San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Mr. Digby’s brings the best of the Midwest to Noe Valley.
Mr. Digby’s displays a quiet mastery of meat and potatoes, along with classic cocktails
There are some avantgarde restaurants that are lauded for their ability to push the boundaries of cuisine. And then there are others, like Mr. Digby’s in Noe Valley, that slide into favor because of their quiet mastery over the unremarkable. Centered in comfort food and classic cocktails, the restaurant isn’t transcendent or challenging. But it succeeds in other ways that matter, thanks to the enduring power of cheesy bread and dishes piled with meat and potatoes.
I went here at first because I wanted to throw a bone to my husband, a Scandinavian (“Scandihoovian,” in his words) Minnesotan who would much rather indulge in thick slices of smoked salmon and rye bread than fish tartare spooned into delicate cornets. In the search for culturally relevant cuisine that would scratch that itch, we stumbled onto Mr. Digby’s, which opened at the beginning of April. “I’m home,” he said as we browsed the menu on our phones. Options included a bythebook wedge salad ($14), meatballs with mashed potatoes ($24), and chocolate pudding ($9) with butterscotch and sea salt — takes on the kind of special occasion fare you eat when going out means grillityourself steak houses and buffets.
Oldschool, American food dots the entire menu: pimento cheese, beef tartare, deviled eggs, steaminghot chicken pot pie. While nostalgia for midcentury American fare is old hat by now, embodied by luxury restaurants like Perry Lang’s in Yountville and the late TAK Room in New York City, the story that Mr. Digby’s sets out to tell is a little more accessible than that — both in menu choice and price. Most options will sound familiar to anybody who’s stepped foot into an American chain restaurant. Appetizers range from $5 snacks to $18 baked oysters, while there are six entrees for $17 to $28. The brief wine list averages around $65 per bottle, with the outlying exception of a $100 LaurentPerrier Champagne. House cocktails are $13 to $15: mostly classics like the boulevardier and gimlet with some editorializing from the bartenders.
Owners Kristen Gianaras McCaffery (Novy) and Mike McCaffery (Mission Rock Resort) brought on Mike Ocampo (West Coast Wine & Cheese, Boxing Room, Zero Zero) to consult on the opening menu, and Ocampo’s ideas straddle the line between classic and what some might call “elevated”: Asparagus pickles are cut on a bias, and the gimlet gets celery and mint. The dishes are fun, but earthbound in ambition.
Spinach dip hot bread ($12), which I previously wrote about in another column, turns spinach dip and its accompanying toast points into a chimera of the two. A small loaf of housebaked sourdough is slashed, then stuffed with mozzarella, Calabrian chiles and fresh spinach. A session in a hot oven turns the insides gooey while firming up the outer crust. Eating this dish is all about the pleasure of those textural contrasts.
Other starters do exactly what they say on the label. The iceberg wedge is piled high like an Easter bonnet with hardboiled eggs, blue cheese dressing, pink roasted beets and smoky nuggets of Nueske’s bacon, imported from Wisconsin. The prawn cocktail ($16) is presented on ice in a classic metal cocktail dish, with sauce containing a noseclearing amount of horseradish. A side of fries ($6) is doublefried and nets you enough to fill a pint glass.
The entree side is made up of the hearty dishes you pine after when snow gets into your boots. Salisbury meatballs crowd an island of fluffy mashed potatoes in a sea of red wine
jus, looking fat and glossy like sea lions on a pier. Tiny berets of peppery nasturtium leaf seem a little absurd on the very brown dish, but they do contribute some punchiness. The pork chop ($28), brined like a ham, is served with a tender wedge of braised cabbage and a whole grain mustard jus that has the warming effect of mulled apple cider.
On every visit, I ordered a plate of seasonal pickles ($5), a colorful assortment of asparagus tips, golden beets, marinated button mushrooms and green beans. They came to the table in varying amounts of neatness: sometimes a seaweedlike tangle, sometimes in militaristic rows. No matter how they looked, they tasted fantastic, with strong pickling spice notes and an invigorating sourness that made the rich food go down easier.
Sadly for vegetarians, the sole vegetarian entree — a sendup of chicken and biscuits ($21) that swaps poultry for hen of the woods mushrooms — veers too far into the beige zone. The kitchen squanders the flavor potential of the beautiful fungi, leaving them to fend for themselves in a flavorless gravy. On a similar note, the chicken pot pie ($24) sported an attractive glazed pie crust, only to be followed by a chicken and veggie filling that tasted like the void. While eating these dishes, I craved stronger flavors; I wanted more browning, more umami, more depth.
Still, though I went to the restaurant on a lark, I was impressed with the coherence of its concept and the high level of execution. Actually, what interested me the most is that it didn’t seem like it was meant to be trendy: It’s just a nice place to bring your kids or your dog or both. (There’s a charming kids menu with a $10 “TV Dinner,” and the restaurant gets its name from a dog.) The dining room, arrayed in warm woods, checkered plaid and cozy leather, wouldn’t look out of place in a Minnesota dive bar.
Comfort food means different things to everyone. That taste of the familiar, that buoy in choppy emotional seas, might appear in masala chai, in a pinch of fufu dipped in palm butter, or in a TV dinner wrapped in cellophane. When we seek out comfort food, we’re not unlike the child who asks a parent to tell the same story again — who finds solace and pleasure in knowing the beginning, middle and end by heart.
It would be wrong to think of comfort food as something intrinsically boring, though. In a March 2020 essay on comfort food, writer and artist Apoorva Sripathi noted, “When we’re looking for comfort, we tend to look around instead of ahead. We look at things (and people) that have always stood by us, and we ask for it (and them) to sustain us.” We seek it out, whatever it is, because it satisfies the stomach and the spirit. In that way, it’s just as much of a luxury as caviar. Mr. Digby’s embodies that idea well.