The Dorian in San Francisco’s Marina District has found an ingenious way to woo pandemic-wary diners back to in-person eating: coat everything in gold.
In early June the restaurant launched a new happy hour, deemed the “Golden Hour”, which it holds from 4:00–6:00 p.m, Tuesday through Friday. During Golden Hour, the Dorian serves a special menu of discounted drinks and specials, as well as two dishes that incorporate real, edible gold.
The Golden Hour Oyster is a $9 Hog Island oyster topped with creme fraiche (think fancy sour cream), Caviar Company sturgeon caviar, chives, and flakes of actual 24k gold. But the star of the show is the Dorian’s Wilde Burger. It’s a Wagyu beef burger with a bone marrow torchon, truffle aioli, watercress, and pickled onions, all served atop a bun which is coated in 33k edible gold. A photo the Dorian sent me shows the burger glittering away atop a bed of parmesan-covered fries.
The price? $50.
You can wash that burger down with any of the Dorian’s Golden Hour cocktails, which include a Magic Mushroom martini with porcini mushrooms and heirloom tomatoes, or several flower-themed drinks with hints of eucalyptus, cardamom or makrut lime.
According to a spokesperson for the Dorian, the restaurant is modeled on a “neighborhood supper club”, evoking a “bygone era”. “The Dorian evokes a Victorian home at the turn of the last century”, the spokesperson told me in an email, “with rich colors and textural wallpapers, mixed with brass and concrete surfaces.”
They don’t call the late 1800s the “Gilded Age” for nothing — it’s unlikely that they ate cheeseburgers, but the Victorians’ obsession with covering things in gold was very real. The Evergreen House, a Gilded Age Victorian home now operating as a museum in Baltimore, Maryland, even includes a gold-plated toilet from the era.
To me, the Dorian has enough art deco elements (think The Great Gatsby) that it looks like it comes from a bit later in the 20th century. Perhaps it’s meant to evoke the home of former Victorians who survived the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic, made it into the Roaring ‘20s, and are ready to party.
If so, then the Dorian’s Golden Hour is weirdly perfect for Our Times. If you’ve been hunkering down in your tiny San Francisco apartment for 18 months living in daily fear of a deadly virus, you’ve just now gotten fully vaccinated, and you’re ready to start eating out again, why shouldn’t you begin with a $50 cheeseburger covered in gold? You’ve earned it.
For those seeking even more excitement, the Dorian is also debuting an Experiential Menu, with “the opportunity to enjoy such activities as wine and espresso pigment painting, Tarot cards, dominoes and Liar’s Dice.” For the less adventurous diner, the Dorian also offers more normal American fare and cocktails.
But really, if you have the option and the means to eat a gold-plated burger, why wouldn’t you?
The Dorian is located at 2001 Chestnut Street, at the corner of Fillmore Street, in San Francisco, California. The restaurant serves dinner Tuesday through Sunday and brunch on Saturday and Sunday. Specific hours of operation, special features and news can be found on the restaurant’s website, www.doriansf.com, by following @thedoriansf on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, and by calling (415) 814–2671.