Beguiled, dish by dish

THE San Francisco restaurant scene has taken a big hit in the last few years. First there was the dot.com dive, then the Sept. 11 attacks and no tourists, coupled with the economic downturn. Restaurants began to close their doors, and for a long while new ones were not turning up with any regularity, and those that were played it very safe.

But a creative food scene like the Bay Area’s couldn’t stay down for long. In past years, when rents were breathtakingly high, young chefs simply moved into unlikely neighborhoods, such as South of Market or the dicier Tenderloin.

Now, some of the city’s most innovative restaurants are cropping up in locales far from the city center -- on Potrero Hill, out on the Avenues, and in the Marina, even Pacific Heights, areas that never had their fair share of good or even interesting restaurants.

All in all, it’s a nice moment in the city by the bay. The success of the Ferry Building Marketplace is sending the city into a frenzy of cooking and eating. High-profile restaurants are showing signs of making a comeback too. Restaurant Michael Mina opened July 9 in the Westin St. Francis. George Morrone launched an all-tartare restaurant called Tartare on July 14. And among other news, Ron Siegel of Masa’s is moving over to the Ritz-Carlton.

But the big news is that great little restaurants are opening in neighborhoods all over the city. What’s interesting is how specific they are: Basque or Neapolitan or Moroccan, say, rather than general-purpose Mediterranean. And they’re brave. We simply don’t have the equivalent here in L.A. San Francisco’s new neighborhood restaurants seem to be doing so well, in fact, that nobody would care a bit if the tourists never found them. In fact, it might make it easier to get in.

That’s certainly the case with months-old Quince. Until recently, you could get a reservation on the odd night with a couple of weeks’ notice. Then, it got written up. And written up. When I called last week, the recording informed me that reservations were being taken a month in advance of the date requested -- a la the French Laundry or Chez Panisse.

Tiny, but seductive

QUINCE is a small place, but it’s also quite delicious, a surprise in the midst of Pacific Heights’ grandes maisons. Set at the street level of a two-story Victorian corner storefront, its discrete presence is signaled only by persimmon-colored awnings with the name Quince.

With just 15 tables, it’s so small that if your table’s not ready, the waiter will send you around the corner to a hotel bar to wait. But when you’re seated, what a lovely surprise -- more like a small Paris restaurant than anything else I can name, with guests cosseted at corner tables or velvet banquettes, quietly conversing beneath four milky Venetian glass chandeliers. Quince is owned by a couple, Michael and Lindsay Tusk. He cooked at Chez Panisse in Berkeley and Oliveto in Oakland; she ran the front of the house at Boulevard.

The menu is small, written each day. After one meal there, I would have loved to have gone back again. And again. As a first course, Monterey Bay anchovy and shellfish salad is a graceful composition of sliced scallops, steamed mussels and squid decorated with house-cured anchovies rolled up like pearls and dotted around the edges of the plate. With a splash of good olive oil and a squeeze of lemon, it’s perfection.

Pastas -- the secondi -- are exquisite. No surprise there. Tusk worked with Paul Bertolli at Oliveto, a fiercely intelligent chef with a purist’s take on Italian cuisine. I loved the delicate handmade garganelli sauced with prosciutto cut like matchsticks, English peas and white asparagus cream. Inch-wide pappardelle sluiced in the juices of marvelously tender and flavorful pork shoulder is fabulous, and the greenest spinach ravioli are filled, simply, with sour, tangy fonduta (melted cheese) and napped in butter.

The star of the main courses that night was a Hoffman farm chicken with tiny wrinkly morels piled on top. Roasted Liberty duck with Frog Hollow Farm Rainier cherries mingled with the duck’s juices was a close second. And how can you not love a restaurant that has such a seductive little wine list, good wineglasses and coconut cake with strawberries and cream? Sensual and unfussy, this is real food.

Over in Berkeley, Christopher Lee, who was co-chef downstairs at Chez Panisse for 10 years, has opened an Italian place called Eccolo in the midst of the eclectic 4th Street shopping complex. He takes no prisoners with his gutsy and sensual California-Italian cooking. His menu reads like a wish list for lovers of rustic Italian cooking.

Charcuterie is a passion with Lee, so I went straight to his incredibly tasty bollito gelatina, made with boiled brisket and tongue with bollito broth and herbs, suspended in gelatina and sliced like a pate. Strips of tripe of different textures and cuts braised in wine, broth and a little tomato is utterly seductive. And fritto misto is more like tempura in style, a collection of wonderful bits of fried squid, green beans and other vegetables, plus zucchini blossoms stuffed with mozzarella.

Pasta dishes didn’t seem as strong, or maybe it was just that day’s menu. But a massive grilled chop of pasture-fed veal with risotto alla milanese and a side dish of new potatoes cooked under embers and Tuscan white beans are sublime. And every piece of bird or meat or fish was impeccably sourced. Lee has a way with fava beans, nettles and other good things from local farmers too. Come dessert, he keeps it simple. There’s always house-made gelato, some kind of fruit like tangerines and dates and a trio of slender cornmeal and anise biscotti.

Lusty Campania

Across the bay in San Francisco’s Marina District is another bold new Italian restaurant called A 16. Named for the autostrada that links Campania to Naples, A 16 specializes in the glorious (and relatively unknown) cooking of that part of Italy. Even the wine list put together by owner Shelley Lindgren focuses entirely on the south, which is a treat. Chef / partner Christophe Hille, who trained as a pizzaiolo in Naples, turns out wonderfully appealing dishes such as tuna conserva and fresh chickpea salad or a zucchini salad with cerignola olives, pecorino and wild arugula. I fell hard for his earthy cranberry bean zuppa studded with little pork meatballs and braised dandelions. He cooks a mean tripe too, flavored with white wine, onions and tomato. And pastas go for the gold with mezza (half, or short) rigatoni sauced with tender stewed octopus, Genovese style. Or freshly made scialatielli (an extruded pasta that looks a lot like spaghetti but has a softer texture) tossed with dried fava beans, cherry tomatoes and black olives. It’s all very lusty. And when I tasted his spicy, coarsely textured fennel sausage with grilled bread, and the pork breast braised in the wood-burning oven until the meat could practically be cut with a spoon, I wanted to move right in.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get the chance to try Hille’s Neapolitan-style pizzas. But that’s only because I’d rushed to try Pizzetta 211 out on 23rd Avenue on the way to dinner at A 16. It’s such a sweet little pizzeria: only a counter, a handful of tables and, out front under a tree, a few more Moroccan-tiled tables where you can enjoy wines by the glass, pretty salads and any of half a dozen pizzette from that day’s menu. Ingredients are from local producers, and organic whenever possible. A flavorful crust may be topped with something as classic as tomato, mozzarella and basil, or with roasted spring torpedo onions, salty sweet prosciutto, peppercress and a little Redwood Hill Farm goat cheese. One version featured chanterelles and pea shoots topped with a farm egg. For dessert, there’s almost always saffron biscotti with a glass of vin santo, among other pleasures.

All over the Bay Area, small plates are the rage, and have been for quite some time. Each new restaurant strives to trump the ones before. And several chefs have taken the idea to a new level. Mattin Noblia, who was chef de cuisine at Gerald Hirigoyen’s Basque restaurant Piperade, has just opened Lluna Basque, a tapas place near the Financial District, and Hirigoyen has opened Bocadillos in Jackson Square, neither of which I had a chance to try.

At Cortez in the theater district, co-executive chefs Quinn and Karen Hatfield (between the two of them, they have worked at many of San Francisco’s top restaurants, including Postrio, plus Spago in Los Angeles) offer a beguiling small-plate menu in a stylish and sophisticated hotel restaurant. Flavors are bright and pure, the inspiration Mediterranean. Dishes range from a terrific foie gras terrine served with a chunky orange marmalade and grilled bread to the day’s crudo (fresh, marinated raw fish) or a bright salad of frisee and smoked trout with warm fingerling potatoes, avocado and apple. Do not pass up the delicate ricotta ravioli sauced with fresh peas and mint and a touch of preserved grapefruit or the prawns a la plancha with deep-flavored Basque pimentos and lemon garlic butter. The fries with two mayonnaises, one flavored with the Tunisian hot sauce harissa, the other with the Middle Eastern spice za’atar, are another must have. Playful desserts include milkshake shots for two and sugar and spice beignets with Valrhona chocolate fondue.

Pluots and quail

In the Marina, the talented Luke Sung, who has a hit with Isa, his first restaurant in the neighborhood, has just opened Lux, featuring French-Asian small plates. This place is young and lively, with a sound level to match. There’s not much in the way of decor, but for a quick bite, it’s really fun. And somehow everything is so delicious, you end up staying on and eating more than you planned. Think black tiger prawn tempura with salt, pepper and lobster oil or a marvelously subtle tartare of grass-fed beef with lemon, shallots and chile paste brightened with mint. Honey-spiced quail is set off by Pluot (that juicy plum-apricot cross) and pear. This is all pretty thrilling stuff for the Marina, or anywhere else, for that matter.

As comebacks go, this one has been quietly building. San Franciscans are hungry, and the city’s restaurateurs are doing a great job of enticing them back.

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New in town

A 16, 2355 Chestnut St. (between Scott and Divisadero streets), San Francisco; (415) 771-2216. Open for lunch Wednesday through Friday; for dinner daily. Soup and pasta, $8 to $13; fish and meat, $16 to $19.50.

Cortez, 550 Geary St. (between Taylor and Jones streets), San Francisco; (415) 292-6360. Dinner nightly until 9:30. Small plates, $6 to $17. Cocktails, $9.

Eccolo, 1820 4th St., Berkeley; (510) 644-0444. Dinner Wednesday to Monday. Entrees, $17 to $32.

Lux, 2263 Chestnut St., San Francisco; (415) 567-2998. Dinner Monday through Saturday. Small dishes, $5 to $16.

Pizzetta 211, 211 23rd Ave., San Francisco; (415) 379-9880. Lunch and dinner, Wednesday through Sunday. Pizzetta, $9 to $13.25. No reservations. Cash only.

Quince, 1701 Octavia, San Francisco; (415) 775-8500. Dinner nightly. Pastas, $14 to $17; entrees, $24 to $29. Reservations accepted one month in advance of date requested.