One of B44's squid ink specialties, salpicon negro B44 • JOJO • MERENDA • KOI PALACE • ORIENTAL PEARL RESTAURANT • PIZZETTA 211 • SAM'S • OTHER PERENNIAL FAVORITES...
Whether dwarfing you amid skyscrapers or astonishing you with yet another wide-open view, San Francisco is a city that inspires. Over every hill, it seems, something else enchants. From old ethnic enclaves to new pockets of cool, here are a few of our favorite things:
Be sure to see our favorite food lovers' finds in San Francisco.
One of B44's squid ink specialties, salpicon negro
At ThirstyBear, Daniel Olivella's sizzling cazuela of cod cheeks — unctuous morsels lashed with garlic, hot pepper, and Sherry — was one of those haunting tastes I could never get enough of. So in 1999, when the Catalan chef left the brew pub to open B44, a Spanish bistro at Belden Place, I was thrilled to find the cod cheeks again. But now they're up against some stiff competition — warm octopus salad with fingerling potatoes and olives, crab-stuffed piquillo peppers in a red pepper sea, and a dozen other dishes I can't imagine going without. Here is Spanish cooking with a Catalan heart by a skilled chef proud of his heritage.
My husband and I have fallen into the habit of dropping in for a late lunch and a glass of wine from the extensive Spanish list. At home, he begs me to sauté mussels with pancetta, peas, and tarragon as Olivella does, but after two tries I still can't get the sofrito quite right. When fresh Monterey sardines turn up — grilled, with a fennel salad — neither of us considers anything else. Sometimes I eat seared halibut and watercress in a bun smeared with allioli (garlic and olive-oil sauce). How can I explain the satisfaction of this simple fish sandwich?
Olivella's salt cod seems like a finer form of the fresh fish, the salt a natural flavor extender. Shredded and teamed with tomato, it is the Catalan salad esqueixada. Roasted with a medley of colorful peppers and eggplant, it is bacallà amb samfaina. With shellfish and shrimps, it swims in an aromatic suquet (soupy stew) thickened and spiced with a picada of almonds, bread crumbs, garlic, and herbs pounded in a mortar.
Order anything with ink. That means arròs negre in the style of Villanova, eight miles from where Olivella was born — squid, cuttlefish, tiny clams, and peas in rice perfumed with the primal, briny flavors of squid ink and allioli. Sometimes there's a sensational salpicon negro of seafood marinated in squid ink with citrus and cilantro. You'll also find fideuà negre — a paella of fine noodles, shrimp, and squid. With or without ink, paellas, including an entirely vegetarian one, are among the glories of a kitchen that reserves 16 burners just for their preparation.
Seating 60 inside and a few more at sidewalk tables, B44 has a colorful industrial décor in contemporary Barcelona style. Both abstractly and concretely, it refers to Vilafranca del Penedès, Olivella's hometown, where the chef returns every August to help construct a "human tower" for the St. Felix festival. You can watch it all on a rest-room video.
44 Belden Pl. (at Bush), 415-986-6287
— From an article by Caroline Bates, Gourmet, March 2002
Flavorful salads and a serene setting at Jojo
This cozy next-door neighbor of Bay Wolf, in Oakland, can't be much wider than a railroad car. You note the sunny mustard walls, the framed old "Jo Jo" apple-crate labels. As you pass the compact open kitchen in the center of the dining room, Mary Jo Thoresen and Curt Clingman look up and say hello. If you've gotten around at all in the last 20 years, it's a sure bet one or the other has cooked for you at Chez Panisse, Zuni, Oliveto, or even at San Francisco's last bastion of the ancien régime, The Old Poodle Dog. What in the world are they doing here?
Cooking — how and what they please, and in their own place. The stage is small (35 seats), but Thoresen and Clingman aren't in it for the celebrity. They're in it for the love of cooking as a craft. And craft, you discover, is what lifts Jojo above many a neighborhood restaurant.
Try the juicy, subtly spiced duck confit and the fine, fresh, pistachio-studded pâté de campagne, and you'll cheer the country French drift of the menu. The beauty of a rich crab and goat cheese tart is in its buttery, flaky pastry. One wintry night, mussels in their prime make a stunning starter steamed in rosé.
The steak frites nearly steals the show. The Niman Ranch flatiron cut with a nugget of anchovy butter has a nice chew and a rich, beefy flavor, and the Kennebec fries are so good everyone keeps snitching them from the steak eater's plate. A lobster-sauced wild steelhead is the loveliest fish I have come across in a week in San Francisco, and an aïoli-thickened stew of scallops, mussels, and shrimps is Provence on a plate. And Jojo's savory bread pudding with a ragout of carrots, turnips, and parsnips is no mean bone tossed to the vegetarian; whenever the kitchen tries to take it off the menu, its loyal fans complain.
Thoresen, a pastry chef at Chez Panisse for 12 years, is so gifted I hope she writes a dessert book someday. Everything she turns her hand to is exceptional, whether a warm chocolate soufflé cake with a Chartreuse crème anglaise or an apple and Meyer lemon tart. Her elegant marjolaine is a finely wrought cake of almond and hazelnut meringue and crème fraîche that you'd expect to find — but never would — in the town's toniest places. It's astounding what can come out of a two-foot-wide pastry station.
3859 Piedmont Ave., Oakland, 510-985-3003
— From an article by Caroline Bates, Gourmet, March 2002
At Merenda, you can sit down to eat striped bass with fennel, peppers, and capers, or head for home with a feast from their sophisticated takekout shop
Merenda
In the end, aren't we all searching for the places where passion drives the kitchen? Where the food doesn't simply amaze us but moves us deeply? Look, then, to the Bay Area's small, chef-owned restaurants, where they cook with their hearts and souls every day.
Out of the rain and into the warm embrace of Merenda, we shake off our coats and hand them to the chef's wife, who says, with a dazzling smile, "We're so glad to see you on such a stormy night." We're glad, too, because as news of Merenda spreads, reserving one of the 30 seats isn't easy. On Union Street, where you'd least expect enlightenment, something quietly extraordinary is under way.
In a storefront they decorated with deep red walls and a beautiful French mahogany wine bar, Keith and Raney Luce have created an intimate trattoria and sophisticated wine and food shop modeled after the Italian rosticceria and the old French traiteur. The 33-year-old Luce, who had been running on the kitchen fast track (three years as sous-chef in the Clinton White House; chef of Spruce, in Chicago; The Little Nell, in Aspen; and, until last October, Plumpjack Cafe, nearby), realized he wanted to simplify. At Merenda, you can drink a Prosecco and nibble on cheeses (or eat a full meal) at the bar; the front counter displays housemade pastas, roasts, vegetable salads, and biscotti to go; and the flexible menu, written daily, lets you compose prix-fixe dinners of two, three, or four courses from any category. What is extraordinary about it all is the eloquence of Luce's cooking. In a city fluent in culinary French and Italian, he speaks an excitingly different dialect.
Where, I wonder, have we eaten polenta comparable to this — all creamy smoothness under a mantle of prosciutto and shredded chicory. "The secret is two parts polenta meal to one part semolina and lots of stirring," a rumpled Luce reveals when he steps out of the kitchen to stop at every table. I don't ask about his supernal pastas — hand-cut spaghetti with a mound of artichokes and mussels; taffy-shaped pasta stuffed with sausage, Bergamo-style, and drizzled with sage brown butter; tagliatelle to make a Piedmontese nonna proud, lavished with mascarpone, chanterelles, and a whiff of white truffle. It's a skill very few master.
From bruschetta with an earthy topping of sausage, mozzarella, and cavolo nero to a soup of pumpkin and root vegetables with a squiggle of sweet Port syrup, Luce's pitch is perfect. Succulent, slow-cooked duck leg with turnips and olives makes me fall in love all over again with rustic French cooking. Fennel, red peppers, and capers wreathe a whole striped bass in splendor and almost upstage it. And dessert isn't the final farewell: After ordering a molten-centered chocolate budino cake, we are bid good night with chocolate-covered hazelnuts from Cremona. That's when you wish you lived around the corner.
1809 Union St., 415-346-7373
— From an article by Caroline Bates, Gourmet, March 2002