Dinner for 2 at State Bird Provisions--with priority reservations!

Value $125

Hot new restaurant on Fillmore Street between Geary & O'Farrell & completely booked up.

 In less than two years it's become the best-known little restaurant in the city - and maybe the country. Last year it won the James Beard Foundation award for Best New Restaurant.

"State Bird is the brainchild of a wife-and-husband team of native Californians, Nicole Krasinski and Stuart Brioza.

The dim sum carts — at least half the food arrives that way, with the other half ordered off a menu — are uncommon to say the least. Although the concept is familiar to everyone at this point, these are laden not with the mostly brown and steamed food common to dim-sum parlors but with gorgeous, far-out, inventively served creations like kimchi yuba (tofu skin) with smoked egg; sweetbread meatballs with fig jam and pickled vegetables; lobster-and-lentil salad; and, yes, dumplings (guinea hen, with broth).

And State Bird goes beyond the surprise, producing a wild variety of avant-garde food that you really want to eat. What’s happening here is the continuing evolution of highly trained, fine-dining-type chefs strutting their stuff in a casual atmosphere. " NYTimes