Leather Storrs: Dining Out in San Francisco

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Thursday, May 21, 2015

Leather Storrs, GoLocalPDX Contributor

Dining out is a critical tool for chefs. We go out to see friends, steal ideas and measure ourselves against the competition. In most cases this is a delightful and enriching endeavor. Even when a meal knocks your socks off, the fear generated by another restaurant’s mastery is fire and inspiration. 

Nicely, travelling to another city removes a certain amount of the local competition aspect. Invariably there will be techniques, ingredients and plating styles that are new and invigorating. I just returned from San Francisco where I experienced not only wonder and inspiration, but also confusion and intimidation in a way that made me feel that I was either completely out of touch or that I was being filmed for some culinary gag show.

Northern California can rightly claim the credit for “California cuisine”: Big, colorful, fresh plates of seasonal foods, often grilled and rarely fussy. Chez Panisse, Zuni Café, Stars and Olivetto are some of the big names responsible for the style that has slowly bled into the rest of the nation. Zuni café is my wife’s favorite restaurant in the world. Its roast chicken and bread salad remains an epic and immensely satisfying signature- simple, bold and elemental. At its best, California cuisine is about shepherding the finest seasonal ingredients rather than manipulating them.

This kind of cooking- simple, rustic, ingredient driven- is paradoxically difficult. There is very little margin for error. A muffed technique or a sub-par vegetable becomes a glaring liability. Perhaps that’s why so many newer California restaurants goose their local, seasonal offerings with smoke and culture. Take “The Progress,” for example- the sister restaurant of the highly regarded “State Bird Provisions.” Their hook is prix fixe, family style, homey sounding dishes tarted up with a global pantry and modern plating. Think of a pile of something attempting to escape a handmade earthenware bowl by collecting on the edge while a forlorn pool flecked with oil and micro something does its best to seem connected to the pile. 

If you don’t go all in for the whole experience, you’re welcome to sample each dish a la carte in the bar. They are all $10, which sadly, is not enough to warrant a reasonable amount of food. Butter clams with kimchi piccata? Yes please, but wait… how do the four of us share one clam? Morels with ramp jus and smoked hollandaise consisted of 3 sandy fungi, cloaked in rich, acrid foam, making a break for the rim. Porcini with ham and wagon wheel croquettes featured two teeny fried cheese nuggets in a mess of cold mushrooms and wet ham. Wagon wheel is the cheese, not the diameter.

The faults of The Progress were at least understandable. It’s a young restaurant, clearly skilled, but wobbly. Ordering a la carte undermined their sense of pacing and the idea of a thoughtful progression of flavors. Yes there were technical flaws and the portions were laughably small, but I understood the spirit of the shop. Not so with Bar Tartine, the dining room connected to the esteemed Tartine bakery.

What the hell is cultured celery root?! “Well,” explained our server, “there are loads of natural yeasts here because of the bakery.” She trailed off as if that explained it. And? Are they teaching Art history? No, the celery root is being fermented, which is all the rage. Said culture was tasty- a cool puree of tangy celery root in a pool of fennel oil- but maddeningly highfalutin. Sort of like their Kefir butter with slow fermented buttermilk. Keeping with the culture, here was the dish that floored me: Trout with brown rice and yogurt. Yep, every organic bodybuilders go-to for shredded abs. But seriously, don’t come at me with brown rice and yogurt, bro. I don’t eat out to get punished.

Now I’m just being jerky. The Tartine bread is justifiably famous and was a fantastic foil for a superior beef tartare. And while I didn’t particularly care for the smoked potatoes with black garlic (fermented!), I admire the kitchen’s commitment to slow food and healthy living (their sprouted lentil croquettes offset the ice cream I ate earlier that day). More importantly, they thrive in a notoriously picky and sophisticated market that obviously wants the culture they’re pushing. And besides, I’m the dope who made the reservation.

Leather Storrs is an Oregon native who has served 20 years in professional kitchens. He owns a piece of two area restaurants: Noble Rot and Nobleoni at Oregon College of Art and Craft, where he yells and waves arms. He quietly admits to having been a newspaper critic in Austin, Texas and Portland.

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Related Slideshow: Where to Dine Out in Portland’s 10 Hottest Restaurant Neighborhoods

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