San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Lasagna and kebabs at new waterfront eatery
When the owners of hit Indian restaurant Rooh landed a prime lease on San Francisco’s waterfront, they locked in one of the city’s specialists in Spanish cooking. Then, they all began talking about kebabs.
The result is Alora, a broadly Mediterranean restaurant that opened on the Embarcadero in late January. There, chef Ryan McIlwraith, best known for his tenure at S.F. Spanish restaurants Bellota and nearby Coqueta, prepares dishes like broiled Kusshi oysters with lemon-Prosecco sabayon, intricate pastas and elaborate grilled meats.
McIlwraith was able to sell owners Anu and Vikram Bhambri on a wider Mediterranean focus after they returned from a trip to Turkey. “We were talking about how the Adana kebab was their favorite thing to eat on their trip, so we put it on the menu,” he said.
The menu still borrows from the chef ’s experience with Spanish and Italian cooking, but also goes in new directions based on his personal fondness for Greek food, which was plentiful growing up near Greektown in Vancouver, British Columbia, and his current penchant for eating hummus and kebabs on days off.
The owners’ favorite Adana kebab ($44) takes a blend of beef and lamb meats and spices the mix with Aleppo and de arbol chiles for a smoky flavor, plus serranos for heat. It comes over a fresh-baked laffa, a long-proofing type of flatbread, enhanced with za’atar and garlic oil. The chicken pincho ($39) is marinated with a sherry-orange marinade accompanied by patatas bravas with padron pepper, influenced by the chef’s Spanish cooking experience.
The hanger steak shish kebab ($70) might be the most elaborate of these. The meat comes lacquered in a grape syrup McIlwraith says takes an entire day to reduce down, accompanied by a roasted grape and bone marrow salsa enlivened with shallots and herbs. It comes with maitake mushrooms, Brussels sprouts and creamy hummus.
Seafood dishes include a hamachi crudo ($26) with a citrus salad and smashed cucumber. The confit octopus ($29) is rendered crispy and golden in a cast iron pan with olive oil; McIlwraith said the preparation involves a quick blanche in water before an hours-long, low heat roast that is worth the wait and labor. “It gets really brown and caramelized,” he said. The octopus comes with a tzatziki, crispy potato pave and a pickled sauteed cauliflower escabeche, for a hit of acidity.
The opening menu has five pastas, but the number might grow, McIlwraith said. For now, those include pici ($25), a Tuscan hand-rolled noodle that has the thickness and feel of udon. Each string is made from a small, 20gram ball rolled out to spaghetti length. It will come prepared with a tomato butter sauce and topped with burrata. The ’nduja lasagna ($36) is a stack of flash-blanched lasagna sheets, ’nduja sausage, Bolognese and bechamel sauce. Instead of being baked, it’s chilled, cut into cake-like squares and seared to order for crispy edges. “It’s not oil-filled, it’s cleaner, and it’s just delicious,” said the chef. McIlwraith took inspiration from the “100-layer” lasagna at New York City’s famed restaurant Del Posto, though he clarified his version has just over 50 layers, for anyone who wants to count.
People coming in just for cocktails and light bites can share a bowl of olives stewed in honey sherry ($18); vegetable plates with an Espelette chile miso dip from local fermenters Shared Cultures ($17); or muhammara, a roasted pepper and walnut dip with pomegranate seeds.
Dessert options include a slice of trendy Basque cheesecake ($15), this one accompanied by burnt honey and carrot marmalade; and pavlova ($14) filled with citrus curd, winter citrus and kiwi. The 10-layer chocolate cake ($18) for two might turn the most heads, McIlwraith said. The shareable treat is a stack of Baharat-spiced cake tiers with pistachio, rose petals and cream cheese ice cream.
The restaurant takes over a historic building on the Embarcadero’s Pier 3, formerly a location of the Plant Cafe. The sizable, 2,500-square-foot dining room can accommodate 50 diners in a setting featuring elegant black tile contrasting with light-hued walls. Long, sheer white curtains cover big windows but still allow natural light inside. Wire lampshades shaped like jellyfish hang from the ceiling over tables, and a metal curtain structure representing ocean waves is also suspended above the dining room. The main patio has 45 seats and views of the Bay Bridge and the surrounding landscape, while the front patio seats 25.
“The water is like 8 feet away (from the patio). I think people are really going to enjoy it,” McIlwraith said.
Anu and Vikram Bhambri, whose first career was in technology at Microsoft, recently opened another restaurant in Emeryville, called Pippal. Another, called Fitoor, is on the way to San Jose.
The road to opening Alora has been mostly smooth, though spirits dampened a bit a few days before opening when staff found the large ceramic planters outside the restaurant had been smashed. “It’s terrible to see, but a similar thing happened when we opened Bellota in SoMa,” he said. “It’s not exactly surprising, but you don’t like to see it.”
Still, and with seven restaurant launches under his belt as a chef, McIlwraith said vandalism didn’t take away from the anticipation and progress leading up to opening day. “Every day the restaurant gets a little bit better and a little bit more organized. It’s a really exciting feeling,” he said.
Alora. The Embarcadero Pier 3, Suite 108. San Francisco. 5-9:30 p.m. Monday-Thursday; 5-10:30 p.m. Friday-Sunday. visitalora.com