Thursday, October 21, 2010
You take in the sleekness of 25 Lusk ― the smoked mirrors, gleaming Scandinavian fireplaces, and enough slate tiles to strip a Brazilian quarry bare ― and wonder if you've been sucked into some portal that opens to Vegas or Chicago, cities that swing their shine around like hardware-heavy Marc Jacobs bags.
This is a place engineered for gawking at, home-page portfolio material for design firm Cass Calder Smith. Since Saturday, when 25 Lusk opened, SOMA's stylerati have showed up to gape. Last night we spotted a fedora'd Jeremy Kidson of Jeremy's in the sprawling basement lounge, seated with a bro at the otherwise empty bar on stools plated with so much chrome you strain to slide them.
The menu, though, from chef/partner Matthew Dolan (Emeril's, Café des Artistes, and Garibaldis once) is framed in bistro restraint.
Us, we nursed a shot of rye and a trio of bar snacks, three items for $14 from a list of eight. Two bacon-capped fried Pacific oysters in a scant pool of Brie Mornay sauce were too big and too flabby, but Manchego-draped cauliflower flatbread got its textures right. Best of all was a braised short rib slider ($3 additional charge), turned lavish with a soft puck of foie gras torchon and a smear of something sweet and jammy. We'd have ordered three of those alone, if we'd had the cash. Overkill? That hardly seems possible here.
25 Lusk: 25 Lusk (at Townsend), 495-5875.
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