The way we’re dining now: Michael Bauer’s top 10 new restaurants.
Today’s restaurant scene is brighter than ever, as passionate Bay Area chefs lead the way
When chefs from other parts of the country want to know about dining trends, they head to San Francisco. The city has been on the culinary cutting edge since 1849, when three Croatian immigrants set up a tent on the wharf to serve fresh fish grilled over charcoal.
This pop-up restaurant became the Tadich Grill.
When New York was serving bad coffee, we had Graffeo, the specialty coffee roaster with a lineage back to 1935. Peet’s, founded in 1966, became the inspiration for Starbucks.
When bread in other parts of the country was like a soft sponge, we were eating tangy Boudin sourdough, which was founded in 1849. In 1983, Steve Sullivan founded Acme and launched what became a national revolution of artisan products. Another first came in 1979, when Laura Chenel introduced goat cheese to the United States from her Sonoma County farm.
Both Sullivan and Chenel have a direct connection to Alice Waters, who opened Chez Panisse more than 40 years ago. What was originally a gathering place for her friends developed into what many consider the most influential American restaurant to open in the 20th century.
Waters had the simple idea of working with farmers to produce pristine ingredients, and this philosophy has become second nature to all the top restaurants across the country.
The 21st century version of Chez Panisse may well be Lazy Bear, which opened in the fall. It’s David Barzelay’s brick-andmortar incarnation of the un- derground restaurant he ran for three years. Tickets are purchased in advance for the 11-plus-course dinner. It starts upstairs with a cocktail party, then diners retire to two communal tables downstairs in front of the open kitchen for a single, nightly changing menu.
The Bay Area has experienced ups and downs, to be sure, but our history is based on innovation, and when historians look back on the 2010s, they may regard this as a golden age of dining. Young chefs, whether they know history or not, work under its influence and continue to build on its culinary legacy.
The result, clearly illustrated by the restaurants that opened this year, is a rich, multilevel dining scene.
Two years ago, State Bird Provisions won the James Beard Award for best new restaurant. Stuart Brioza and Nicole Krasinski’s concept of using dim sum-style rolling carts to deliver their Western food ignited a national trend and helped chefs think differently. This year the pair opened Progress, where family-style dishes make it a banquet version of State Bird.
Brioza and Krasinski were building on another trend that started here more than a decade ago: the small-plate phenomenon that now has practically become standard around the country. Small plates, which perfectly fit the bar scene, in turn helped set the stage for the cocktail revival.
When Greg Lindgren and his partners opened Romolo in 1998, very few bars used fresh fruit in their drinks. Then restaurants and bars began to take that concept even further by making bitters and flavor- ings and growing herbs. The Bay Area led with such places as Bar Agricole, where cocktails are as meticulously crafted as the food.
This year, Thad Vogler opened Trou Normand, which celebrates not only cocktails but also whole-animal cooking and charcuterie. In Oakland, James Syhabout, who is considered one of the most impor- tant cooks in that city, has created a menu specifically designed for beer at his Dock restaurant adjacent to the Linden Street Brewery.
Earlier this year, Fifth Floor, where David Bazirgan earned 3½ stars for his refined California-inspired food, did a complete turnaround. The restaurant was remodeled and renamed Dirty Habit, where Bazirgan now creates barfriendly food such as Dungeness crab toast with uni butter and lardo; spicy chicken wings with sweet soy and chile vinaigrette; and braised lamb neck on polenta.
Before the early 2000s, most restaurant lounges were largely separate from the dining room; diners who ordered a Negroni or Manhattan were
likely of a certain age. Now the cocktail revolution has been embraced by the under-30 set; many restaurants are bars, and bars have become restaurants. At many popular places today, wine has taken a backseat to cocktails.
This melding of what used to be distinct cultures has led to an even more casual dining atmosphere, communal tables and a noisy buzz. The number of dishes on the menus has shrunk, and the selections are often listed without division between appetizers and main courses.
Only a decade or so ago, restaurants tried to be all things to all people, which is what led to the standard-hits menu at Italian restaurants and a similarity of dishes at the California-inspired places. With truncated menus, restaurants are more focused; creative chefs don’t feel bound to follow a classic path and can use their heritage to create food that is not only personal but unique.
That trend is best shown by Traci Des Jardins’ restaurant Arguello, which she opened in the Presidio in October. Mex- ican restaurants, like Chinese places, often have a laundry list of dishes; her menu includes only eight appetizers and four large plates, plus a few sides such as guacamole and chips.
Des Jardins, who is half Mexican, is one of the city’s top chefs and earned her reputation at Rubicon and at her Jardiniere, serving American food with strong French techniques. At Arguello, she’s calling on her Mexican heritage for inspiration.
Syhabout, who got much of his training as the chef at Manresa in Los Gatos and offers a California menu at Commis in Oakland, has embraced his Thai heritage at Hawker Fare; next year he’ll open a much
larger version in San Francisco.
Thai food, which was on the wane for the last few years, is coming back. Pim Techamuanvivit opened Kin Khao, and Tom Narupon Silargorn has opened three Lers Ros since he debuted the first one in the Tenderloin five years ago.
Corey Lee has allowed his Korean heritage to influence his refined food at Benu, which earned a third Michelin star this year. He uses the French/ California techniques from his time as chef de cuisine at the French Laundry, but adds an increasingly stronger Asian overlay at Benu.
At Saison, which also received a third Michelin star this year, Josh Skenes not only uses Asian ingredients, but he plays with fire. Every course is touched by an open flame, by embers or by smoke.
Using this primitive method has become the rage at places such as Camino, TBD and the Molina in Mill Valley, where chef-owner Todd Shoberg spends his time manning the wood oven — his only source of heat.
This year, Lee opened Monsieur Benjamin, his ode to French bistro cooking. French food had fallen from favor in the last decade or so, but it’s coming on strong with the opening this year of such places as Aquitaine, Gaspar Brasserie, Les Clos and Hiro Sone’s Urchin Bistrot.
Yet the biggest trend of the year is the emergence of really well-crafted
Creative chefs
don’t feel bound
to follow a classic
path and can use
their heritage to
create food that is
not only personal
but unique.
Japanese food, which makes sense in the Bay Area’s ingredient-driven milieu.
Four Japanese restaurants made my accompanying list of the top 10 newcomers of 2104, including Kusakabe, Pabu and Iyasare in Berkeley.
Chez Panisse alum Sylvan Mishima Bracket last month opened Rintaro in a handsome warehouse space on 14th Street, where he takes painstaking effort to make the classic Japanese omelet, and uses ingredients like fresh wasabi from Half Moon Bay.
Diners flock to these new trendy restaurants, which often leads to a tendency of those on top to slowly coast downhill. Countering that, one exciting theme in 2014 is the number of established restaurants that continued to reinvent themselves.
Three of the best places I reviewed in 2014 — Marlowe, Ichi Sushi and Hong Kong Lounge II — are businesses that expanded to new or larger locations. Classics such as Schroeder’s, founded in 1893; the Big 4, which still has a piano player in its lounge; and the 147-year-old Sam’s Grill have been rejuvenated.
That trend started in 2012 when Original Joe’s finally reopened in North Beach after a fire closed the original Tenderloin location five years earlier. Now John Duggan and his family are refurbishing another classic — Joe’s of Westlake — which should reopen next year.
If things continue on this path, we may soon be entering the platinum age of dining.