The Progress gets better with age
In his Between Meals column, Chronicle restaurant critic Michael Bauer writes about the restaurants he visits each week as he searches for the next Top 100 Restaurants. His main dining reviews, written after three or more visits, appear in the Sunday Food + Home section.
When they opened State Bird Provisions in 2011, Stuart Brioza and Nicole Krasinski were in fact working to open their dream project, the Progress, in a large space on Fillmore Street. But there was also a small space next door, so into it State Bird went.
Because of a confluence of factors, including the narrow space with the kitchen in front, they came up with the idea of serving their California-inspired food like dim sum. Waiters troll the room with carts and trays, allowing diners to choose what they want. It was an immediate hit, and the next year State Bird won the James Beard Award for Best New Restaurant.
It took the couple three more years to open the Progress, and it was worth the wait. Every element was considered in the space, which was once a theater. The lath walls, revealed when they removed the old plaster, were left bare and look almost like a purposeful art installation. The same curving design element moves throughout the restaurant, in the arches in the ceiling, along the edge of a table, and in the banisters and even the light fixtures.
It’s a space that is uplifting and fun and appeals to a wide age range of diners.
From the start, the food has had an eclectic bent. But over the past three years, the menu has continued to evolve. Originally diners were given a menu with 17 items and they chose six for the table for $65 a person. Last year the menu included 14 items and diners chose four for $62; that was preceded by what the menu listed as “a few things for the table.”
Today, the family-style aspect remains but there are more choices, and diners can order as much or as little as they like.
Diners are still given a ballpoint pen to mark their selections on the menu. Now there are three shared main courses that dominate the center of the menu, and each serves two to six. They change daily, but recently consisted of a pound of grilled live spot prawns ($80) with yuzu seaweed butter and crushed potatoes; roasted and grilled half rabbit ($52) with bacon, farro and persimmons; and half a barbecued duck ($60) with spicy peanuts, Thai basil and smoked chile vinegar.
On this visit I went a different direction. I ordered dishes from under the headings of Western Additions (Hog Island oysters with yuzu pickled nori); Raw and Salads; Vegetables and Grains; and Seafood and Meat. While the influences are eclectic — a Japanese salad ($18) with hearts of palm, local nori and trout roe; dumpling-like pork and kimchi pierogi ($16); and stinging nettle and ricotta ravioli ($17) with black trumpet mushrooms and apple cider saba — they work well together.
The kitchen produces one of the best salads with winter citrus ($15), with slices and chunks of cara cara, kumquat, oro blanco and mandarin, plus colorful leaves of radicchio. Ricotta salata and the fresh taste of nuovo olive oil finish off the dish.
The gently smoked raw tuna takes crudo to a new level; the slices of fish are buried under crushed pine nuts, paper-thin coins of radishes, sprigs of parsley and a charred jalapeño buttermilk dressing.
In the seafood and meat section, there is a rustic beef short rib and mushroom ragout ($28), and octopus a la plancha ($31) mixed with butter beans, blood oranges and kale chips.
It seems almost a disservice to Krasinski, an accomplished pastry chef, that her desserts aren’t listed on the initial menu. There are floating islands ($10) with coconut sorbet and a burnt cinnamon anglaise; a cocoa custard ($12) and Earl Grey doughnuts with hibiscus lime stracciatella ice cream. I find it hard to pass up the State Bird peanut milk ($3 a shot) that has an intense nut flavor with a touch of muscovado syrup.
It’s exciting to see a restaurant I loved from the start becoming even more refined and exciting.
1525 Fillmore St. (near Geary), San Francisco; (415) 673-1294 or www.theprogress-sf.com. Dinner nightly.