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Our Pastry Chef Francis Ang helped raise money for Project Open Hand this past weekend.

One of the best in the business, we are so happy to have Chef Baz here at Fifth Floor!

The amazing Brian Means shares a beer cocktail from his arsenal of libations.

The "Being Baz" experience on this weeks hot things to do.

Coverage of the recent event at Scribe Winery, where these chefs give their insights to the cellar at Scribe.

Think Tasty weighs in on what is happening here at Fifth Floor!

This article recently ran in the Design section of 7x7 magazine, discussing how visually appealing our cocktails are!

Our burger has been chosen as one of five of Michael Mina's favorite burgers. What an honor!

Amy Goldberger gives her insights to which wine pairs well with Mexican food.

Fifth Floor is featured as one of the best burgers in the City!

Our own Brian Means mixes up a cordial that adds a little sting to spring. The 9 Herb Charm cocktail is only fresh through August so get the recipe below and read all the must-haves for spring in this Food Fanatics piece. 

Brian Means shows his extensive knowledge of liquor in this article, discussing one of the lesser known spirits available.

Round up of all the best Happy Hour spots!

Our Pastry Chef Francis Ang discusses the use of beeswax, a versatile, natural ingredient in many kitchens.

Fifth Floor rolls out their new happy hour menu with $8 signature cocktails. Now you have another reason to come to Union Square.

Our own Brian Means tells the tale of his worst last call. You will never believe what an apple martini can stir up.

The persimmon makes a comeback with Pastry Chef Francis Ang. See him whipping up his impressive persimmon pain perdu. It makes the list of SF Gate’s favorite dishes, come see if it will make yours!

We are proud to have Chef Francis Ang nominated for Food & Wine’s Best New Pastry Chef! Vote for Francis and come try some award-worthy pastries!

Our own Master Sommelier, Emily Wines talks wine and shows us what is takes to be the best in this Food Arts piece.

Our own Chef David Bazirgan was spotted at Pigs & Pinot event in Healdsburg this weekend alongside many other local SF chefs. There were more than just secret ingredients revealed this year...

See all the delicious behind the scenes photos from this weekend’s Pig & Pinot event, where Chef Bazirgan showed off his spiced dashi!

Want to continue your St. Patrick’s Day weekend? Brian Means shows us an Irish inspired cocktail with our favorite, Irish whiskey. Sip on this vibrant, springy cocktail!

Our own David Bazirgan will be crafting a delicious dinner on March 30^th, in honor of Scribe’s release of the first vintage Sylvaner. This rare dinner is open to the public. Get your seat here. Dinner starts at sunset!

Serious Eats adapts our “Blarney Stone” cocktail for an easy, make at home recipe just in time for St. Patrick’s Day. Look below for the delicious recipe straight from the bar of Brian Means…

Our own chef de cuisine Nicolai Lipscomb and pastry chef Francis Ang mix it up in the kitchen with a pop-up dinner on March 18. “Another Night in the Kitchen” includes delicious dishes like truffled egg with asparagus and leek, a strawberry rhubarb float and more! This five or four-course menu is available and is only featured for one night.

Narrowing the search, Jacques Bezuidenhout recommends Fifth Floor as one of the best destinations for creative original cocktails. See what he recommends in Brian Means bar in this Liqour.com piece. 

Our own Brian Means lets us in on his favorite cocktail books in this week’s Serious Eats piece, and he’s taking it back with the classics…see where his inspiration comes from! 

Take a look into our kitchen for our savory spin on a sweet favorite! Pastry Chef Francis Ang weighs in on the delicious staff meal that might surprise you…

Brian Means lets us in on the San Francisco bartender favorite! You can try his favorites with our “Fernet Trio,” that illustrates all the treats’ potential flavor and charm.

Words like “creative,” friendly, well-informed,” and “unparalleled” describe our elegant restaurant in this Zagat piece describing San Francisco’s best!

Our own Brian Mean made the cut in Esquire’s “Cocktail of the Week” with his delicious “Fair Thee Well” concoction that is sure to warm you up!

Our own sommelier Amy Goldberger takes us on a nostalgic flight back to the 70s with some of our best port! See what we created in this Grub Street piece.

In this Serious Eats piece, our own Brian Means tells of the danger when mixing fire and cocktails and it can get a little bit sticky…

The technique, explained Fifth Floor pastry chef Francis Ang, is surprisingly simple: Rounds of pear sit overnight in a CO2 canister in a sugary blend of pear liquor and pear jam.

Ms. Goldberger, the sommelier at Fifth Floor restaurant, in San Francisco, told me she has resolved to drink "more Riesling and less Riesling" in 2013.

I'm seeing way more daiquiris lately because rum is making a comeback. It's such a simple drink and it's delicious and there are just three ingredients: white rum, lime juice and simple syrup.

At check-in, I was presented with complimentary in-room yoga equipment along with my room key, but considering that my evening plans began and ended with an epic meal at the hotel's acclaimed Fifth Floor restaurant, one of the hotel's rental bikes might have been more appropriate.

When Chef David Bazirgan of San Francisco's Fifth Floor feels a tickle in his throat, he soothes himself with avgolemono, a simple Mediterranean soup of eggs, lemons, and chicken broth. "It makes me feel better" he says, "and closer to my Armenian grandmother."

Here’s what Bazirgan had to say about each chef, why he choose him/her to be part of the series, and what he admires in each of them...

Ang gets inspired by-and changes his menu around-seasonal, local produce.

Bauer enjoyed Fifth Floor's burger, when he dined at the bar.  Read his mention here.

Expert bartender Brian Means walks us through the right and wrong way to mix up some great cocktails!

Executie Chef David Bazirgan and executive pastry Chef Francis Ang recently gather up their crew, this time for a summer visit to one of their favorite local farms- Dirty Girl Produce.  Joe Schrimer led the team through his fields to teach them a little about all the goodies he is currently harvesting...

Chef Baz shares his New England summer food highlights.

Nicolai Lipscomb, chef de cuisine at the Fifth Floor in San Francisco's Hotel Palomar, agrees that garnishes and edible flowers are excellent choices for a cook's garden. They are his main crops in the restaurant's roof garden.

Pastry Chef Francis Ang's black olilve madelines made the list!

Have you ever been curious about how Nicolai Lipscomb got his start working in the kitchen? Check out this beautiful piece!

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Fifth Floor Was Named one of the 50 Best Burgers In SF!

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Fifth Floor was named one of the top 100 Bay Area Bars!

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They're letting foie gras go out with a bang over at Fifth Floor where chef David Bazirgan, starting this week, is offering a five-course foie-gras menu featuring both of these dishes.

Spotlights Pastry Chef Francis Ang's "Corn Cremeux" dessert.

We were wowed by Chef David Bazirgan's humor and creativity from the teeny, tiny amuse-bouche of quince served three ways on a giant white plate, to the foie gras in several forms including ice cream to the perfectly poached lobster.

The fine-dining spot's new lead bartender, Brian Means, recently unveiled an excellent cocktail program, including the Spanish Maiden: citrusy Buddha's Hand–infused tequila, prized Del Maguey Vida mezcal, St. Germain elderflower liqueur, lemon, rose-geranium syrup and a house-made habanero tincture.

Fifth Floor was named once again as one of the top 100 best restaurants in the Bay Area by the San Francisco Chronicle.

Head bartender Brian Means' new cocktail menu at the Fifth Floor offers some interesting and elegant choices.

They grill it so that it's pink and oozy in the center and grill-crisped on the outside. Then it's smothered in caramelized onions and melted comté cheese and placed between a brioche bun so light you'd suspect the burger was levitating its way to your mouth if it weren't for the buttery taste of the bread.

Essentially, these orbs are like doing shots with a cocktail back. And while the sphere/chaser combo will change weekly, whatever you order, you’ll be presented with a yolk-like glob in an absinthe spoon resting atop the lip of the cocktail chaser. This week, it’ll be a citrusy pisco/Lillet sphere over the gin-based Pink Elephant that’s got a splash of smoked absinthe.

A few weeks later, in the dark, wintry cold of California December in San Francisco, we arrived at Fifth Floor.  The wait staff appeared green with envy at what we were about to enjoy, mentioning that Chef Baz had been laboring intently over various ways to present the delicacy to his guests.

David Bazirgan (pictured, right) revitalized this once top-rated hotel restaurant with his New American food. He produces three menus: a casual bar menu, an a la carte menu and a six-course tasting menu ($85), which offers a beautifully executed progression of dishes, balancing tradition with cutting-edge techniques. His cooking incorporates those seemingly contradictory rustic and refined elements that only those creating at the highest level can achieve.

PL: A year ago, we did a little mini-series that followed you around as you got acquainted with the Fifth Floor. 12 months later, how did the year go?

DB: I feel fortunate. Really fortunate in a sense that I had goals set out, and accomplished pretty much all of them. Business has picked up tremendously, which was not an easy feat, but we got the Fifth Floor back on the map. It’s talked about again.

It’s been a challenge. It took me a while to get the staff up to speed, but as a whole, I think the whole thing has gelled.

Chef David Bazirgan of Fifth Floor Restaurant in San Francisco shares this delectable recipe for Foie Gras Burrata.

Pop-up restaurants are no longer the playground of the not-yet-established. These days, even seasoned chefs and restaurants are joining the mix. Most notably, Chef David Bazirgan of Fifth Floor Restaurant in San Francisco decided to feature a different guest chef for five consecutive nights to kick off the holiday season.

December 5-9: To celebrate the holiday season, the Fifth Floor is welcoming five top San Francisco chefs into the kitchen to prepare a special five course holiday menu, inspired by their own culture : Dominique Crenn, Jeff Banker, Brandon Jew, Hoss Zare and Matt Accarrino

En route to writing about Fifth Floor, the subject of this week's full-length restaurant review, I talked to David Bazirgan, who's been the chef of the restaurant since November. What I wanted to know: In the era of the small, idiosyncratic restaurant, why take a job at a hotel?     

One of them is Fifth Floor at the Palomar Hotel, where turnover in the kitchen has paradoxically kept the restaurant fresh. The newest chef is David Bazirgan, who earned a strong rep for his food at Baraka and Chez Papa Resto.    

As San Francisco restaurants pull off intricate tasting menus and wine pairing contortionism in their dining rooms, the bar area continues to be a place for chefs and bartenders to loosen their (purely proverbial) ties.

For an indulgent threesome, get yourself to the Palomar Hotel's Fifth Floor restaurant's lounge. Their $25 "Burger, Bourbon, Beer" cure-all includes a glass of Buffalo Trace boubon (neat or not-so), a chaser of Lagunita's IPA, and chef David Bazirgan's macho burger made of more than a half-pound of ground beef from Golden Gate Meat Company.

Newly hired chef David Bazirgan is bringing French inflections to his modern California menu at Fifth Floor, and one of the highlights are these earthy, decadent ravioli garnished with hedgehog mushrooms, sage, brown butter, pistou, and wilted chicories, and filled with the triple-cream brie from Normandy named for famed eighteenth-century gastronome Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin.

Today reveal the 26 restaurants that are new to the list this year. They’re in San Francisco unless otherwise noted....

A good chef knows this; a great chef adapts just enough to meet diners' expectations without losing the creative spark.

At Fifth Floor, in San Francisco's Hotel Palomar, Bazirgan proves he is truly a great chef. He produces three menus - two in the 60-seat dining room and a shorter bar menu in the 55-seat lounge.

The iconic Fifth Floor restaurant in the Kimpton’s Hotel Palomar has been synonymous with elegance and creative cuisine for more than 12 years. With a new executive chef at the helm, the chic spot serves up inspired New American cuisine that will give you a true taste of the city’s culinary talent. Stand-out dishes include the Mendocino uni flan with Dungeness crab fondue; Island Creek oysters five ways; butter-poached Maine lobster, slow-cooked squab with black trumpet mushrooms, house-cured pancetta and root vegetables and roasted lamb loin with golden raisins, black radish and harissa jus.

Food writer Carolyn Jung swoons over her recent Fifth Floor experience: "My Liberty Farms duck breast arrived sliced and fanned on the plate, its skin salty, crisp and irresistible. The exquisite duck-port jus was thick, jammy, and almost candied tasting. Kumquats, sunchokes, celery root, rutabaga and dandelion greens completed the dish..."

"Ladies and gents, we have a winner! After tabulating all the votes in our hottest chef competition that pitted the city winners against each other - and eliminating all the fraudulent votes - we can officially crown Eater's First Annual Hottest Chef in America! The winner: San Francisco's David Bazirgan."  

5@5 is a daily, food-related list from chefs, writers, political pundits, musicians, actors, and all manner of opinionated people from around the globe.

Chef Bazirgan is featured along with "Five Recipes for the Meyer Lemon."