conversation while you watch the pizzaiolos toss your pie. Outside a crowd has gathered, waiting patiently, pleasantly, on a sidewalk that used to be so lonely and forlorn at night.
5008 Telegraph Ave., Oakland, 510-652-4888.
Ame
At first blush, Ame’s story has the makings of a cautionary tale. After years of running Terra, a sweet restaurant in St. Helena, Hiro Sone and Lissa Doumani are drawn by the siren song of the city and open a big, spendy place in the flashy, splashy St. Regis Hotel.
It’s a plot line suggestive of soulless expansion: a bloated reproduction of a wine country restaurant, Terra on ’roids.
But Sone and Doumani have scaled this slippery slope to great heights, selling their names to a corporate bidder without selling out. The husband-and-wife team now have a terrible commute, but they use the two locations to their advantage, shuttling between St. Helena and San Francisco to give Ame their unique spin.
Ame took some inspiration from Terra, including its executive chef, Critics’ Choice Rising Star, Greg Dunmore (see page 114). Sone’s signature dish of sake-marinated cod with shrimp dumplings in shiso broth is here, too. But the Asian accents are stronger at Ame, and the sleek sashimi bar aptly complements the upscale urban atmosphere.
On many evenings, you can spot Sone in the open kitchen plating poke—a sesame-seasoned blend of whatever fresh fish is in stock—or slivering sea bream sashimi over monkfish liver, the ocean’s equivalent of foie gras.
Service is sharp, and the eclectic sake list matches up with some of the city’s most unusual food. By the end of the evening, you’re left with an impression: this is a restaurant run by chefs who care too much to just cash out. 689 Mission St., S.F., 415-284-4040.
Redd
In his young but already well-traveled career (Spago in Beverly Hills, Daniel in New York, Auberge du Soleil in Napa Valley, plus stints overseas), Richard Reddington acquired a reputation among his peers: he was an immense talent who had failed to find the perfect fit. Then, late last year, Reddington discovered the ideal restaurant. It just happens to be his own.
Reddington’s place stands on Washington Street in Yountville, a stone’s throw from the French Laundry. Redd has an easygoing air, where a bearded guy in blue jeans with the look of a bouncer can bump up to the bar and order a bottle of rare bordeaux.
At Auberge du Soleil, among other gigs, Reddington oversaw a mammoth operation—one that wasn’t his. At Redd, you can tell he’s put his hands on the menu. There’s a spring to his cooking,
a subtlety and sophistication in even the most simple-sounding dishes, such as roast chicken with white beans and Meyer lemon.
You can order à la carte, but the chef’s inspiration is most apparent in his tasting menu,
a five- or nine-course volley that showcases his versatility. Hamachi sashimi over sticky rice leads to butternut squash ravioli, and potato gnocchi with chanterelles turns up in advance of monkfish saltimbocca, the fish wrapped in prosciutto and laid out on salsify ragout.
Running his own place, Reddington comes across as a chef of redoubled enthusiasm, a richly skilled cook grateful for the chance to do things right. His five-course tasting menu is well worth $70 ($100 with the wonderful wine pairings by Critic’s Choice Best Wine Director Chris Blanchard—see page 118). Not to try it once would be an act of shortsighted self-deprivation, like telling Michelangelo your ceiling doesn’t need touching up. 6480 Washington St., Yountville, 707-944-2222.
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Range
With its crisp, compact menu, offered in a correspondingly compact dining room, Range
is a restaurant of perfect pitch and scale.
Phil and Cameron West (he of Bacar, she of Delfina) prove themselves attuned to the tastes of the Mission, a ’hood that welcomes well-groomed restaurants but remains wary of anything too high-end. The Wests walk deftly down the middle. This is seasonal California cuisine, sprung from local farmers’ markets.
That kind of food can leave you wondering why you paid eight bucks for a plate of tangerines. Not so at Range. Prices are in keeping with the scruffy-chic self-image of the Mission, which means entrées hover around $20, though the cooking often tastes like it’s worth far more. You get the gist quickly: tomato soup, sweetened with a fried squash blossom; goat cheese and sorrel ravioli layered in a shallow bowl. But the subtlety of the flavors impresses you over time. There are quaint country touches—slow-cooked halibut in fava bean broth, served in a miniature cocotte—but the service and atmosphere are urbane. And desserts made by former punk-rock guitarist and Critics’ Choice Best Pastry Chef Michelle Polzine (see page 116), such as pluot tart with cardamom ice cream, deserve mainstream success.
You often hear grousing about changes in the Mission, how new money has softened its edge. That may be true; still, if Range represents the way things are headed, Mission protectionists may end up concluding that change has an upside after all. 842 Valencia St., S.F., 415-282-8283.
Canteen
There they were, a few months after the restaurant opened: local critics Michael Bauer and Patricia Unterman eating simultaneously in separate booths in a dining room not much bigger than a shoebox. Chef Dennis Leary wore a worried look, but not because he had tastemakers in his midst.
That look is his usual expression. And it’s less an indication of concern than of care; the chef tends to his minuscule kitchen with the fixed gaze of a man trying to bend a spoon with his mind.
Of all the many things to like about Canteen, Leary is what leaps out first. He’s the focused presence behind the bright green counter, whirling like a dervish, the former Rubicon chef who turned a coffee shop into one of the best restaurants to open in this city in years.
Though Canteen has received national press, Leary pays little heed to the fuss. His California-French restaurant, done up as an avant-garde diner, remains intensely local, so much so that the chef sets aside one night a month to make dinner just for
his regulars.
Leary has a hand in everything that comes out of the kitchen, from the condiments to the coffee cake. “To my mind, a chef who doesn’t cook is not a chef. I want to be back there making things, getting burns and calluses on my hands,” he says. He makes a lovely veal blanquette, but his most stunning dish might be asparagus and fennel salad with
peas and pea puree, topped with a spooning of verjus sorbet: it’s a flush of spring frosted with a light winter chill.
It’s food as art. Food as metaphor, which is fitting. At Canteen, what you get is so much more than what shows up on the plate. 817 Sutter St., S.F., 415-928-8870.
Sea Salt
What started with Lalime’s, a well-loved Cal-Med restaurant in Berkeley, has blossomed into an East Bay mini-empire. It’s run by the Krikorian clan, who’ve put their faith in the pithy restaurant concept.
Sometimes the strategy goes over well (Fonda, Latin small plates). Sometimes not (T-Rex, overpriced barbecue). At Sea Salt, they’ve gotten almost everything right.
There’s a faintly cutesy Finding Nemo theme to the decor. But they don’t harpoon you with it. This is no Spenger’s. And the food, sharp and simple, keeps your focus on the plate.
The menu takes a two-lantern tack: pretty much everything arrives by sea. Much of it is
shellfish, sustainably selected and treated with a highbrow-lowbrow touch. A sweet lobster roll, big and buttery, rises above its humble New England background. The BLT, meantime, might be the East Bay’s finest sandwich. It’s a modernist take on the diner standard: bacon, lettuce, and pan-seared trout.
Sea Salt sells a package, but the package works. The restaurant blends in smoothly on an upward-looking stretch of San Pablo Avenue, a block that, for all its new polish, is still more patchouli than Pottery Barn. Most important, the Krikorians tend to the smallest details, right down to the housemade ketchup accompanying the cornmeal-battered fish-and-chips.
Yes, they’re out to lure you with a catchy concept, but they’re offering more than an empty hook. 2512 San Pablo Ave., Berkeley, 510-883-1720.