Canteen

Of the many important responsibilities of a watercooler food critic, none is more grave and telling than his role as advisor to friends and coworkers on where and where not to dine. The questions are often specific: Where should I take my wife for our ten year wedding anniversary? Do you know where they make good Northern Chinese hand-pulled noodles? My in-laws are visiting from Chicago; who serves the biggest portions? But the most common – and most difficult – request is invariably delivered in a hushed underground voice, and before the question is punctuated I can tell what they’re after: the hidden neighborhood gem that, romanticized in their mind’s eye, glows amber-hued and serves the kind of comfort food that your great grandmother supposedly used to make in a wood-fired brick oven. (Unless she was Korean. Then she most likely served a small bowl of rice and stew made from old kim-chee.)

The inherent problem with hidden neighborhood gems is that the ones that are so good that you wish they would stay secret for your own private pleasure are, for the very same reason, publicly exposed. And the better the restaurant, the swifter its outing. So it was inevitable that Canteen skipped the clandestine affair with neighborhood locals in-the-know and wed itself nearly immediately to high-profile critics, with mentions from the Chronicle to several national food magazines. The story is a seductive one: a young rising-star chef leaves a prominent establishment to start a hole-in-the-wall restaurant as the arena for a very personal exploration of the relationship between man and food. After my visit, however, I have to wonder whether the attention and acclaim it has received is well deserved.

Canteen has many of the ingredients that make a great neighborhood restaurant. First and foremost, it is small. If it was an ipod, it wouldn’t even be a nano, it would be a shuffle: there is space for 20. It’s tucked away in an obscure part of the city - the TenderNob - adjacent to the lobby of a quirky hotel that looks as if it charges by the week, day, or hour. And finally, its menu is short but broad, and emphasizes fresh, local ingredients. So far, so good.

But Canteen ultimately fails because it also lacks several essential ingredients. The décor is pleasant, but its personality is forced. Obscure books are stacked to give the diner the impression that you’re dining in a well lived-in room. My friend leaned over to whisper that it looked like a staged kitchen in an Ikea showroom. By the front door a horizontal coat rack hangs above a pair of simple but stylish chairs: a shot straight out of a pottery barn catalogue. I didn’t know if I should order six of those chairs for my dining room or the Cod with Artichokes for my dinner. Personality was absent in the service as well. I hoped for the warm greeting one gets from a favorite aunt. Instead, the waiter greeted us quickly as he rushed by to grab something for another table. We came in for a hug, and we received a handshake. It was all so disappointingly perfunctory.

The short menu, updated weekly, reads just as it should. It tempts the diner with rustic but elegant fare: Beef roast with mashed potatoes, chard, and jus; cream of lentil soup; Ling cod with artichokes and Meyer lemon cream; Almond cake with cherries, prunes, and Armagnac; Chocolate and hazelnut pot de crème. The dishes are hearty and robust, conjuring up images of old groves, misty coastlines, and strong, stout farmers’ wives. But these pastoral pleasures and agrarian reveries come at post-industrial metropolitan prices. The entrees are priced at a hefty $22-26, a range that puts it in the same league as restaurants that serve far more exquisitely prepared dishes. Scott Howard, Range (recipient of a Michelin star), and Woodward’s Garden all offer better food at comparable prices.

Still, in this crowded space, there is room for Canteen. It is a program restaurant: there is a specific theme, a staged setting, paid actors, and its name evokes the specific scale and the particular temporal spirit of the place even before you step inside, as if it was the anticipatory title of a play. And program restaurants always have a way of attracting diners who regularly crave a theatrical display. Based on how difficult it is to get a reservation there, Canteen seems to attract plenty of them. For me, however, this pastoral drama, pleasant though it is, is so straightforward that there is no promise of deeper layers to be discovered in subsequent visits, no new nuances to ponder or subplots to explore. I'm happy to have tried Canteen, here in the country's Broadway of restaurants, but I'm ready to hit the next show.

Michael Mina

The best thing to happen to the Bay Area dining scene since Alice Waters started a revolution and Thomas Keller raised the bar to world-class heights was the arrival of a small clandestine band of food critics and their stingy, it turns out, purse of French stars. All controversies aside, the Michelin Guide caused nearly every top restaurant to put their best foot forward for a few months in hopes of earning those coveted Michelin stars, of which even the rumor of a loss of one famously precipitated the suicide of a top French chef. There have been reports here and there of extra ass-kissing by greeters at the podium, the strange disappearance of unattractive waitstaff, the word "chicken" on menus giving way to "poulet" or, at places that were really trying to impress, "poussin." Things got really hot here in the foggy city, and some of the heat seems to have stayed.

The biggest improvements I've noticed to date are at Michael Mina. I have to confess that I didn’t notice them immediately. So strong were the defenses of my biases against the restaurant that they relented in stubborn increments for several weeks. But finally they succumbed to the memory of the succulent kobe beef, the playful but luxurious lobster “corndog” amuse-bouche, the sommelier who lingered on a busy night to chat and engage.

Michael Mina serves two menus: a 3-course choose-your-own-adventure ($88), and a standard multi-course chef’s tasting menu that runs into the triple digits. I opted for the former, which is further split into two sections for each course: triptych plates that feature a single prominent ingredient prepared three ways and the chef's signature dishes like his black mussel soufflé, lobster pot pie, and tuna tartare. During my initial visit a few years ago, I found the triptych preparation to be oppressive and overly ostentatious, but this time around I thought it was playful and clever, keeping even the most jaded tongue alert and amused. But playfulness, no matter how clever, quickly becomes exasperating if it isn’t backed up by solid execution. At Michael Mina, I couldn’t find one detail about the food to complain about, no matter how hard I searched. And although I can’t recall exactly what I ate - weeks separate that dinner and this review – I remember quite vividly the unique sensation in my mouth that can be created only by that ineffable quality we sometimes lazily label as “fresh” or clumsily describe as having “clarity” or “sparkle” as I have in previous reviews.

The biggest improvement was in the service. In my initial assessment back in September of 2004, I complained that a three course dinner felt laborious, that I had to hail a waiter every time I needed more water or bread, that I had had better service at Chevy’s. This time around, the waitstaff was omnipresent and invisible: I always had everything I needed without noticing any intrusions to my conversation with fellow diners. The sommelier, as I mentioned before, provided the little measure of dialogue that makes diners feel engaged.

Of course, not even the Michelin Guide can change every bad thing. The restaurant still opens up into the tacky lobby of the Westin St. Francis and the tall ceilings and concrete pillars still give one an impression of being in a cacophonous cave. The bluish-grey palette was supposed to evoke the fog, but in this setting, it conjures up stones and hirsute dwarves. But once the food arrives, full of wit and beauty, the ears ignore the echoing clamor and the eyes become myopic, seeing only the gastronomic composition on the table. So impressed was I by what I ate that, with my apologies to Monsieur Passot, I have to end with this statement: this is the best food I have had in San Francisco.

And in case you're curious, Michael Mina earned an impressive two Michelin stars, the highest rating for any restaurant in the city.