San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Corey Lee plots a new restaurant.
Corey Lee finally has a location for his longawaited Korean restaurant.
Lee — (pictured) the chefowner of Benu, with three Michelin stars, as well as Monsieur Benjamin and In Situ — has talked about opening a Korean restaurant in San Francisco since at least 2013.
Now, he confirms that he is planning a Korean restaurant in the former Blowfish Sushi location in the Mission District (2170 Bryant St.). He hopes to open the restaurant by next summer, though he would not reveal further details. Blowfish Sushi to Die For closed earlier this year after 23 years in business.
Lee’s cooking at Benu has many Korean influences, although the Koreanborn chef has a background primarily in Western cooking, including about a decade working at the French Laundry in Yountville.
The name of the business listed under Lee’s liquor license application is San Ho Won, but Lee didn’t confirm if that will be the restaurant’s name.
— Tara Duggan, tduggan@sfchronicle.com
A favorite street food in Rome is pizza al taglio, a long rectangles of crispyetsoft dough covered in toppings and sliced, weighed and baked to order.
That experience has touched down for the first time in the East Bay with Pollara Pizzeria, which is now open in Berkeley’s ritzy Fourth Street shopping district.
Pollara hails from Jon and Kayta Smulewitz, the owners of Oakland’s longstanding Sicilian restaurant Dopo and Adesso, the Italian wine bar known for salumi that closed in 2017. Chef Joey Rachel used to work at Dopo before venturing to San Francisco’s Prairie, Berkeley’s Donato & Co. and finally Pollara.
The Smulewitzes traveled to Rome 10 years ago and checked out Pizzarium, Gabriele Bonci’s landmark pizza al taglio spot that has since spawned locations in Chicago. In a sense, Pollara is modeled after Bonici’s restaurants.
“We fell in love with the dough and the crust. It was a tremendous inspiration for us, and it still is,” Jon Smulewitz said.
At Pollara, diners gaze at the display case showing 10 rotating pizza options, all long rectangles with the same crust that manages to stay crisp enough to hold all the toppings but light enough that you can eat a few slices. Diners point to whichever pizzas they want and say how much they’d like.
“The dough is really special. We’ve been working on it a long time,” Smulewitz said, explaining the highhydration dough’s long fermentation process.
Toppings include salumi like smoked pancetta, prosciutto and spicy salami as well as some seasonal vegetables and cheeses, such as buffalo mozzeralla, mascarpone and stracciatella. Depending on the ingredients, pizzas run from 60 cents an ounce to a little over $1 per ounce. According to Smulewitz, the average diner would likely order about 5 ounces, though it depends on the richness of the selected pizza.
Beyond pizza, Pollara also serves some antipasti, including salads and suppli, little balls of fried rice, tomato and mozzerella. There’s also wine and beer, and tiramisu for dessert.
The restaurant is set in the former Tacubaya space — the Mexican restaurant moved to a larger Fourth Street location — and seats about 50 people; there is also a patio. Pollara is closed on Mondays, but it is expected to be open seven days a week by October.
While Pollara is the first spot in the East Bay to specialize in pizza al taglio, San Francisco has two restaurants similarly dedicated to weighedtoorder Roman pizza: Slices (330 Townsend St.), which opened in February in Mission Bay, and Barbara Express (427 Columbus Ave.), which opened last fall in North Beach as a sister restaurant to Barbara Pinseria & Cocktail Bar. This rise in noncircular pizzas should not be confused with Sicilian or Detroitstyle pizza, which feature very different crusts despite also being square.
IF YOU GO: Pollara Pizzeria. 11 a.m.-8 p.m. Tuesday-Sunday. 1788 Fourth St., Berkeley
— Janelle Bitker, janelle.bitker@sfchronicle.com
The Bay Area’s newest Tartine outpost is now open — and it’s in the East Bay.
Though they have already opened locations in Los Angeles and Seoul, Tartine cofounders Chad Robertson and Elisabeth Prueitt haven’t opened a spot across the bridge from where they founded their bakery empire. That changed with the debut of a small Tartine cafe inside the Graduate Hotel in Berkeley (2600 Durant Ave.).
Unlike the more sprawling Tartine Manufactory concepts in San Francisco’s Mission District and Los Angeles, the menu and footprint at the Berkeley spot are limited. There is no seating inside the cafe (a former flower shop), but visitors can find seating in the hotel lobby.
The cafe serves the bakery’s classic array of pastries, coffee drinks made with the company’s houseroasted beans, and about four of its breads. There is also a short menu of smorrebrod and sandwiches ($8.50 to $10), plus grabandgo items. While Tartine’s secondnewest location in San Francisco’s Inner Sunset is a cafe that also serves breakfast, lunch and dinner, there are no plans for fullservice meals at this location.
Tartine’s breads have already been on the menu at the hotel’s restaurant, Henry’s, where chef Chris Kronner has headed up the kitchen since last year and serves the Henry’s Burger on Tartine’s sweet potato bun.
The cafe has entrances on the street and within the hotel. In addition to Los Angeles and Seoul and its San Francisco proper locations, Tartine has an outpost at SFO’s International Terminal.
IF YOU GO: Tartine Bakery, 7 a.m.-3 p.m. daily. 2600 Durant Ave. (in the Graduate Hotel), Berkeley. www.tartinebakery.com
— T.D. As soon as Nido owners Silvia and Cory McCollow moved to California, they talked about opening a big outdoor restaurant with familystyle meals and an emphasis on agave spirits. They finally opened that dream spot, dubbed Nido’s Backyard.
“This was what we wanted to do on day one,” Cory said. “We did not have the space to do something like this, so it went on the back burner.”
Nido’s Backyard is located just a couple of blocks from Nido, the restaurant they ultimately opened first, in 2012 near Jack London Square. As with the McCollows’ original restaurant, Nido’s Backyard spotlights light, vibrant Mexican dishes through a Northern Californian lens. Jose Ramos, formerly cochef of Nido with Sylvia McCollow and a chef at San Francisco’s Nopalito before that, leads the Backyard’s kitchen. The major difference between the two restaurants is size.
Nido’s Backyard has 200 seats — four times as many as Nido — in an openair, laidback setting. The
McCollows took over a 30,000squarefoot parking lot, though they’re using only about 4,500 square feet, and installed 14 shipping containers, loads of greenery, a full bar, a game area and a private dining section. The owners have dreams for a phase two for the space, which might include a DJ booth, stage or greenhouse for growing and selling plants.
“We have a lot of options for what we can do ... so people can have more to do beyond just eat and drink,” Cory McCollow said.
Jenny Schwarz, coowner of Oakland’s Japaneseinflected Hopscotch, is also on board as a consultant, focusing on designing future events.
“I’m so excited about this project,” she said. “I think this is the coolest thing to come to Oakland.”
The owners bill the Backyard as the Bay Area’s first margarita and agave garden, capturing a similar vibe to the region’s many beer gardens but featuring mezcal, Tequila, bacanora, sotol and other agavebased spirits. The bottle list features roughly 100 such spirits, including many oneoffs. Cocktails are meant to be approachable with some lowerproof options. Food and beverage menus are both set to be longer than those at Nido.
“The idea is to be hosting a Mexican backyard party,” Silvia McCollow said. “The menu here is going to be fun — not to say Nido is not fun. It’ll still have the same level of complexity but with a more relaxed, backyard feel to it.”
Think platters of tacos, whole chickens and other large dishes meant for sharing — often with a big stack of tortillas. Ramos’ team is importing heirloom corn from Oaxaca and making masa inhouse. During an opening preview, there were tacos filled with saucy birria and others laced with crispy cheese, huitlacoche (corn smut) and mushrooms ($13 for three). Hidalgostyle baked lamb served with vegetables and multiple salsas ($32) fed bigger groups.
Nido’s Backyard arrives after four years of planning and frustrating delays — largely due to a crosswalk. Located on a busy street where cars whip around to cross train tracks, the McCollows had to install a crosswalk they estimate will end up costing them between $35,000 and $55,000.
“In our minds, it’s something that should be passed on to the city or a larger developer to do,” Cory McCollow said.
The McCollows had hoped that with all the development happening around Jack London Square, someone would have installed a crosswalk before Nido’s Backyard’s opening. That didn’t happen, and the process with the city of Oakland has been unexpectedly complicated, Cory McCollow said. He and Silvia launched a crowdfunding campaign to help cover the costs, but he said the delays and extra expenses ate into their budget for playful touches they had hoped to add to the site.
Now, Cory said, “We need to open and let people eat and drink and have fun.”