It
would be silly for me to review a restaurant I like in San Francisco.
Nearly all of my readers are outside of San Francisco; half are outside
the United States. And, you may not like some of the foods I liked best
at Wayfare: bone marrow and calamari.
But the dinner had
elements that are legitimate to write about. The restaurant makes an
effort to update recipes from 110+ years ago. The interior design theme
is a very masculine downtown men's fine restaurant from a long gone
era. It has a small pool room.
What we forget, or some may not have known, is that the extraordinary revival of delicious food that began in 1976 in Berkeley with the Buttercup Bakery, Alice Waters, Tassajara bread and all the hippy coop food stores, followed much later by the French Laundry, was the second great food awakening. The same thing had happened in the late 1890's in San Francisco. The food then was alive and exciting with dozens of dishes invented in that milieu that became standard American favorites. (Banana pudding, Hangtown fry, baked avocado with crab Louie salad, Baked Alaska and Oysters Rockefeller.)
It also true that a great re-awakening of cocktails has recently occurred in San Francisco. I saw the first invention at the Rohan Lounge (3809 Geary) around 2000 when the owner started using Japanese shochu as the basis for cocktails. Shochu is liquor but is classified as wine by California. As a consequence, other bars with just a beer and wine license, copied the Rohan innovation. We had an explosion of innovation in cocktails.
I've read countless articles from the East Coast by East Coasters who think everything was invented there. I mean everything from Grateful Dead rock to openly gay bars, to contemporary food and cocktails. I wrote about the East Coast syndrome last month.
What we forget, or some may not have known, is that the extraordinary revival of delicious food that began in 1976 in Berkeley with the Buttercup Bakery, Alice Waters, Tassajara bread and all the hippy coop food stores, followed much later by the French Laundry, was the second great food awakening. The same thing had happened in the late 1890's in San Francisco. The food then was alive and exciting with dozens of dishes invented in that milieu that became standard American favorites. (Banana pudding, Hangtown fry, baked avocado with crab Louie salad, Baked Alaska and Oysters Rockefeller.)
It also true that a great re-awakening of cocktails has recently occurred in San Francisco. I saw the first invention at the Rohan Lounge (3809 Geary) around 2000 when the owner started using Japanese shochu as the basis for cocktails. Shochu is liquor but is classified as wine by California. As a consequence, other bars with just a beer and wine license, copied the Rohan innovation. We had an explosion of innovation in cocktails.
I've read countless articles from the East Coast by East Coasters who think everything was invented there. I mean everything from Grateful Dead rock to openly gay bars, to contemporary food and cocktails. I wrote about the East Coast syndrome last month.