San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Matt Horn’s fried chicken, Flour + Water team’s rustic pasta and much more
Take this list of nearly 20 restaurants that are opening this fall as an optimistic sign that the Bay Area restaurant scene is alive and growing in exciting ways, despite the enormous setbacks of the pandemic.
Several of the fall’s most anticipated openings are chefs’ first solo projects. There’s Joodooboo in Oakland, a modern Korean deli from Steve Joo. He’s a former co-chef of pop-up Nokni, who approaches banchan with a Californian sensibility. In San Francisco, two popular pop-ups are going full time: former Lazy Bear chef Matthew Kirk is turning his pop-up Automat into a full-service restaurant, and Kristina Liedags Compton and Rachel Sillcocks will serve breakfast all day at their new North Beach restaurant, Hilda and Jesse.
Other openings, meanwhile, promise exciting new ideas from bigname chefs. Corey Lee is finally opening San Ho Won, his Korean restaurant in the Mission, and the team behind Flour + Water is planning a new neighborhood restaurant focused on affordable, homey Italian fare. Matt Horn of Horn Barbecue fame is gearing up to open his first spin-off restaurant in Oakland with a focus on fried chicken. It’s difficult to make any broad generalizations about this group of fall newcomers. They represent a mix of cuisines, price points and regions. Diners looking for the region’s next great fine dining destination or a new go-to takeout spot are likely to find something appealing.
There were even more restaurants that didn’t make the list or are experiencing delays, pushing their opening timelines to this winter or early 2022. But for now, here are 17 restaurant openings to look out for this fall, listed by geographic region.
SAN FRANCISCO
Former Lazy Bear chef Matthew Kirk is turning his pop-up Automat, known for its unusual breads and fried chicken sandwiches, into an all-day restaurant in partnership with Lazy Bear owner David Barzelay. It’ll serve coffee and pastries in the morning, followed by counter-service lunch and dinner. The goal is to give San Francisco a laid-back, family-friendly option where parents can still be excited by the food.
chefs have drawn a following for their playful but composed breakfast creations. That includes dishes like thick buttermilk pancakes topped with grilled strawberries mixed with maple syrup, and hashbrowns topped with local seaweed and fermented green garlic mayonnaise. Critic Soleil Ho named Hilda and Jesse one of the best pop-ups of 2019. The dining room, where customers will be able to order breakfast for dinner, will evoke retro diner vibes.
Cacio e pepe arancini will be offered at Daytrip, which promises vegetable-centric, fermentation-heavy small plates in Oakland’s Temescal.
District, Penny Roma aims to be a laid-back neighborhood restaurant with reasonably priced, simple, fresh pasta dishes. Think cacio e pepe, not spaghetti with meatballs. Crudos, antipasti and wood-fired meats will round out the menu.
restaurant team wants to straddle the line between tradition and modernity, with classics like short rib, or doublecut galbi, but also a kimchi pozole inspired by San Ho Won’s location in the Mission District and the restaurant’s longtime butcher, Luis Perez, who often makes Mexican pozole for staff meals. San Ho Won is the newest project for Lee, chef-owner of three Michelin-starred Benu, Monsieur Benjamin and recently closed In Situ in San Francisco.
A spread of mezze and vegetable-centric small plates, top, from Little Saint, scheduled to open in late November in Healdsburg. Agnolotti dal plin, above, hails from the Piedmont region in Italy and will be on the menu at Penny Roma, a new restaurant in S.F.’s Mission District from the Flour + Water team.
natural wine bar is going to be unlike anything else in San Francisco. That’s partially because the upcoming Mission District spot is the city’s first restaurant to open with a mission to reduce food waste, just like owners Kayla Abe and David Murphy do with their other company, Ugly Pickle Co. But it’s also because of the extreme maximalist decor with disco balls, cheetah print and glitter vinyl. To eat, there will be shareable small plates and lots of pizza featuring lesser-used toppings like pork jowl and smelt.
and outdoor seating, takeout and delivery — featuring three underrepresented cuisines: Afro-Caribbean, Malaysian and northern Iranian. It will also likely be the first place to reliably eat Eusope’s food after she closed Mahila and Azalina’s during the pandemic.
Joodooboo promises to bring something new to the East Bay: a modern Korean deli where pillowy, delicate tofu is the star. The effort comes from Steve Joo, a former co-chef of pop-up Nokni who approaches banchan with a Californian sensibility. Think local, seasonal produce for items like kimchi and soy-marinated pickles. Those small dishes will be available by the pound or as a dinner set alongside rice and a simple protein, such as grilled pork or that special tofu.
The most exciting restaurants at new Los Altos food hall State Street Market are all projected to open this fall. First up is Bao Bèi, a TaiwaneseKorean stand from the former chefs of the Michelin-starred Maum in Palo Alto. There, Meichih and Michael Kim combine their respective backgrounds through dishes like gua bao (the fluffy Taiwanese buns), noodles and banchan. One gua bao is filled with shrimp mousse and an aioli made with Taiwanese black vinegar and then deep-fried whole, inspired by a Korean fried shrimp toast dish called menbosha.
Little Blue Door is fine-dining chef Srijith Gopinathan’s first fast-casual concept. It will replicate his inventive Cal-Indian food at Taj Campton Place in San Francisco and Ettan in Palo Alto, but at a more affordable price point. The restaurant’s menu will include vada pav, the Indian street food sandwich typically featuring potato, with cauliflower instead; Ettan’s popular smoked butter chicken; and a “kulfreddo,” his mashup of the frozen Indian dessert kulfi and Italian semifreddo, among other dishes.
Later this fall, Traci Des Jardins of Jardinière in San Francisco will open El Alto, a Mexican restaurant focused on seasonality and live-fire cooking. Think a lighter mole made from local apricots and almonds, and whole fish cooked on the grill. For El Alto’s chef, Des Jardins brought in Robert Hurtado, who led the kitchen at Des Jardins’ now-closed San Francisco restaurant Arguello. El Alto also boasts its own downstairs cocktail bar; an opening date hasn’t been announced yet.
There are a lot of things to get excited about with Little Saint. First off, the food will come from the chefs behind Healdsburg’s three Michelin-starred SingleThread. The restaurant is also going to be more casual — read: affordable — and focused on meat-free dishes. And it’s taking over the 10,000square-foot former Shed space, with ambitious plans to combine art, music, food and wine. Plus renowned designer Ken Fulk is in the mix. Enough said.
Napa Valley’s next splashy fine dining opening is Truss, part of the new Four Seasons hotel in Calistoga. It’ll feature food rooted in French techniques from an all-star crew of chefs known for their previous work at Michelin-starred restaurants, including executive chef Erik Anderson, formerly of Coi, and pastry chef Josh Gaulin, previously of Quince. As with many other Wine Country restaurants, expect Truss to source from local farmers, such as quail from Wolfe Ranch in Vacaville. The luxe indooroutdoor setting is likely to be a draw alone, with tables overlooking vineyards and mountains.