Summer’s salad
Melissa Perello makes panzanella with the season’s best, year-round
Many chefs begin cooking as a summer job or hobby, never imagining that it will turn into a career. But forMelissa Perello, chef-owner of Frances restaurant, her path was clear from the start.
“Iwas kind of a food nerdwhen Iwas younger,” she laughs, explaining that her parents both had artistic backgrounds. “I knew exactlywhat Iwanted to do straight after high school.”
Thatwas to attend the Culinary Institute of America in upstate NewYork.
She does admit that landing on theWest Coastwas more of an accident.
“I didn’t think Iwould like San Francisco,” she says, “so I looked for an externship inNewYork, but I couldn’t find anything in time.”
Instead, she ended up atAqua withMichaelMina.
Itwas good fortune for Perello, who fell in love with the Bay Area and returned toAqua towork after graduating in 1996. She later moved to the now-closed Charles NobHill, then aMina property as well, towork underRon Siegel. When he moved on, she nabbed his spot as executive chef— and earned a Chronicle Rising Star Chef nod.
Eventually she decided to open her own restaurant, and found a small space in the Castro. She opened Frances nearly five years ago.
The small restaurant iswhere she concentrates on a daily-changing menu, creatively using up every scrap that she brings in the door.
“We put panzanella on the menuwhenwe have an overload of bread,” she says. That means the dish can be served year-round, using ingredients like kale, fennel and spring onions in a chicken broth-based vinaigrette.
But in the summer, it’s time for the traditional version, with tomato-soaked bread, crunchy cucumbers and other seasonal produce. It’s a dish she makes at home as well— it’s especially party-friendly because it gets better as it sits.