At Prairie, a chef turns up the heat

Buzzy Mission spot is in flux — for the better

It seems like Anthony Strong has truly tried everything. San Francisco is the wall against which the chef has thrown countless spaghetti noodles, from a deliveryonly bistro to deep dives into regional Italian cooking. And now, Prairie, his first fullservice restaurant venture as both chef and owner, is his testing zone.

Several of the ambitious ideas he had at the beginning, when the Mission District restaurant opened in October, have been tossed aside. The dim sumstyle, checkbox service? Gone in favor of traditional table service. Surcharges in place of gratuity? Axed.

From my vantage point, as a critic who showed up seemingly in the middle of this transformation, I think it’s great that he’s changed things up, because the Prairie that I first encountered didn’t make much sense.

Like someone wearing layers of patterns that startle the eye, there was so much going on conceptually in the selfidentified Italian restaurant: Japanesestyle highballs, scifi aesthetics, handmade pastas and grilled avocados all jockeying for attention. The restaurant always had the feel of being Strong’s scrapbook of stuff he likes.

But now, the “newschool Italian” cuisine has shifted into something even more personal — what Strong calls the steak house of his dreams, a faint echo of the bluecollar supper clubs of his Midwestern youth. The genre classifications seem nebulous and imprecise, much like modern music (i.e., is that song witch house or dark electro? Does anyone know?)

Here’s what is concrete: The new menu format puts grilled items front and center. There are fewer pastas and more minimally adorned meat and vegetable centerpiece entrees, with sides and sauces like porcini sugo and dried scallop butter available separately.

Is all of this shifting in Prairie’s first year a sign of weakness? A restaurant’s first year is the makeorbreak time, its chance to sail out into the world with secret hopes that there aren’t major leaks in its hull. You want a strong elevator pitch, for both critics and investors. And almost above everything else, critics tend to see inconsistency as a major red flag when reviewing a restaurant: a sign that something is amiss. Yet this evolution made more sense to me the more I dug into where Strong came from: the Midwest, CalItaly and back again. I think a multicultural, California take on a Midwestern steakhouse is a brilliant idea, and I hope Prairie commits to this particular pivot.

Over the phone, Strong told me that his original concept involved “opening up the pantry.” I could almost imagine the chef, who steered Delfina’s pizzathemed expansion throughout the Bay Area and helped open the Roman-inspired Locanda in 2011, privately itching to do something more with those restaurants’ comparatively straightforward Italian menus. Their pantries seem strictly on-theme, with the most non-Italian items being the inclusion of local, seasonal produce. At Prairie, he doesn’t have to bend to tradition.

You can see that freedom in the dishes that made it through the restaurant’s costume change: a piccatastyle chicken roulade ($21) with big hunks of umeboshi on top; a grilled avocado ($13) dressed in spicy olive “kosho”; and a coalroasted sweet potato presented as a side dish with dried bonito flakes fluttering on top.

Specifically, Strong’s mind looks to be drifting westward to Japan, though I think the kitchen needs more practice with those components. The mochi appetizer ($8) about sums it up. Wrapped in guanciale and served on tender radicchio leaves, this dish was a puzzle. The guanciale crisped up nicely on the grill, while the mochi bits weren’t given a chance to cook properly and retained their rectangular shapes and firmness. They didn’t puff up and liquefy on the inside like campfire marshmallows (the mochi bacon skewers you can find at Inner Richmond izakaya Halu do, every time). It’s a creative dish, but one that tells me that the kitchen crew doesn’t quite know how to wield mochi effectively yet.

In fact, Prairie’s best dishes are the ones where the ingredients seem respected and fully understood. Take the cabbage dish ($17) — two quarters of pale savoy cabbage with savory scallop butter massaged into its crevices and blackened on the grill. Strong, a very extra chef indeed, tucks it in a shaggy blanket of bronze fennel fronds, torn mint, parsley and carrot leaves. The result is like eating a giant, fluttery grilled abalone. It feels luxurious, this cabbage, and it works exceedingly well. The “sour cream and onion” burrata ($14), flavored with green onion powder and served as a dip with grilled bread, is notable as a lovely moment of honesty from Strong, who probably ate his fair share of A&E onion dips at childhood cookouts. Tongueincheek Midwestern touches like this feel perfect

The view into the kitchen at the Mission’s new Prairie.