Going to San Francisco : Where Should I Eat?

Now that I no longer live in Northern California, I seem to be sending an inordinate number of friends off to San Francisco for a few days. I enjoy pulling out a map of the city and marking it up with all my old haunts--coffeehouses, bookstores, eccentric shops, flea markets, farmers markets, picnic spots, long walks. Then comes the pleasurable business of deciding where to send them to eat. I can easily get carried away. If they’ve got three nights, I’ve got 10 restaurants. (Well, it is hard to get into some of them on short notice.) I do, however, custom-tailor the list to budget, personality and circumstance. And this fall, due to a rash of recent restaurant openings, I’ve added a few new names.

Still at the head of the class is Chez Panisse--upstairs or down. (If you don’t reserve well ahead for Jean-Pierre Moulles extraordinary cooking in the more formal downstairs restaurant, you will definitely be eating in the upstairs cafe.) But not everybody is ambitious enough to make the trek across the bay to Berkeley, even though by L.A. standards this commute is a piece of cake.

When I mull over the restaurants in San Francisco I love, though, it turns out most of them are French. French restaurants have been a presence since the city’s early years. These days, it’s not the formal French cooking of Masa’s or Fleur de Lys that intrigues me, but the earthier bistros and cafes. The fact that I don’t have a single Italian restaurant on my list says a great deal about the difference between San Francisco and Los Angeles. (If I weren’t restricting this list to San Francisco, Oliveto in Oakland, where former Chez Panisse chef Paul Bertolli is now cooking Tuscan country fare, would be enthusiastically included.) Or maybe it’s that in Los Angeles I miss a certain kind of sensual French cooking. And when I do make a brief foray back to San Francisco, these are a few of the places I look forward to visiting.

* Zuni Cafe. After Chez Panisse, I think first of 15-year-old Zuni Cafe on Market Street. Everyone I’ve ever sent to this eccentric, beloved place has fallen in love with Zuni’s mix of old and new San Francisco (society meets artsy South-of-Market) and earthy French-Mediterranean cooking. The kitchen is ruled by Judy Rodgers, whose fate was decided when she spent a year as a high school exchange student living with the family of the late three-star chef Jean Troisgros in Burgundy.

Here, there is a required menu: First, a glass of Veuve Clicquot brut and an iced platter of raw shellfish from the little stand perched on the sidewalk outside, just like in Paris. Oysters, clams and periwinkles are served with crusty sourdough loaves from Acme (the Bay Area equivalent of La Brea Bakery). Then you have to have the house-cured anchovies with slivers of celery and Parmesan, a comforting bowl of porridge-like polenta with a dollop of mascarpone , feathery light ricotta and spinach gnocchi, perhaps some kind of fish braised in the wood-burning brick oven. But always, always the crisp-skinned roast chicken for two with a Tuscan bread salad doused with Champagne vinaigrette. Travelers take note: Zuni is open virtually all day--even for lunch on Saturday.

* Restaurant LuLu and LuLu Bis. Restaurant LuLu, in the burgeoning South-of-Market area not far from the new Yerba Buena Gardens Center for the Arts, has been a runaway hit since the day it opened nearly two years ago. Inspired by Zuni, LuLu is a much bigger place, one notch down in price, with a wood-burning pizza oven and wood-fired rotisserie as focal points. Chef/owner Reed Hearon, who worked with Mark Miller at the Coyote Cafe in Santa Fe, turns out rustic family-style dishes from the French and Italian Riviera.

I’ve had some very appealing dishes here, mostly first courses like the plump, juicy iron skillet-roasted mussels, fried artichokes with Parmesan, wood oven-roasted Portobello mushroom with fresh corn-studded polenta. Zero in on the grilled spot prawns with romesco sauce too. Side dishes such as olive oil mashed potatoes and Romano beans with lemon and olive oil are good, but I haven’t been all that impressed with the main courses. The very rotisserie items that look so enticing--the squab wrapped in pancetta and served with brilliant green fava beans and crinkly morel mushrooms, the rosemary chicken or the pork loin with fennel, garlic and olive oil--just don’t have that much flavor. For dessert, there’s sometimes a refreshing trompe l’oeil wedge of melon ice.

LuLu is actually two restaurants (three, if you count the adjoining cafe where you can get breakfast, take-out items, antipasti and a quick dinner). Next door is the much smaller LuLu Bis, where Hearon offers a three- or four-course prix fixe meal with several choices at $21 or $27. You eat family style at long communal tables, much the way you did at San Francisco’s traditional Basque restaurants.

* Fringale. Slang for “the urge to eat,” Fringale (pronounced frin-GAL) is a highly appropriate name for this companionable South-of-Market bistro. It is a tiny slip of a place, always crowded, very French, with a terrific price-quality ratio and utterly delicious French bistro food. It is also tremendously popular, so it’s difficult to get a table on short notice. (You can, however, eat at the bar.)

The chef is Gerald Hirigoyen from Biarritz, France; the waiters are French, a little brusque, but very authentic, non? The smart little wine list has some gems like Fonsalette, the Cotes du Rhone from Chateau Rayas. Start with a classic frisee salad with warm bacon dressing or the immensely satisfying platter of duck confit, smoked duck breast and a slab of unctuous pink foie gras . Next comes a heap of fragrant steamed mussels garnished with fried garlic and parsley, a truly wonderful confit of duck leg almost hidden beneath a hillock of tiny French lentils or slow-braised veal short ribs, tender and gelatinous, with thick strips of parsnip. I dream about Hirigoyen’s marinated roast rack of lamb; it’s that flavorful. Don’t forget a side of green beans or comforting gratin of potatoes and cream. And for dessert: almondy gateau basque and a divine cherry clafoutis .

* Bizou. A few doors down from Fringale is a moderately priced corner bistro with the affectionate word “Bizou” (little kiss), spelled out in tall old-fashioned French block letters. A profusion of sweet-smelling herbs and lavenders spill from the window boxes. Inside, the high-ceiling space has been painted a glorious shade of goldenrod. A small bar, a couple of old paintings, a vase of lilies set high on a shelf, faux bamboo chairs with irises stenciled onto the wooden seats complete the endearing picture of a modest bistro in some far-flung corner of Paris.

Chef/owner Loretta Keller’s heartfelt cooking evokes the tastes and smells of Provence.

Her wonderful little salads and first courses interest me more than the main courses. I’m certainly not going to pass up the dreamy house-cured salt cod layered with potatoes and onions and cream or the plate of violet Provencal-style octopus and the pasta called orzo scented with winter savory for mere grilled duck breast or tuna. One night the small, appealing menu included warm fava bean and artichoke salad strewn with nasturtium petals and shaved pecorino, a velvety terrine of rabbit and duck livers and a soup of pureed grilled vegetables loaded with what looked like baby clams, but were actually . . . cockles! And I do love the beef cheek “Sainte-Menehoulde” (yes, indeed), marinated in red wine, braised slowly and then finished off with a crisp coating of mustard and bread crumbs--perfect with a Gigondas or Chateauneuf-du-Pape rouge. Follow it with summer bread pudding stained blood red with berries--not really French, but then Keller is refreshingly undogmatic.

* Bistro M. Ebullient entrepreneur/author/chef Michel Richard, who jets around the country opening offshoots of his celebrated Los Angeles restaurant Citrus, has moved in on San Francisco. This summer he opened his latest place, Bistro M, in the stylish new Hotel Milano next door to Nordstrom downtown. It’s a long skinny space with a striking painted mural overhead running the entire length of the restaurant. The operative word here is bistro; don’t expect a menu as ambitious as his L.A. restaurant Citrus. While at this point it doesn’t seem the food will set the town on fire, Richard and chef Anthony Pels are doing some very nice things. I could happily lunch on the “charcuterie tower,” three tiers of salami, ruddy prosciutto and country-style duck pate served with rough-textured, crusty bread. The two are to be commended for offering a real cheese course, your choice of four or six cheeses, including a good Roquefort and tete de moins , a hard cheese served in ruffled shavings. The bistro’s menu is strong on straightforward French comfort food such as a lovely platter of steamed vegetables with a little crock of aioli or boudin parmentier: crumbled homemade blood sausage topped with buttery potato puree. At lunch, Bistro M offers a three-course menu for just $15 (green salad, duck confit, mirabelle plums with vanilla-bean ice cream, par example). Desserts from this master patissier are worth every calorie.

* Alain Rondelli. Another favorite of mine, Alain Rondelli is a savvy neighborhood French restaurant in the Richmond district, between Golden Gate Park and the Marina. Since he left Ernie’s to open his own place last year, the Paris-born chef, who worked six years as second-in-command to Marc Meneau at his three-star restaurant in Burgundy, has been putting in long hours behind the stove at this 48-seat restaurant. I know I’ll find things such as mussels in an orange-and-saffron-scented broth, perfect slabs of foie gras sandwiched between slices of tender brioche, tripe simmered all night long in red wine and rich, concentrated pot au feu made with lamb, instead of beef. When he first opened, the space was a bit stark; it’s much more comfortable now. And a good thing, too, since Rondelli is now offering a 20-course (yes, that’s 20) Menu Ambroisie that takes about five or six hours to eat. He prepares this Gargantuan meal only on Wednesdays, Thursdays or Sundays by reservation three weeks ahead. Initially, he would prepare it for a minimum of four; now it’s just two. The price for this grande bouffe is $150 per person.

* Rubicon. When New York restaurateur Drew Nieporent of Manhattan’s celebrated le Montrachet comes to town to open a restaurant with celebrity investors such as Robert de Niro, Robin Williams and Francis Ford Coppola in tow, it creates quite a stir. Rubicon, in fact, takes its name from director and winery owner Coppola’s flagship Napa Valley Cabernet. The chef is Traci Des Jardins, who cooked at Joachim Splichal’s Patina in Los Angeles and most recently at Elka in San Francisco. The wine director is Larry Stone from Charlie Trotter in Chicago, one of the top sommeliers in the country. Rubicon’s two-story space in the heart of the financial district looks like a buttoned-down banker’s restaurant, reminiscent of San Francisco’s historic Jack’s or Sam’s Grill--but without the patina. I’ll brave the austere decor for the wines: It’s thrilling to see so many hard-to-find wines all on one intelligently conceived list.

Des Jardins’ Splichal-influenced menu--is less adventurous. Dishes such as scallops with truffled mashed potatoes in a buttery, rich sauce or filet of beef with big slices of grilled Portobello are clearly designed with wine in mind. And to finish off that bottle of Pinot noir, there’s a respectable cheese plate with warm walnut raisin bread.

* The Heights. Charles Solomon, who cooked at Bouley in New York, was chef at a wonderful little restaurant called Geordy’s in an alley off Union Square. That closed last year; now he’s back as chef/owner (with partner David Wartell) at a new place, The Heights, set in a romantic Moorish-inspired house in Presidio Heights. Its three intimate dining rooms are furnished with candlelit tables and comfortable chairs slipcovered in a black-and-white vegetable print. The waiters wear elegant waistcoats to match. This is a restaurant for grown-ups, quiet enough to converse over a leisurely dinner.

The guy can cook. One night’s ameuse geule was gutsy, warm fresh sardines in balsamic vinegar jolted with lime and grapefruit. Then we had a belon oyster stew with fingerling potatoes, leeks and cream and a stunning warm lobster salad with bitter braised endive and a feisty horseradish cream. He served skate in a beautifully modulated tomato-caper sauce and superb baby lamb cooked three ways. Desserts are equally well crafted; he even makes his own dainty chocolates.

* Hayes Street Grill. For a quintessential San Francisco experience, I fancy the Hayes Street Grill at lunch when light streams in the skylights. It is a wonderful restaurant for pristinely fresh fish prepared with skill and respect. Since reinventing the San Francisco grill in 1979, along with more creative fare, Hayes Street has offered a selection of plain grilled fish with a choice of classic sauces. A recent summer lunch stands out in my mind: a marvelously delicate fritto misto (mixed fry) of tiny fried calamari, pale yellow wax beans and deep green beans and an assortment of squash accompanied by a gloriously garlicky aioli; Tuscan-style sand sole with lemon and rosemary, thumb-sized artichokes and knobbly fingerling potatoes; sweet, custardy sand dabs meuniere , cooked on the bone and served with a pile of brassy gold fries. And then a blackberry ice so intense, three baskets of berries must have gone into one serving.

* Postrio. Wolfgang Puck’s sole San Francisco restaurant Postrio has been a hot reservation ever since it opened in 1989. When you call for a dinner reservation, a recorded voice advises callers that one of the “reservationists” will be with you shortly. Since we’ve got ample chance to sample Puck’s cooking in Los Angeles, bypass all that bother and go instead to breakfast at Postrio--that’s a Puck meal you can’t get in L.A. No reservations; just waltz right in and right down that grand staircase. You get the same swell service, a large table to spread out the juicy bits of the Chronicle and all the time in the world to tuck in a splendid breakfast: homemade duck sausages, heavenly soft-scrambled eggs loaded with lobster and mascarpone, hand-chopped corned beef hash topped with perfect poached eggs. . . . And this ideal restaurant experience sets you back just a fraction of the price of dinner.

GUIDEBOOK / San Francisco Eats

Alain Rondelli, 126 Clement St. Closed Monday, Tuesday and lunch. Entrees $14 to $23; six-course tasting menu $45 per person; 20-course Menu Ambroisie $150 per person; tel. (415) 387-0408.

Bistro M, Hotel Milano, 55 Fifth St. Open for lunch and dinner daily. Entrees $13 to $24; three-course prix fixe lunch $15; tel. (415) 543-5554.

Bizou, 598 4th St. Closed Sundays and Saturdays at lunch. Entrees $10.25 to $17; tel. (415) 543-2222.

Fringale, 570 4th St. Closed Sundays and Saturday at lunch. Entrees $9 to $15; tel. (415) 543-0573.

Hayes Street Grill, 324 Hayes St. Closed for lunch only Saturday and Sunday. Entrees $12 to $18; tel. (415) 863-5545.

Postrio, 545 Post St. Breakfast Monday to Friday 7 to 10; weekend brunch 9 to 2. Breakfast entrees $7.50 to $11; tel. (415) 776-7825.

Restaurant LuLu, 816 Folsom. Closed Sundays at lunch only. Entrees $8.50 to $16; three- or four-course prix fixe dinner, Tuesday through Saturday, next door at LuLu Bis $21 and $27; tel. (415) 495-5775.

Rubicon, 558 Sacramento St. Closed Sundays and Saturday at lunch. Entrees $16.50 to $24: three-course prix fixe menu $29; tel. (415) 434-4100.

The Heights, 3235 Sacramento St. Closed Mondays and at lunch. Entrees $17 to $23; six-course market menu $50; tel. (415) 474-8890.

Zuni Cafe, 1658 Market St. Closed Mondays. Entrees $10 to $21; tel. (415) 552-2522.