San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Upscale dining goes mobile in S.F.
Good luck getting a seat — there are just 4 — at this popular chef ’s next S.F. stop
When Anthony Strong closed his restaurantturnedmarket Prairie last summer, he needed a break. More specifically, he needed to go camping. He sold his car to buy a 1989 Volkswagen camper van — and then he turned it into a dining room. Named SuperStella, it’s a oneofakind dining experience in San Francisco: not a food truck, not quite a popup and much more intimate than its catering license implies.
This month, he’ll start parking Stella outside the Ferry Building, bringing his fourperson dining room into dazzling view of the building’s clock tower and the Bay Bridge. He’ll roll out fake grass, set up a portable bonfire and serve soup in a thermos to complete the glamping vibe.
In many ways, Stella shows Strong in his element. A lover of rustic, smoky dishes, he cooks every course on a portable charcoal grill from Texas that emerges from the trunk. He also enjoys a fun construction project, which led him to gut the van, build banquettes, reupholster the ceiling, install dimmable solar lights and create a clipon bar after watching a lot of YouTube videos.
For the past two months, diners could choose between their own private residence — assuming they have a big enough, level driveway — or Mission Bay food truck hub Spark Social SF as settings. It’s been a hit so far, with Stella booking up weeks in advance. April and May will bring the Ferry Building option, along with some Ferry Buildingspecific dishes like s’mores featuring Recchiuti Confections marshmallows and chocolate.
The humble setup is combined with a menu based on Strong’s fine dining chops. The tasting menu, which starts at $110 with $50 for wine pairings, begins with snacks served on top of a camping cooler to diners reclining on white lawn chairs. Then there’s the soup course: a coalroasted artichoke and charred jalapeño soup presented in a vintage thermos. A few more courses follow, such as grilled sardines or grilled lettuces, and then a largeformat entree like a whole grilled Mt. Lassen trout or porcinirubbed dryaged rib eye paired with several sides. While glasses are used for wine, most items get served on enameled tinware — with thermal blankets available for chilly nights.
The pandemic forced many chefs to think creatively about what it means to run a business, and Stella is Strong’s version 2.0 — he already pivoted by turning his Mission District restaurant into a grocery store before last March’s shelterinplace order.
The van also arrives at a time when the Bay Area is relatively short on fine dining experiences, as many upscale restaurants have struggled to translate their food into takeout boxes or outdoor setups. With the return of indoor dining and more of these destinations reopening, it’s possible fewer diners will feel a pull to eat in a camper van, but Strong thinks it’s just unusual and lighthearted enough to have enduring appeal.
He put in a lot of work to figure out how to make Stella a legit enterprise. As he started dismantling the van last fall, he searched for another example of a dining room in a car in the U.S. and couldn’t find one. After talking to folks at the health department, he determined he couldn’t sell anything onsite because that would make the van open to the public and require a lot of permits. He also couldn’t sell tickets in advance because that would categorize Stella as a popup, thus requiring a commercial kitchen and, again, more permits. By making Stella a catering operation, he’s able to serve clients at the venue of their choice — in this case, his van.
There are other quirks to the new gig. Once, he had to take apart the engine and replace the van’s timing belt before racing to a diner’s house. Also, when the door opens, it sounds like a French police siren, and every once in a while the sound will go off for no reason in the middle of dinner.
But the benefits are huge: Essentially working as a private chef, Strong gets to interact with diners in ways he
“It’s making me question whether a restaurant is even worth it. We completely destroy ourselves in the business to fill our 80seat restaurants.” Chef Anthony Strong
never got to when he was running the kitchen at Delfina or operating Prairie. And he has free time to exercise and read a book every week.
“It’s making me question whether a restaurant is even worth it,” he said. “We completely destroy ourselves in the business to fill our 80seat restaurants and try to make it work in a business landscape that is not set up for small operations to succeed.”
Now, Strong is learning what he really wants to do in the postpandemic future, which may or may not involve another brickandmortar restaurant. He has settled into his loves of rustic cooking, unique settings, familystyle vibes and intimacy.
“There’s so much pressure to go in a certain direction with fine dining — I think a fussy, cutesy direction. I’ve been struggling with that for a long time,” he said. “I’d really like to keep going with (Stella) in some shape or form. It might not be a jampacked 100seat restaurant, but it’s very satisfying.”