Tuesday, April 1. 2008

Micro Bistro San Francisco (continued)

I think that got a lot of chefs around the city thinking that they could open their own postage-stamp-size restaurants, cook the food they want to cook, and not mortgage their futures and culinary freedom to financial partners. Certainly I've been seeing more micro bistros this year than ever before, and most of them look to have been started with the chef's own money.
A good example of this was our recent visit to Cajun Pacific in the deep Outer Sunset. This restaurant was obviously put together with the minimum renovating funds possible, including mismatched cutlery and food-service plastic tumblers. It's only open Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights, and the staff consists of the chef (Michael Maddox), a waitress (Stacy) and a dishwasher/salad chef (Mexican, of course). Yet this modest, seats-16 venue is used to produce some fantastic Cajun/Creole cuisine that Paul Prudhomme would be proud of.

Of course, micro sushi bars have always been popular, since that's the tradition for Sushi bars in Japan. Hama-Ko Sushi in Cole Valley (known as 103B Carl Street, since the name is nowhere in evidence), Okina Sushi in the Inner Richmond or No-Name Sushi on Church Street all have devoting followings who put up with erratic hours, long waits and limited selection to have the straght-from-the-chef sushi experience. Hama-Ko, for example, employs only the sushi chef and his wife, and while there's a menu it's pretty useless; order omakaze or why bother?

My wife and I prefer more down-home (and inexpensive) Japansese cuisine, especially after my recent business trips to Tokyo where I learned to long for a tasty bowl or bento for Japansese train station prices. Thankfully, we found this in Balboa Sushi House, a tiny storefront overflowing with houseplants. Inside the eccentrically decorated restaurant, you'll be served a selection of homestyle Japanese food by the single woman proprietor and her invisible kitchen assistant. And leave for under $20 per person.

Don't get to Pizetta 211 in the Outer Richmond late and hungry. Home to the best Tuscan-style pizzas in the city, yet seating only 19, Pizetta 211 develops large waiting crowds by 7:00, and on a rainy night forget going at all. Don't count on take-out either; they stop selling it when they run low on dough. But ... the pizza is great, the desserts are fantastic, and they stock Lazy Creek, my favorite micro-winery, so it's worth coming at 6pm to enjoy.

It's not all happy stories, though. With a tiny staff and little capital, micro bistros can shut down with little notice. Zoya, despite rave reviews, just couldn't stick it out long enough in the bizarrely configured Days Inn restaurant space for us to give it a try. Mind you, that's probably the space more than anything; Midori Mushi folded there after two years despite a devoted cult following -- although both chefs moved on to full-sized sushi bar Sebo on Hayes Street itself.

We have lots more micro bistros to look forward to. The Inner Sunset recently developed Lavash, and on Wednesday we're going to give Sauce in Hayes Valley a try. I love living in San Francisco!
Posted by The Fuzzy Chef in Restaurant Reviews at 01:50 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)
Defined tags for this entry: , , , , , , , ,
Related entries by tags:
Ten New Orleans Cookbooks
PG-13 Rice
Non-Traditional Thanksgiving, Part 4
Greek Islands: restaurant review
Belgian Calzone
Tweet This!Tweet This!

Trackbacks
Trackback specific URI for this entry

No Trackbacks

Comments
Display comments as (Linear | Threaded)

No comments

Add Comment

Enclosing asterisks marks text as bold (*word*), underscore are made via _word_.
E-Mail addresses will not be displayed and will only be used for E-Mail notifications.