When vegan paradise Millennium closed May 1 after more than 20 years in business, you couldn't exactly blame it on gentrification in the Tenderloin. The Hotel California's new ownership simply didn't want a restaurant anymore, but it still felt like a stinging loss for a feisty community. Even though I'm an omnivore, Millennium was always special to me: It was the last restaurant I ate in before I officially became a San Francisco resident.
But as in the unloved 1989 sci-fi film Millennium, this was not the beginning of the end, but the end of the beginning. S.F.'s loss is Rockridge's gain, and the Millennium that Chef Eric Tucker inherited when his partnership with Larry and Ann Wheat ended with their retirement is a little cheaper and a lot more laid back. (Saying goodbye to a hotel will do that.)
However, while Tucker's kitchen has noticeably pulled back on the use of oil, it seems to labor under a paranoid sense that people find vegan food boring or unimaginative, and so one must always pile on more, more, more. This leads to an unfortunate self-fulfilling prophecy, where dishes fall prey to internal competition as ingredients that might be dazzling in isolation cancel each other out and become homogenized.
The initial starters, like the cornmeal-crusted fried green tomatoes ($12.50) with their chaat-fried chick peas and warm spinach panzanella, were promising. Salted and lightly fried, the sesame- and Arborio-crusted king trumpet mushrooms ($12.75) redeemed the soggy, oily, fried fungi we've all eaten again and again.
But everything came out nearly all at once, and almost every plate had a big messy smear of sauce, like a signature written with a pen's last gasp. The Brik Purse ($23.95) was where things began to go awry. On paper, it's magical: a combination of a spelt risotto chard Florentine, black lentil sugo, porcini confit, whiskey-black peppercorn cashew cream, and a grilled rapini green olive relish. On the plate, it was virtually impossible to appreciate any of those things in full. The lentils could have been washed more thoroughly, and the plating resembled mid-level catering food at a venue 1,000 miles from an ocean.
And it got worse before it got better. The beet tartar ($12.50) had a strange, crumbly-wet texture, and the nominally caraway-flavored cracker that accompanied it was just sad. It looked like somebody sliced the top off an oatmeal cookie, and tasted like a cross between a communion wafer and something your mom gives you after you've been sick for three days to see if you can hold anything down. Throw in some dabs of saffron-burnt orange aioli, the color of French's mustard, and the whole thing was too much and too little, and difficult to share.
The potato-masa sopes (smoked eggplant-pumpkin seed picadillo, pumpkin seed cream, pickled onion, and purslane, $11.95) were sadly bland, requiring a lot of mixing to get anything to yield much flavor — although in terms of taste, texture, and nutritional content, purslane is just the best green there is. The other masa dish, a red corn tamale ($22.95), wasn't too dense but led to the same frustration where you had to put in some effort to amalgamate the best taste with every forkful.
However, the tagine-like chicken-fried cauliflower (with creole-gigante bean gratin, herbed bread crumbs, and lovage-cashew remoulade, $17.95) was simply outstanding. It was served in a cast-iron skillet, and I savored every individual bean. It was too dim to make out, and not listed on the menu besides, but whatever chili preparation was in there made it all come together.
The last thing we were served should have come out first: a refreshing (if wet) shaved cucumber salad ($12.50), like an exploded, rice-less California roll. Its cherry-horseradish combination was by far the best risk Millennium took.
Fresh whole cherries appeared on the cocktail list, too. While the cherry caipirinha was beautiful, almost marbled with fruit, it was too subtle — not the mojito-on-steroids you want those to be. I enjoyed the Cynar-forward Red Emma, however.
Pastry chef Ariana Goldschneider's desserts were a mixed bag, too. The scoop of avocado ice cream in the seasonal trio ($7) was wonderfully creamy, but the loganberry tasted like a scented candle. A cherry-almond tart ($9.50) was luxurious and liqueured-up, the brittle not so brittle that you're going to lose a filling, and the kirsch ice cream that accompanied it was perfect. Apart from the Crème de Violette truffle, a platter of sweets ($6.50) again reminded me of something that gets dumped on every table at a catered banquet.
Aesthetically, Millennium wasn't much, either. Apart from the leafy rear garden, the décor is awfully heavy on the beige family. The interior didn't seem entirely finished, so I'm reluctant to press the point, but the lighting fixtures felt like they came from Home Depot and the big wall-mounted clock screamed Pier 1. The lighting was so low that many dishes were hard to see — although playing the guessing game can be fun — and I couldn't understand why there wasn't any music playing, especially after 9 p.m. when things thinned out.
It's a cliché to say something is less than the sum of its parts, but the frenetic piling-on of ingredients feels as though things had been run by committee, like a bill larded up with amendments to pass through a partisan legislature. You can all but feel the menu's brow beading up with perspiration as if Millennium were trying to be the global ambassador for veganism itself. With Ramen Shop right there, one block down, it's a bitter contrast considering how rich things can be with a little restraint.
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