Winery regains stature 3 years after Napa quake.
Michael Bauer takes stock of the Bay Area restaurant scene.
By Michael Bauer
Compiling the Top 100 Bay Area Restaurants guide is like laying out a puzzle. I see all the restaurants I’ve reviewed and updated, and as pieces fall into place the picture comes together and trends emerge. But they aren’t always linear.
Of course, trends don’t just happen. They build on what came before, and at some point reach critical mass. Here are the trends that dominate our dining scene this year.
Rising costs
For the last five years, the rising cost of dining out has been at the forefront. That remains the most pronounced trend of 2016 and one that threatens the health and creativity of our dining scene.
Not much more than a year ago, I bristled at the $30 main course; now even neighborhood places have reached that psychological benchmark, including Seven Hills, new on the list this year, where the three main courses range from $32 to $38. (Fortunately, pastas start at $18.)
The story is the same everywhere. Last year at Frances, one main course was $31 and the other three were under $30; now three of the four range from $32 to $34. At the charming La Ciccia in outer Noe Valley, two of the three listed main courses are $30; last year they were all under $30. At SPQR, pastas were $28 to $29 and now they’re $30 to $31.
Escalating prices have touched every cuisine. Only one main course at the new August 1 Five Indian restaurant is less than $30; the other four range from $34 to $39.
In San Francisco, what you see is not entirely what you get because the majority of restaurants also add a surcharge of 3 to 5 percent to pay for health care and other mandates. This year many upped the percentage, led by the Big Night Restaurant Group — which includes Top 100 restaurants Park Tavern and Marlowe — where the surcharge has risen to 6 percent.
Cocktail culture
In today’s economic climate a liquor license is considered essential for success. But as I wrote in 2006, referring to the state of dining in 2005, “We’ve also seen a revival in cocktails that has moved beyond being profit centers to becoming culinary centers that rival savory and dessert courses.”
The bar has taken on even more importance now. At places like the Saratoga, new on the list this year, it’s impossible to separate one element from the other. More and more, cocktails are becoming as integral to the concept as the food.
It stands to reason that this trend reflects other shifts. Increasingly, restaurants are taking a more casual approach to design and service. In the last couple years, I’ve noticed that patrons at high-end restaurants are younger, which may speak to the dominance and affluence of Bay Area tech culture.
The confluence of these trends leads to a question I hesitate to contemplate: Is traditional dining at moderately priced restaurants becoming a thing of the past?
Fast-casual experiment
Some high-quality restaurants are forgoing full-table service for various forms of a quick-casual concept, where diners order at the counter and food is brought to them. An example is Corridor, new to the list this year. Here diners have a choice: They order at the counter or, if they want a full-service experience, make a reservation and are seated on the mezzanine where they order from a printed menu.
Owner Ryan Cole says this approach saves staff and frees up tables faster so that the restaurant can get more turns if needed.
Cole and his partners also own Trestle, where diners have a changing three-course menu for $35 each night. I don’t know how they do it, because the food is as good as places that charge two to three times as much. However, Cole says that having a fixed-price menu that changes nightly saves staff and food costs.
This year, more than a third of the restaurants on the list have a fixed-price menu, either as the only choice or as an option. The need to control costs is also the reason that Bay Area menus are getting shorter.
Japanese and Indian
Even two years ago the Bay Area was lacking high-quality Japanese and Indian restaurants. What a difference a year makes.
At least a dozen restaurants serving omakase sushi menus have debuted. At Ju-Ni, chef Geoffrey Lee and two other chefs serve a creative 18-item menu for $125 at a 12-seat counter. Other new menus range from Hashiri in Mint Plaza in San Francisco, where the diner has three menu options for $250, $300 or $500, to Delage in Oakland, where nine courses cost $65.
Other notable newcomers: Miminashi in Napa has excellent yakitori, chawanmushi (a Japanese savory custard) and larger plates such as salmon collar. These are served in a carefully thought-out interior that includes a wood ceiling designed to look like interconnecting pagodas.
At Onsen in San Francisco, diners can enjoy an excellent
dinner for under $50 by choosing among skewers of squash, squid and lamb; plates of grilled sardines and udon noodles; and green tea soft-serve for dessert. The owners took over a mechanic’s shop and turned the service pit into a soaking tub. The space is now a spa with the restaurant in front. Many people dine before or after a soak, but the food stands on its own.
Last year I felt lucky to find the Indian-inspired Rasa in Burlingame to add to the Top 100. This year I had three more to consider: Babu Ji, Rooh and August 1 Five. All these places offer personal takes on the food, and each have well-developed cocktail programs using Indian flavors.
Just how much the dining scene has diversified struck me earlier this month when I visited a yet unreviewed Cal-Ital restaurant, Contrada, on Union Street. I realized it had been many months since I’d been to a new restaurant serving pizza, pasta, house-made pate and salumi. A decade ago, it seemed like chefs felt they wouldn’t attract customers without pizza on the menu.
Casualties of the economy
The escalating prices we’ve seen at restaurants don’t mean the owners are padding their pockets. With rents and salaries soaring, it simply costs more to open a restaurant and keep it running.
Last year two Top 100 restaurants opened and closed within a year: Volta and Ninebark, in Napa. Other popular restaurants previously on the list also called it quits, including Mamacita, Range and the new larger location of Ichi. (However, Ichi moved back into its original space and is still open.)
Generally, no more than one or two places on the Top 100 list close each year. In 2013, I wrote that the three closures were more than in any other year; this year there were five. (Still, on a national level, a 5 percent closure rate looks good.)
Other groundbreaking restaurants that at one time were on the list called it quits in 2016, including Rose Pistola — named the best restaurant in the country in 1997 by the James Beard foundation — and Lulu, a South of Market restaurant that fueled many trends with its industrial decor, communal tables and family-style dining.
While these are larger places, what feels most threatened by the economy are our neighborhood restaurants — those places out of the downtown area that can’t depend on tourist traffic.
A month ago the owners of Cassava on Balboa Street near 36th Avenue started a GoFundMe campaign to raise $50,000 so they could stay in business. In one month they raised $51,324 from 304 people. This type of generosity illustrates that a restaurant is an important thread in developing a cohesive neighborhood fabric.
I hope stories like Cassava’s will help to overshadow the foreboding I have about the economic viability of restaurants in the future.
High-end invention
The biggest news of the year, however, belies many of these trends. Single Thread, which opened in December and offers a $225, 11-course menu, is the most important new restaurant in Sonoma County in decades — and undeniably one of the most important new restaurants in the region.
Chef Kyle Connaughton worked with Michelin threestar chefs in both Japan and England before moving to Healdsburg. The restaurant has a Japanese sensibility in decor, food and even in how products are grown. The chef ’s wife, Katina Connaughton, is in charge of their nearby farm and uses a Japanese almanac based on 72 growing seasons. Some might even add Single Thread to the list of Japanese restaurants because the aesthetics are so similar.
Single Thread dramatically illustrates another undeniable trend: Just about every highend, fixed-price menu in the Bay Area has been influenced by Japanese cuisine. With its attention to detail and pursuit of purity, the cuisine dovetails with how local chefs approach their cooking.
When you look at the number of high-end restaurants here — French Laundry, Manresa, Benu, Saison, Coi, Quince, Atelier Crenn, Gary Danko and Acquerello to name a few — there can be no denying that, despite the current challenges, the Bay Area has become the best fine-dining city in the nation.