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| Bay
Wolf 3853 Piedmont Ave. Oakland, CA Phone: (510) 655-6004 |
Bay Wolf, an Oakland restaurant that is repeatedly honored by local newspaper polls as one of the Bay Area's best, is a spot that attracts smart people — academics, artists, writers, and ladies-who-lunch. Set in a century-old Victorian house, Bay Wolf is a lively yet calm place where guests come to eat and drink great wines rather than to be seen. It has a Parisian sensibility of the 1920s, when artists would trade art for meals. And it just so happens that internationally recognized local artists such as Raymond Saunders and Rupert Garcia are regularly seen dining beneath their paintings that bedeck the walls. For more than 25 years, Bay Wolf has specialized in the preparation and celebration of duck. It has popularized the nationally known local brand, Liberty Ranch Ducks — a free-range, leaner type of Pekin duck. The menu changes monthly to reflect the food of a different Mediterranean region. | ||||||||||||||||||
| Campton
Place 340 Stockton Street San Francisco, CA Phone: (415) 955-5555 |
The restaurant in the chic little Campton Place Hotel on Union Square opened to wild acclaim in 1983 when Bradley Ogden first served hearty American food in its fancy European setting. But today, French chef Laurent Manrique is at the helm, cooking the heroic, hearty food of his swashbuckling native region, Gascony. Anything but bourgeois, Gascon cuisine is complex and packed with flavor; it is bold, almost virile fare. Manrique has translated his experience growing up in France and working at Taillevent in Paris into a unique and decidedly non-California Cuisine menu. In addition to a seasonally changing à la carte menu, Manrique also offers a tasting menu every few months that celebrates the preparation of one particular ingredient. (Past ingredients have been green almonds, peaches, morels, and truffles). One dish available throughout the year is Poule au Pot D'Aurélie, a dish he learned from his grandmother for whom it's named. A traditionally prepared poached chicken, it's served tableside in a casserole bowl with mixed vegetables, vermicelli, and foie gras with the cooking broth poured over top. Campton Place's charm and attentive service makes it a special occasion destination. It is sedately festive and hosts many marriage proposals, anniversaries, and birthdays. | ||||||||||||||||||
| Chez
Panisse 1517 Shattuck Avenue Berkeley, California Phone: (510) 548-5525 | If you want to know why Chez Panisse is the single best restaurant in the United States, just look at a single appetizer served one evening last May. The center of the plate was dominated by an artfully rumpled heap of beyond-organic herbs — microscopic leaves of tarragon, bittersweet curls of baby chicory — and to one side was a trembling bit of broth that stayed jellied just long enough to be spooned up to your mouth. The swath of mayonnaise on the other side of the plate had been made to order. A scattering of crunchy, sharply vinegared wax beans practically vibrated with the sweet crispness of spring. The yolk of a halved soft-boiled farm egg shone as orange as a Van Gogh sunflower. It was the loveliest conceivable expression of a season, of an aesthetic, of a great agricultural region. Where else could you find satori in an egg salad? To be fair, Chez Panisse is barely a restaurant in the usual sense of the word. In its 30 years it has grown from an amateur eating establishment to an institution with a mission, but there is still a single set menu, different each day, and it is served to the restaurant's staff as well as to its customers. Cooks, responsible for but a single dish apiece, may devote as much time to positioning a sprig of chervil as most line cooks do to plating an entire course. Provisioning is considered as important as cooking, and a whole community of bakers, wine importers, and farmers has sprung up in support of the restaurant, which virtually invented the position of forager. And Alice Waters, who may be the most influential figure in the past 30 years of the American kitchen, still seems not so much a chef as a gifted impresario who has mastered the difficult task of coaxing fine chefs (now Christopher Lee and Kelsie Kerr), superb California produce, and her own exquisite sensibility together into shimmering meals as fragile yet as enduring as butterfly wings. | ||||||||||||||||||
| Oliveto 5655 College Ave., Oakland, CA Phone: (510) 547-5956 |
If you cannot go to Italy right now, do yourself a favor — book a table at Oliveto, Paul Bertolli's rustic Italian restaurant upstairs from Oakland's Market Hall. Do not expect architectural towers of tumbling food on the plate, rather delight in the chef's economy of expression: My favorite is Arista — shoulder-end pork loin roasted on the spit — on a white plate with an extraordinary complex sauce made of a sugo of pork trimmings perfumed with rosemary. Bertolli prepares spit-roasted meats and fowl, delicate handmade pastas, and thin-crusted pizzas. If you want vegetables such as spinach with garlic and lemon or green and yellow wax beans, order them on the side. Each item shines. This Renaissance man not only cooks but he plays the piano, hunts wild boar, and makes his own mortadella, salami, tuna botarga, and balsamic vinegar. | ||||||||||||||||||
| Delfina 3621 18th St. San Francisco, CA Phone: (415) 552-4055 | A nice break from San Francisco's many upscale restaurants, Delfina is an honest, unfussy Italian spot. Matt Dillon, Don Johnson and celebrity chefs Julia Child and Jacques Pepin are among those who have eaten in the low-key dining room. It doesn't hurt that Delfina's main courses, such as halibut roasted on a fig leaf with sweet corn and Meyer lemon tarragon butter or Chianti-braised short ribs with polenta and gremolata, go for $10 to $16—far below the norm these days. | ||||||||||||||||||
| Foreign
Cinema 2354 Mission St. San Francisco, CA Phone: (415) 648-7600 | French bistro fare may be part of the lure, but the prime reason Geena Davis and Sean Lennon threw parties at this Mission District locale is that it's a great space. The biggest draw? An outdoor seating area where foreign films are projected on the side of an adjoining building. Nearly 200 diners—including recent visitors Tom Waits and Charlize Theron—mingle and munch on frogs' legs, sweetbreads or herb-crusted chicken breasts. | ||||||||||||||||||
| Gary
Danko 800 North Point San Francisco, CA Phone: (415) 749-2060 | Chef/owner Gary Danko is the star at this Fisherman's Wharf restaurant, though the romantic wood-shuttered dining room has hosted A-listers Brendan Fraser and Sharon Stone. Dinner is a prix-fixe three- to five-course "modern classic" masterpiece (from $51 to $70). Selections might include glazed oysters with leeks and Osetra caviar, or Moroccan-spiced squab with orange-cumin carrots. Call now for reservations—it books up months in advance. | ||||||||||||||||||
| Rose
Pistola 532 Columbus Ave. San Francisco, CA Phone: (415) 399-0499 |
Rose Pistola, the James Beard Best New Restaurant Award winner in 1997, pays tribute to the Italian cuisine of the immigrants who first settled in North Beach from the region of Liguria. The menu merges Californian produce — originally brought over and locally cultivated by these early immigrants — and the bounty of the bay with classic, Ligurian recipes. These new Californian Italian dishes include cioppino, a San Franciscan fish stew with local crab, skillet-roasted mussels, and shaved artichokes with fava beans. Chef Reed Hearon — who traveled extensively around Liguria — wanted to stay true to North Beach's roots through not only its cuisine but also its customs. Following Ligurian tradition, many of the dishes at Rose Pistola are served family-style. Presenting a platter of food in an informal and familial way allows everyone at the table to sample the dish and appreciate the beautiful presentation, especially of dishes such as whole striped bass with fennel, potato, and tapenade, or any of the cold antipasti. The sleek and stylish spot has a slightly nautical sensibility, with maritime details and modern gray, yellow, and white tiles. It bustles from noon until midnight with the energy of the area. North Beach, famous for its large number of restaurants and bars that catered to failed Gold Rush prospectors who lived in the area, is still known for its vivacity, good food, and lively bar scene. | ||||||||||||||||||
| The
Slanted Door 584 Valencia St. San Francisco, CA Phone: (415) 861-8032 |
Many people think the Slanted Door, an upscale, chic restaurant in San Francisco's Mission District, serves some of the best Vietnamese food in the country. It brings together authentic home cooking with a high level of sophistication and a dedication to freshness. The irresistible food just gets better with every visit. Charles Phan, the 30-something owner/chef (once an architecture student at UC Berkeley) re-creates the cuisine of his mother's kitchen that he learned as a boy. He is able to blend the various herbs, spices, and vegetables of his homeland and of Northern California to great success. Fresh mint, basil, cilantro, ginger, and curries lay the groundwork for dishes with green pea shoots, squash plants, and local roasted fish and poultry. The modern two-story loft space, adorned with velvet banquettes, large contemporary paintings and stained wooden chairs, offers an amiable "with it" atmosphere that is perfect for people-watching. | ||||||||||||||||||
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