It's hard to think of an object more closely associated with a restaurant than its menu — but, like so many other aspects of modern dining, the menu is a new invention, dating back only 150 years or so. There's always something a little freeing about being without its tyranny, liberated to eat whatever comes your way without having to make a single decision. The plate, or procession of plates, defines your meal, not your preconceptions of what they might turn out to be.
This kind of dining works at a restaurant like the French Laundry, where the tasting menu is basically a thesis statement from the chef told through food. But though I was dazzled by many dishes that came my way at a recent dinner at the 2-month-old Californios in the Mission, I found myself struggling a little without that printed signpost, trying to understand where I'd been, where I was going, and what the journey meant overall.
Californios comes from Val M. Cantu, a chef with a fine dining background who's been refining his take on modern Mexican cuisine at pop-ups around town for a few years. At his tiny new 32-seat spot, there's no a la carte menu, and no real choice when it comes to the tasting menu (though there is a vegetarian version) — you sit down and the food begins to come. The team experimented with variable pricing early on, including a five-course menu for $57, but it is currently $75 per person for about eight courses, with an optional $45 beverage pairing. This puts it on par with many of the more inventive tasting menus in the city, and in comparison, falls a little short.
There was a lot to like about the food; the team of chefs in the small, open kitchen, plating calmly with tweezers, is undoubtedly a talented bunch. They knew their proteins well: I swooned over creamy, butter-poached sablefish in a pool of green garlic sauce, both subtle in their own way and together added up to the kind of bite that made me close my eyes in order to taste it all the way through. There was a slice of roasted duck with a textbook-perfect red center and crisp crust, perfectly paired with a red wine reduction. Tender sous vide chicken came in a remarkably rich, clear broth with sprouted grains and pomegranate — the restaurant's take on pozole, but almost as thick as consommé, and what I'd like to drink on every sick day for the rest of my life.
The dark gray, almost clubby room lends itself well to fine dining, with white tablecloths and a choice of seating between more private tables and comfortable leather stools at the open kitchen. With its art on the walls, tufted leather banquettes, and shelves of cool coffee-table books, Californios has the kind of "rich person's living room vibe" you'd expect from someone who trained under designer to the stars Ken Fulk — as did Cantu's wife, Carolyn, who designed the space.
Dinner began like most tasting menus: with a flurry of small bites paired with an excellent unfiltered Italian prosecco. There was a briny Hama Hama oyster with jicama mignonette, and a startlingly fresh and interesting celery and kiwi granita that was laced with pop rocks. The most true to the vision of the restaurant was a "take on" chips and salsa, a thin fried cracker with daubs of salsa and a dust on top that was like a haute Cool Ranch Dorito.
But I wanted to see more of the Mexican influence in other dishes. The reason to do a tasting menu, of course, is that you want the dishes to cascade onto each other until the chef's viewpoint comes crashing into your consciousness, and though these showed technical prowess, I never felt they added up to a cohesive whole. There was a nice piece of yellowtail with mandarinquat and chile: It was all smoke, citrus, acid, and buttery fish that made for a lovely few bites. But was merely being lovely enough, when the chef's thesis of personal, modern Mexican food infuses his website and press materials? I felt the same ambivalent admiration for the smoked egg custard layered with smoked tomato, and the dessert foie gras ice cream with banana brûlée. All good, but all things that could reasonably be found at any Northern Californian restaurant.
Among the best parts of the meal were the thick, warm tortillas served with a sour cultured butter mixed with yogurt, but those suffered from another issue I ran into with the fledgling restaurant: its service. When your check can easily top $300, everything should be flawless. We had an extra charge on our bill, and our server's awkwardness was palpable every time she interrupted to take our plates.
That extended to the food's presentation. Some of the chefs were sharp and articulate, explaining exactly what we were getting (and the sommelier, Charlotte Randolph, formerly of the French Laundry, was truly excellent: helpful, informative without being too much so, and friendly). But others mumbled their way through an explanation or, as in the case of the tortillas, just dropped them off without much of an explanation at all. We waited to see if more food would be delivered, and by the time we realized we were meant to eat them alone, they had already cooled.
This kind of reliance on the chefs, who were, you know, already plating every course, was more of a symptom of that lack of menu than anything else; it makes the chefs and servers do all of the heavy lifting. I was eager to revisit the meal at the end, but the menus we were given were so stylized that they were basically useless (mine read: "hielo, a-chi, huev, [poll, papo, sable, pato, verb, foie").
Restaurants don't exist in a vacuum, and it is unfortunate for Californios that two excellent places have opened recently that offer similar coursed meals: Lazy Bear and The Progress. It's a bit of an unfair comparison — both of those are from chefs at the top of their game (and have James Beard nominations for Best New Restaurant of 2015 to prove it), while this is Cantu's first real outing on his own — but it's an impossible one to ignore. Californios shows a lot of promise. But by really pushing the envelope with the Mexican flavors that Cantu loves, and paying better attention to customer needs over the kitchen's ego, it could go from something promising to something unmissable.
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