Bar Tartine
Six years after it opened, Bar Tartine, the restaurant offshoot of Tartine Bakery, has become Hungarian at dinner and Scandinavian at lunch. Both meals are fantastic–original and luscious. The lunchtime Danish sandwich bar was created when Bar Tartine expanded into a space next door and installed bread ovens. There, Chad Robertson bakes whole grain northern [...]
Read More →Ken Ken Ramen
During the recession, the idea of opening a successful restaurant changed. Instead of raising seven figure capital from investors, passionate cooks with a dish or two they loved to make figured out new ways to get them to the public–pop ups, restaurant sharing, food stands at farmers’ markets, food trucks, community kitchens. They invoked the [...]
Read More →Boot and Shoe Service
To sustain a no reservations policy, a restaurant must be very popular and very good, not just in the kitchen but in the front of the house, too. Nothing aggravates hungry people more than uncertainty, and how the peckish are handled from the moment they walk through the door determines whether they will flock back. [...]
Read More →Chili House
Paul Kwan, my Clement Street insider, turned me on to Chili House, a new Sichuan/northern Chinese restaurant in the inner Richmond, and a relative of Z & Y, a Sichuan place in San Francisco’s Chinatown. The chef at Chili House worked at Z & Y, and apparently the ownership is the same. However, Chili House [...]
Read More →Troya on Fillmore
As an immersive traveler, I adopt the diet of everyplace I go. When I get back to San Francisco I actually feel homesick for the food, the air, the pace, of the places I visit. This happened when I recently returned from villages and provincial cities in southeastern Turkey along the Syrian border. I just [...]
Read More →Rich Table
A lot of young chefs these days are trying to break away from culinary traditions, to rewrite technique, to recombine ingredients. Most of them fail. You don’t know why you’re eating the stuff that lands on the plate. It doesn’t satisfy. Rich Table is the exception. It defines itself as an innovative restaurant while turning [...]
Read More →Wise Sons Deli
Lord knows we need a Jewish deli in San Francisco and the Wise Sons have made it their mission to bring us one, first as a pop up, then in a booth at the Tuesday Ferry Plaza Farmers Market, and now as a brick and mortar self serve restaurant in the Mission. On the booth’s [...]
Read More →Market & Rye
The sandwich explosion rumbles on in San Francisco. Naked Lunch, Deli Board, Salumeria, Wise Sons and now Market & Rye, Ryan Scott’s mini-chain of two. In once sense, today’s sandwiches are a throwback to the overstuffed Italian deli sandwich made with layers of meats and cheese dressed with oil and vinegar. The current versions are [...]
Read More →Bar Bambino
Bar Bambino’s off the radar location on 16th Street, just one block east of Mission but seeming miles away from Valencia street action, happens to be a blessing for those of us who frequent the restaurant. We can drop in, even on weekends, and usually find a seat at the communal table in the front [...]
Read More →Del Popolo
Jon Darsky, who apprenticed with Charlie Hallowell at Pizzaiola, went pro at Delfina Pizzeria, and became the much lauded pizza maker at Flour + Water, has struck out on his own. No, he has not opened a brick and mortar pizzeria. Rather he designed and had fabricated a pizzeria in a shipping container mounted on [...]
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