Hits from Postrio’s Menus

BREAKFAST: There is just about any juice you’d want to start the day with including freshly squeezed tomato and apple juice ($2). Granola with dried apricots, figs and currants should please the Earthshoe contingent. For others there are various designer pancakes, waffles and omelets as well as a “trio of smoked salmon, sturgeon and white fish on homemade bagels” ($10).

Best of all is a real San Francisco classic, Hangtown Fry, updated in a particularly delicious way. Hangtown Fry, which was invented during the gold rush, is a dish of oysters, bacon and eggs. Here it has turned into an elegant omelet containing delicate oysters, melted cheese and crisp pieces of pancetta. It is served with fresh salsa and lacy little potato cakes. It costs $9, and I’d gladly eat it every morning.

LUNCH: If you don’t have a reservation you can walk into the bar and eat five kinds of pizza including one topped with duck sausage and shiitake mushrooms or another with spicy marinated shrimp, goat cheese and sun-dried tomatoes. They cost $8.50 (the Jewish pizza is $15), and they are better than the ones served at Spago--their crusts are crisper.

You can also eat “baby romaine salad with garlic vinaigrette and Parmesan croutons” (a very nice version of Caesar, $6.50) or gazpacho with Dungeness crab (not, I think, a particularly felicitous combination, $5.50).

Pastas include a truly delicious black pepper fettuccine topped with wild mushrooms ($11.50)--one of those deep brown dishes that makes you think of autumn. There are sandwiches--a club sandwich with smoked lobster arugula and bacon ($12), homemade pastrami ($8)--even a hamburger with homemade ketchup, ($9). Main courses include grilled chicken on mashed potatoes ($11), grilled scallops with olive, basil and olive oil vinaigrette on baby greens ($13) and sauteed shrimp with a white bean salad ($13).

DINNER: Most of the entrees seem like Spago without baby vegetables. There is the wonderful Chinese-style duck ($18.50), familiar roasted Sonoma lamb (here served with a black olive sauce, $19.50), and whole grilled red snapper (at Spago they bake it in the pizza oven). Maybe Spago should consider adopting the delicious spinach and soft egg ravioli served with a whole grilled quail ($9.50); it was especially delicious.

The best-selling appetizer is crab cakes, served with a smoked red pepper sauce ($9.50). I didn’t much like it--the cakes tasted primarily of bell peppers. There is also a Spago-like terrine of duck liver with grilled country bread ($12), a Spago-like Mediterranean fish soup ($7.50), and that delightful marinated tuna ($9.50). Don’t miss the grilled eggplant with mozzarella--it includes the best homemade salami you’ve ever eaten ($7.50).

Desserts--there are lots of them--sound wonderful. Caramel apple pie with apple caramel sauce and ice cream. Marjolaine. Creme brulee with berries . And so forth. Here you can’t help wishing that Postrio were a little more like Spago--none of the desserts has the sweet intensity of the desserts served down south.