San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
The best flippin’ pancakes in the Bay Area
Hese 6 spots serve ot, fluffy treats om classic to uly inspired
The pancake is one of mannd’s greatest inventions, up ere with the wheel and the ternet.
The simple combination of arch and liquid produces mething eternal with inrnational appeal. You can d innumerable examples ross the globe — jeon in rea, injera in Ethiopia, rabi kauh in Indonesia — menting its immortal status. hile most iterations share milarities in shape and prepation, American pancakes e a sweet treat associated th breakfast. In the Bay rea, the dish is primarily und at diners or brunch staurants, piled high, essed with pats of butter d a generous glug of syrup. For years, I’ve been on the nt for the best versions. cently, while searching for e Bay Area’s best diners, I mpled a good number. Sadmany of them fell flat (pun tended) in execution — her too sweet or too boring. t there were a few that rose the occasion.
Some spots prefer by-theok recipes, using butterilk for flavor and moisture, hile others reach for corneal or ricotta.Still more dulge in innovative toppings d flavors.
A mix of traditional and perimental, these are the y Area’s best pancakes.
ilda and Jesse
Innovators like Hilda and sse in San Francisco take ncakes into new territory. ese aren’t the massive dooropper-size pancakes you ight find at your local diner. lda’s stately pancakes ($18) e an inch-thick — about the e and girth of a biscuit or ckey puck — and the flars veer into the savory. asonal fruit like strawrries and cranberries are me-grilled over mesquite ood to impart smokiness; a ower of cream adds tang; d maple syrup supplies eetness. The dish is only ailable for weekend brunch an a la carte item.
701 Union St., San Francisco. a.m.-2 p.m. Saturday-Sunday. daandjessesf.com
ceanview Diner
Parked in a busy shopping rridor of west Berkeley, ceanview Diner has a special nd of pancake ($22), which kes over 40 minutes to prere. Put the order in as soon you arrive because you n’t want to miss it. The dish question is dubbed a “soufpancake,” a baked treat owned with gems in fresh uit form. The dough has a lloon-like lightness, while e seasonal fruit topping ds tartness and texture.
St. Francis Fountain
St. Francis Fountain in th Mission District is one of Sa Francisco’s oldest restaurant with a long lunch counter an wood booths throughout the space. It’s an uncomplicated realm to find American com forts of the past, like candy, milkshakes and flapjacks. T pancakes have a mahogany hue from the flattop sear, which imparts a subtle toast ness. The dough is a little stretchy and porous, the better to soak up whipped butte and syrup. These cakes are classic and will never go out of style.
2801 24th St., San Francisco 9 a.m.-2 p.m. Monday-Friday; a.m.-3 p.m. Saturday-Sunday. stfrancisfountainsf.com
Sam’s Log Cabin
Sam’s Log Cabin has a wi range of pancakes in its repe toire: traditional buttermilk, seasonal, savory and ones made with cornmeal. The latter is the best for its sponge-like qualities that readily absorb butter and syrup. What these cakes lac in fluffiness, they make up fo in natural sweetness. The pan-fry imparts notes of car mel and the cakes taste like warm corn bread. While thi style is common on the East Coast, it’s a rare sight in the Bay Area. Luckily, Sam’s, wi its charming outdoor area, makes a worthwhile version
945 San Pablo Ave., Albany 8 a.m.-2 p.m. Tuesday-Sunday samslogcabin.net
Saul’s Restaurant & Delicatessen
nded woman spinning rerds. The wine, which carries a stinct whiff of lychee gummy ndy, is called Disco! (exclaman mark included). Those who ne at natural wine-leaning Bay rea restaurants will recognize is skin-fermented Sauvignon anc as practically ubiquitous. The wine has become the callg card for its winery, Richond’s Subject to Change Wine . “That wine became its own rsona, its own brand,” said ex Pomerantz, the owner and inemaker. It’s also one of Subct to Change’s most recognizly “natty” wines. Skin contact ves it a wild, tannic bite; carnic maceration imbues it with icy, tropical fruit flavors. But in many ways, Disco! is no nger the best representative of bject to Change. After quickly coming what is likely the untry’s largest producer of ze-zero wine — wine made witht sulfur, a commonly used eservative — Pomerantz, 36, is tooling his 6-year-old busiss.
He’s raising capital to launch a w brand of affordable blends, l Hours. Meanwhile, he’s dialg back the production of the bject to Change bottlings, hich he hopes will become ore “serious,” he said. If he as once known for Disco! and ne Juice, a carbonic Zinfandel at epitomizes the chuggable be that natural wine folks call lou glou,” Pomerantz now pes to be known equally for s more classically oriented ines, like a peppery Zinfandel unatic) and a textural Charnnay (Bang Bang) that don’t nspicuously announce themlves as natural at all. Pomerantz has spent years ying to help the Bay Area’s natal wine community establish elf. He and Brent Mayeaux, of agiaire Wines, launched an nual festival showcasing merican natural wines. Now at the movement has found me footing, Pomerantz has a w goal: to make natural wine ss polarizing.
The All Hours bottles ($225), which will go on sale this mmer, serve that mission. hey will include small amounts sulfur, to ensure stability and nsistency. They’re meant to ste approachable, “slightly less ady and niche,” said operans manager Anne Disabato. “We want to bridge the gap for n-natural wine drinkers,” id Pomerantz.
Few California natural wineakers have built businesses ith so many prongs. Pomentz and his partner, Domique Henderson, own Gemini ttle Co. and Bar Gemini in the ission District. He crafts the use wines for San Francisco staurants Flour + Water and orella. He makes more than 000 cases annually of $20 sulr-free wines for Whole Foods: white, Blanc Space, and a red, cense 2 Chill. His wines are ld in 35 states and about 15 untries.
In 2022, his winery produced ughly 20,000 cases — enorous by natural wine stanrds, though small for the genal wine industry. About half of at was for the Subject to hange brand, the rest for other ojects. Last year, Pomerantz creased production by 40%, rtly due to market conditions it’s no secret that sales of all
tractors to early fans of Green Day, who felt disappointed when the once-underground punk band from Berkeley was suddenly all over the radio. “You should be happy if Green Day’s successful,” he said. “These people are getting paid.
“It’s the same thing with natural wine,” he continued. “There’s always going to be the super culty underground stuff that’s for the insiders. Then there’s going to be the affordable stuff that people can grab anywhere.”
That’s what Pomerantz wants to make.
Pomerantz moved to San Francisco in his 20s and became the assistant winemaker at Kivelstadt Cellars in Sonoma in 2011. Though the wines he was making there would not have been classified as natural — still an obscure term then — many were unconventional. Kivelstadt put wine in kegs and made orange wines long before either
was commonplace.
Pomerantz started hanging out at Ruby Wine, a small shop and bar in Potrero Hill that was becoming a gathering place for the city’s burgeoning natural wine community. He started drinking wines from European producers like Frank Cornelissen and Jacques Puffeney and became obsessed.
In 2017, bolstered by investors that he characterized as “friends and family, not people trying to get rich,” Pomerantz struck out on his own. Initially, “Subject to Change” was a placeholder — but then he decided to stick with it.
“Alex from the beginning had a different vision for Subject to Change than what most people would think,” said Brett Pallesen, another regular in the early years at Ruby. Rather than make miniscule volumes of precious wine, Subject to Change “was an ambitious project to deliver honest wines at a good price that also
happened to be natural.” Pallesen, too, got bitten by the bug and started an import company, Soil Expedition; he now partners with Pomerantz on a wine label called De Levende.
The fact that Pomerantz added no sulfur to his wines — radical even among natural winemakers — drew attention. Sulfur occurs naturally in grapes, and the vast majority of wineries around the world add additional sulfur during winemaking to prevent bacterial issues. Many who consider themselves “natural,” even those eschewing other interventions like filtration or acid adjustments, still add small amounts of sulfur as insurance against the wine going bad.
To its believers, sulfur-free winemaking is like walking a tightrope: risky but potentially beautiful. “Making wine without sulfur is incredibly rewarding because — and this is going to sound woo-woo — you can trust in the process and let the wine be what it’s going to be,” said Pomerantz.
better use of the space, he a Mayeaux put together their fir natural wine festival, Wine fro Here, last year. It sold 550 tic ets. This year’s event is plann for April 14, benefiting Foo wise, the organization behi the Ferry Plaza Farmers Mark
All of this — the festival org nizing, the product line f Whole Foods — has led ma onlookers to the impression th Subject to Change is a beh moth. But Pomerantz laug when he hears outsiders d scribe his business as “esta lished,” he said.
“The average small wine just struggles. Badly,” he sai “Even when times are real good.” Two years ago, wine sal were booming, but the winer financials were still “incredib tight.” Now that the indust looks sluggish, Pomerantz sai “it’s just brutal.”
He may be making more wi than others, but “I feel like we’ still getting crushed under t same market conditions as e erybody else.”
Partly, Pomerantz’s desire break down natural wine’s pa titions is a survival instinct: wines like All Hours can agr with a wider range of palat that’s better for business f Pomerantz and his peers.
But his enlarge-the-tent que also has to do with his own shi ing taste. There was a time wh he tolerated wines with high volatile acidity, which can ma a wine taste vinegary. “We de nitely pushed a lot of stuff to bo tle in the past that now I wou either not bottle, period, would wait much longer to bo tle,” Pomerantz said. “Win that had not gone complete dry, wines that still had a lot solids in suspension.”
Now, he considers it part the business model that so wine “just isn’t going to make i Often, it gets repurposed in brandy, vinegar, vermouth.
Bogue, of Flour + Water, h perceived an evolution, too. “A ex’s wines seem to have gotten little more fine-tuned, a lit more character-driven,” he sai
The wine that best embodi