Timber & Salt ready for its second act
New chef streamlines the menu at the Theater Way restaurant
It’s a common lament of theater- and moviegoers: Pre-show meals often feel rushed, and there are so few late-night options save for pizza and fast food. However, Timber & Salt, along Redwood City’s Theater Way, has offered sophisticated, full-service dining late into the evening, making it a hot spot on this lively, pedestrianfriendly thoroughfare.
Recently, a new chef took over the kitchen, which made this restaurant worthy of a second look after I’d had a rather uneven experience over the summer. Isaac Miller comes to the Peninsula after working at Maven and Sons and Daughters in San Francisco. He has pared the menu, making it tighter and lighter with more seasonal focus, while keeping some of the appealing starters like Korean fried chicken wings ($12) and Buffalo cauliflower ($10).
Inside, the restaurant is dark and cozy, and the bar, which provides a good portion of the seating, is the centerpiece. There’s also an expansive patio that nearly doubles the restaurant’s capacity.
Late in the evening (after 9 on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, after 10 Thursday through Saturday), the menu is pared to the bar menu, including a monstrous burger ($17) topped with bacon jam and extrasharp cheddar.
We arrived at 8 on a Friday evening to a bustling restaurant and it took a couple of minutes before a hostess greeted us, but she seated us right away. We waited again, close to 10 minutes, before a server came to our table and asked what drinks he could get us.
Bar manager Brian Matulis, previously behind the well-regarded cocktail program at Station 1 in Woodside, has compiled a list of small-production wines and an ever-changing list of on-tap microbrews. He also has created several original cocktails, all named with a reference to “The Simpsons,” like the whiskeybased Cletus Del Roy ($11) and the refreshing gin and cucumber Spider Pig ($12), so easy to drink it could have you hanging from the rafters like Homer’s swine if you’re not careful.
Drinks pair well with appetizers like the crisp Buffalo cauliflower. In an interesting twist, Miller used purple cauliflower and dressed it judiciously with Buffalo sauce and a light drizzle of blue cheese dressing that offered plenty of flavor without weighing it down. Salmon in the crudo ($14) was fattier than I would have liked, but the accompanying hollowedout marble potatoes served like deviled eggs were absolutely delightful. I’d order this dish many times over just to have them again.
The most noticeable improvements were in the main dishes, though we had to wait for them an inordinately long time — a good 30 minutes after we’d finished our appetizers.
Before, the main dishes were too fussy with dots and dabs of unnecessary garnish. Some components were neglected — like the potatoes with the steak
that were doused in sauce and not even close to crisp. Now, they’re roasted in duck fat, plain and simple. The steak, medium rare, could have used more seasoning, as could the gnocchi ($21) in the other entree we tried, but that’s an easy remedy. The gnocchi was topped with broccoli rabe and served with fennel and roasted sunchokes, a combination that didn’t entirely work, but still better than the previous version I’d tried. Our server, who’d recommended
the dish, asked what I thought. I was honest and told him it needed more seasoning.
There were two desserts to choose from: a chocolate cheesecake and banana bread pudding ($10). We chose the latter, which was a huge piece, with an understated banana flavor and a lightly crunchy crust — perhaps from a quick pan-fry — topped with vanilla ice cream. Even my dessert-shunning friend enjoyed it.
When our server brought the check, he told us the dessert was complimentary since I’d not loved the gnocchi he’d recommended. That was a nice and much appreciated gesture.
While there’s still room for improvement at Timber & Salt, particularly when it comes to timing, the drinks are great and the new chef has taken some big steps forward with the menu, making the restaurant’s second act one worth seeing.