San Francisco: Will You Marrow Me?

I once saw Tony Bourdain wax poetic (I think on his old Food Network show) about the kinds of places NYC chefs hang out after hours. Something about 4 a.m., Nobu bringing the sashimi and Batali hunkering down for a whiskey or two or three...I can only remember bits and pieces of it. But the one thing that did stand out was...wait for it...bone marrow.

I recall Tony saying something about how, sometimes, they got plates of cooked bones filled with fatty marrow and used it on toast like butter. I stopped dead in my tracks when I heard/saw this; what an absolutely lascivious yet perfectly pure thing, this bone-marrow-on-toast phenomenon!

But until I went to Two in San Francisco, I've never seen it on a menu (outside of the typical osso buco), so naturally I had to have this most decadent treat. Served with a bit of uber caramelized tomatoes mixed with a touch of basil, the bone marrow was lusciously fatty, meaty and just downright lusty. I almost felt guilty partaking in such deviance, except I had to work very hard for it; it takes a good amount of scraping to get enough marrow to cover a small baguette. So my recovering-Catholic self felt justified in knowing that I earned this delectable dish.

Needless to say, I relished every bite.