There’s no question that San Francisco can claim a place right beside New York  and New Orleans as a seminal restaurant town.  At the same time that those other cities were building a restaurant culture—Delmonico’s opened in the Wall Street area in 1837 and Antoine’s in the French Quarter in 1840—by the time the Gold Rush was in full swing in Northern California in 1849 the city, then known as Yerba Buena, rushed to feed the newly rich entrepreneurs of the day with a Barbary Coast swagger.

Whenever I visit, then, I try to get to what’s old and new and some in between.  Here’s part one of my report on a visit last month.

 

 

ROOH

333 Brannan Street

415-525-4174

 

    The year-old ROOH is the first restaurant opened outside of Asia by the New Delhi-based Indian Good Times Restaurant group, whose stated goal is to “bring Indian cuisine onto the international map in a way that has never been presented before [by] blending modern cooking techniques applied to Indian cuisine with a tradition going back more than 2000 years.”

    While Indian restaurants have changed measurably in major cities across the U.S., ROOH and its sister restaurant Baar Baar in NYC (see my review below) have really done more than any others to alter perceptions of Indian cuisine, design and décor.  At ROOH, Sujan Sarkar,  Executive Chef at both restaurants, recently awarded Times Chef of the Year in India, is taking full advantage of the Northern California bounty of meat, seafood and provender to create wholly novel dishes always grounded in Indian flavors and cooking techniques.

    The restaurant itself, located in SoMa, sprawls over 3,548 square feet, done in vibrant Indian colors of indigo, Rani pink and turmeric yellow, with very tall ceilings hung with industrial ducts and crystal chandeliers. The rattan chairs and leather booths are very comfortable and the bar lounge is  stunningly lighted, like a set out of Bladerunner. 

    The cocktail program has quite a novel touch: You are presented with a circular graph whose center lists six flavors of  “ancient Ayurveic wisdom”—salty, sour, sweet, bitter, astringent and pungent; the next circle lists the ingredients in cocktails with names like Mustard Old Fashioned, Berry Shikanji and Hyderabad Tonic, all very unusual. So, you can match your cocktail to the flavors of the food you are tasting. With drinks this exotic, you’ll need some guidance.  Then, too, ROOH has an extensive wine list, and Vishvas Sidana knows best which ones go with which dishes.

    The panoply of dishes—many I’d never encountered—runs from small plates like dahi puri flatbread with luscious yogurt mousse, potato, avocado, tamarind gel and raspberry ($10) to paneer chili of crisp shredded kataifi, ginger chutney and lemony achaar pickle gel ($14), each relying on tradition but tasting brighter and more enticing than most versions I’ve had.   Pickled cauliflower comes with an onion uttapam pancake, sour cream and crunchy peanut chutney ($15).

    Tuna, not often seen in Indian cuisine, comes with California avocado, tamarind gel, green mango, togarashi chili powder and delightful puffed rice ($15), while a “gun powder scallop” gets its name from the hot curry oil drizzled on the mollusk with corn curry and a salsify crisp ($19).

    Among the large plates that wowed me were a monkfish done tandoori style with alleppey curry and a rice dumpling ($30) and hearty, nicely fatty beef short ribs curry (below) with baby turnips, rawa semolina and marrow-stuffed kofta and garlic mashed potatoes ( $32). Of course, there are wonderful Indian breads like garlic naan ($5).

    Desserts as well are Western with Eastern flavors added: a carrot halwa cake with cardamon and chocolate with yogurt sorbet, hazelnuts and puffed millet crisp (both $10).

    ROOH is a bellwether restaurant in a city that respects culinary tradition while always encouraging innovation.

 

 

 

EIGHT TABLES BY GEORGE CHEN

8 Kenneth Rexroth Place

415-788-8788

 

    As with ROOH, Asian cuisine is showing its myriad influences at Eight Tables, opened last fall, featuring Chinese shifan tsai, or “private chateau cuisine,” referring to the experience of dining at a private home with a banquet prepared by a highly respected chef who uses the seasons as his guide to ingredients.

    Located on the second floor of the $20 million China Live complex in Chinatown, Eight Tables is reached through a barely lighted back alley entrance, which seems to add to the mystery of what you will soon be experiencing. As you exit the elevator you are cordially greeted by a hostess in a room set with a wonderful 1950s style phonograph that plays old Shanghai jazz, then you enter into a series of eight rooms set for individual parties at beautifully polished tables with brass inlaid Lazy Susans.  Photos of owner and executive chef George Chen’s family are hung on the walls above you.  The service staff is dressed in beige Ralph Lauren suits. Even the chopsticks are embossed, one pair for right-handed guests, one for left-handed.   It’s swank, all right, and has a shadowy cinematic cast.

    Chen has always been in the forefront of authentic Chinese dining experiences in San Francisco, having started at Madame Cecilia Chang’s seminal restaurant, The Mandarin. On his own he opened Betelnut Peiju Wu, an innovative Asian beer house, which I deemed one of the Best New Restaurants of 1996.  Chen then launched the multi-unit Long Life Noodle Company, and turned his focus on Shanghai cuisine at Shanghai 1930. Other concepts followed.  So Eight Tables is a culmination of his career and his goal to give Chinese cuisine the same respect it has in China itself, adding a superb wine, sake and whiskey list to the mix, overseen by Anthony Kim.

Dinner here is a $225 fixed price for about ten courses, with accompanying wines at $125 more.

    I haven’t the space here to detail everything I had, so I will just say that the presentations are spectacular and Taiwanese chef Robin Lin’s ideas can be amazing without being extravagant.  You begin with nine small dishes set on one serving plate, each jewel-like, and you’ll probably forget what the waiter tells you they are. But the principal ingredient becomes apparent as you pop the item into your mouth, which follow a sweet-and-sour and hot pattern.

    Next come Four Seas dumplings filled with, respectively,  osetra caviar, bay scallop, trout roe and sea urchin.  Shao kao’ barbecued duck skin followed, with Iberico ham char sui and a siu yuk pork belly sandwich; black cod was steamed in a banana leaf with bamboo cannelloni, lotus root and eggplant; velvetized chicken (cooked with egg whites) was appointed with black truffles, a soya veal jus and scallion roll but didn’t add up to much flavor; the last savory course was a foie gras potsticker with rice porridge and black sesame dumpling. Then comes a fermented rice sorbet dashed with gogi vinegar and pastry chef Luis Villavelazquez’s chocolate bean cake with rose sorbet.

    I was a bit jetlagged the night I dined at Eight Tables but that didn’t diminish my pleasure over the course of a two-and-a-half-hour meal. I was so constantly surprised and amazed by the presentation, the refinement and the flavors of what I ate that I left feeling elated and wondering what the next menu will be in the next season.

 

 

NEW YORK CORNER
By John Mariani

NOTES FROM THE WINE CELLAR

WHAT I'M DRINKING NOW
By John Mariani

 

LA CREMA SONOMA COAST CHARDONNAY 2016 ($23)—La Crema makes a lot of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, from California and Oregon vineyards, and this is their basic bottling from Sonoma, with 13.5% alcohol. It is a very creamy Chardonnay without the cloying caramel and bitter oakiness so many others have. La Crema makes others more site specific, but at $23 this one is at least as flavorful as Chards twice the price.

 

CHÂTEAU FONBADET PAUILLAC 2012 ($50)—Pauillac in Bordeaux’s Haut-Médoc region is justly famous for its Premier Crus like Lafite-Rothschild, Mouton-Rothschild and Latour, which sell for hundreds of dollars. But you’ll get an entry-level taste of what makes the region such a superb terroir in this charming blend of 60% Cabernet Sauvignon, 15% Cabernet Franc, 20% Merlot, 5% Petit Verdot and a touch of Malbec. It has a long life in it, too.

 

TRIVENTO GOLDEN RESERVE MALBEC 2015 ($21)—While it’s rare that I ever drink the same wine night after night, were I forced to live far from a wineshop, I’d happily repeatedly quaff this rich Malbec from Mendoza made by a young group of vignerons. Winemaker Gérman Di Cesare ages this Malbec for 12 months in French oak, then in bottles for another year. At 14.5% alcohol it has body, structure and plenty of complexity at a good piece. This I could drink many nights in a row.

 

UPSHOT RED WINE BLEND ($28)—Winemaker Justin Seidenfeld  explains on the label at some length and all caps: “UPSHOT (NOUN): THE FINAL OR EVENTUAL POSITIVE OUTCOME OR CONCLUSION OF A DISCUSSION, ACTION, OR SERIES OF EVENTS,” meaning this wine is the end result of a unique experimental blend from Sonoma County, with 44% Zinfandel for body and fruit, 29% Merlot for softness, 15% Malbec for complexity, 7% Petit Verdot for fruity intensity and, “for the fun,” 5% Riesling to provide a floral note.  It really works, and shows that California need not be bound by wholly traditional assemblages.

 

 

HILLOCK ESTATE DISTILLERY SOLERA AGED BOURBON  ($103)--- To be a stickler, many would insist that bourbon can be made only in Bourbon County, Kentucky, but as the makers of Hillock Estate indicate, New York State has been a barley and rye producer since the 1800s, so why not put some of it into a bottle of whiskey? Prohibition shut down the distilleries in the Hudson Valley, but Hillock has revived the industry and done so with an impressive and layered bourbon with a little bite but not the sweetness of some of its competitors’ to the South.

 

MAGNUS HIGHLAND PARK SINGLE MALT SCOTCH WHISKY ($39)—This Highland Park whisky’s label calls it “unapologetically bold” and “bears the soul of our Viking ancestors.” Perhaps, but to me it was simply a delicious, smoke-rich, very peaty sipping Scotch that for a single malt is amazingly well priced. Very good for these cool spring nights and baying at the moon.

 

DEPT. OF WRETCHED EXCESS, PART 7,886

A Tokyo restaurant chain named Stamina Taro Next is making an eating challenge in the form of the “Meaty Mega-sized Stamina Taro Napolitan Spaghetti” (left)--a 4.4-pound bowl of spaghetti topped with a one -pound hamburger patty topped with four thick strips of bacon, and s four pork cutlets on top, weighing in at 8.15 pounds. Anyone who can manage to eat it in 30 minutes or less will get it for free, and will also get a 50,000 yen, or $455, gift certificate.

 

PERHAPS, MADAME, YOU WOULD LIKE A
LEETLE SLAP IN YOUR STUPEED CANADIAN
FACE FOR U-ZEENG ZEE WRONG UTENZEEL?

A French waiter named Guillaume Rey has filed a discrimination complaint with Canada’s Human Rights Tribunal after being fired by the casual dining chain Milestones Grill and Bar for allegedly being “aggressive, rude, and disrespectful” to customers. Guillaume Rey insists he was fired for "being French," which means he "tends to be more direct and expressive" than some servers." The Tribunal denied Rey's request.