-in dispels this notion, as it has all the flavor of those cuts without any of the gristle that you may expect. Tender like you dream about, juicy like you wish it to be -- the filet delivers on both counts in a large way. This is how flavorful a steak can be when placed in the right cook's hands.

Another featured offering on Bobo's menu is the decadent Dungeness Crab. The crab (at least 2 lbs. when caught) is roasted with garlic and butter to the perfect degree of sweet tenderness. It comes as a cocktail starter with a beurre blanc coulis ($13), and in half-order ($19), whole crab ($35), three pounds ($49), and crab feast ($100) portions. Also, to satisfy your land and sea hankering, the surf & turf is available (1/2 crab and petit filet) for $35. Prices are hefty, but the portions are more than adequate. If you treat the meal as a special occasion and rationalize a bit, you'll get over the hard hit to the plastic.

Other delectable notables on the menu are the pancetta-wrapped scallops in a wasabi pesto aioli ($9); the sides of baked yam with brown sugar butter, and spinach sautéed with toasted garlic chips and olive oil (both $6). Full-flavored and skillfully balanced, these dishes hold their own against the rock star appeal of the main offerings.

What didn't standout and wow us at Bobo's were the skillet roasted mussels ($12) -- a tad overcooked and dry; the lobster bisque soup ($8), with too much curry spice; and the Maui onion rings ($6), a little greasy and bready for our liking. These basic menu items were a disappointment considering the relative ease of their straightforward preparation.

So is there any room for dessert after this hearty fare? If you kick back and sip your luscious red wine (we tried the Cabernet VJB Dante Sonoma County 2000 for $39, and Kenwood "Jack London" Sonoma Valley 2000 for $44), you may have just enough room to share the sorbet trio ($7) and the dunce cap cones filled with dark chocolate mousse and an ancho pepper chocolate sauce ($8). Both desserts are decent but not as great as Mom's exquisite chocolate rum torte -- angel food cake soaked in Meyer's rum and frozen with a marble of chocolate ooze and whipped dreams of cream; now you have reached manna nirvana!

Back to the main meaty attraction: if there's a better steak (my Uncle Frank's BBQ many seasons ago), I have to think it is more out of loyalty to my dearly departed relative and less to do with how this most excellent dish tasted. Boboquivari's bone-in filet joins the pantheon of top grade A meals. Just wish Uncle Frank could have joined us…

Written in collaboration with Laurel Timms

Partners Jerry Dal Bozzo, Dante Serafini and Andrea Froncillo have the Midas Touch when it comes to opening restaurants – other ventures include The Stinking Rose (North Beach and Beverly Hills), Crab House at Pier 39, Calzone’s and The Dead Fish – and Bobo’s is another brilliant nugget. When these successful restaurateurs decided to open a steakhouse, they wanted to offer the best steak possible, and partnered with one of the few purveyors in the country who has a Total Quality Control (TQC) USDA-rated facility for dry-aging beef (only eight-percent of US facilities qualify for this designation). While a handful of the better steakhouses dry-age their beef (on premises) up to 21 days, Boboquivari’s ages their beef for four to six weeks, producing a tender, juicy, flavorful piece of meat that literally melts in your mouth. Only Brooklyn’s famous Peter Luger and Bern’s of Tampa, Florida, have a steak that can compare.

When you first walk into Bobo’s (located in the two-story building at 1450 Lombard Street that used to house a Thai restaurant), you are instantly transported to a mystical, mysterious place. The first thing you see is the beautiful bar, with its enormous glass sculptured top backlit with a soft green glow that bounces seductively off the dark, red-amber walls. A giant Italian marionette greets you, whimsically leaping over the doorway with his long, gangly legs. This marionette is the namesake for the restaurant – Boboquivari (bo-bo-kwee-var-ee) is the Venetian court jester of comedy and entertainment, and the atmosphere at Bobo’s doesn’t disappoint.

Settled in our cozy booth, my dining companions and I began ordering from the "light meals" portion of the menu, which can also be ordered as appetizers to complement your entree. We started with the sizzling iron skillet-roasted mussels ($10), which were delicious – tender and juicy with a smoky flavor. I’m not a huge mussel fan, preferring clams and oysters, but these were the best mussels I’ve ever had. Next we tried the Dungeness crab cocktail in a citrus beurre blanc coulis and smoked salmon ($10), which was also lovely. The crab was fresh and sweet and was nicely offset by the tangy citrus. I had never seen a twice-baked potato on a menu – my mother made them routinely when I was growing up – but they have a good one at Bobo’s, filled with gooey fontina cheese, zucchini and chives ($5). The lollipop lamb chops with truffle oil essence and spicy mojito mint sauce (four for $10 or six for $15) were roasted rare to perfection and were so tender they practically fell off the bone, but my favorite appetizer was the lobster soup with potato and cauliflower puree in a light curry brodetto ($9). I’m not a curry fan, but I loved this soup so much that I wanted to lick the bowl. So often, lobster soup in a restaurant means one or two pieces of lobster in thick bisque, but this soup was in a light bisque and thick with chunks of sweet, tender Maine lobster. Other light fare standouts included the giant salt-roasted prawn, the sautéed Brussels sprouts and the Ahi tuna carpaccio with crunchy Chinese cucumber ponzu and sesame oil mist.

For entrees, there was no question that we were ordering the steak. But before the piece de resistance arrived, we tried a couple other dishes. The Hawaiian sunfish in seaweed-sesame soy glaze sauté ($16) was marvelous – crispy on the outside and moist and juicy inside, the sweet fish was a perfect match for the layer of tender, slightly-salty seaweed that accompanied it. But it was the crab angel hair lasagna ($14) that set my heart aflutter. It may sound strange, but this dish is a masterpiece in its simplicity. In fact, it was such a hit at the Crab House on Pier 39; they decided to bring it to Bobo’s, where it serves as the icing on top of an extremely well-rounded menu. Angel hair pasta, cooked al dente, is baked in a ramekin with a creamy but not heavy béchamel sauce until the top is brown and the lasagna mixture is hot and bubbly beneath. I can honestly say that I dreamt about this dish for days afterward.

At long last, the steaks arrived. JT, Ronan, Heather and I split the filet mignon (16-oz. $39) and the t-bone (24-oz. $42), and they arrived at the table thick, sizzling hot, medium-rare and juicy. Even the guys – both fitness trainers with hearty appetites – were in shock at the sheer size of these cuts. The filet was served bone-in – something I had never seen before, but it helps the flavor blossom during that four to six week dry-aging process. Words can simply not describe the steak at Bobo’s, and I would be doing an injustice even trying. Suffice to say, I’ve never had a better steak anywhere.

There is only one dessert on the menu – quadruple bypass, made with dark chocolate mousse, "dunce cap" cones and ancho chili pepper chocolate sauce ($5). It was the perfect ending to a perfect meal – light, fluffy mousse in a peppery sauce that gives the mousse a bit of an edge.

Boboquivari’s is a must-visit restaurant for anyone who loves steak, but there’s something on the menu for everyone, from vegetarians to pescetarians. With charming atmosphere, friendly service, a well-stocked bar and a smart wine list, this is the perfect place to gather with friends for a warm and wonderful evening.

Not to Miss Dish: The steak, of course! But make sure to order the crab angel hair lasagna and the lobster soup as well.

Boboquivari’s: 1450 Lombard Street @ Van Ness. (415) 441-8880. Open daily from 5 p.m. to 11 p.m. Bobo’s will soon offer limo service to and from the Lombard Street Garage. There is also limited parking next to the restaurant.