Gastronomique: Canteen
One of the cool perks of writing about food in blogs is that you get to meet people who write about food in blogs. And they are quite a few food bloggers around here (I'll just mention two SFist contributors, Sam and Derrick, but scour their blogrolls for many more).
A blog we read is the one of Haddock. He is a chef in a rather sleepy city a few hours drive away from San Francisco, and decided to write a blog after running into friend of SFist and world-reknown food blogger Pim at Kiss Sushi. The blog allows him to communicate with like-minded people, to sound ideas and get feedback, and occasionally to vent his frustration without fear of backfire from his community.
Picture of Dennis Leary by the Chronicle's Darryl Bush.
Haddock routinely comes to San Francisco: to get supplies that he cannot get in his neck of the woods, and to refresh his culinary instincts in the SF food scene. So we suggested we meet for lunch. We suggested Canteen, as we read chef/owner Dennis Leary prepared everything from scratch, a cooking philosophy that Haddock endorses as well.
Canteen fits in a handkerchief. It is the closest to a chef you’ll be, save bringing him in your kitchen. To better observe, we propped ourselves up at the counter, which lines one side of the room, opposite a handfull of booths. I found the tinyness of the place endearing. Haddock probably did as well, but he noted that such a small place could only prosper in a city, where providers can visit every day and storage is not an issue. Haddock also noticed that the cooking range was an antique, grandfathered in its corner, as the hood did not cover the front burner. The places does indeed look like the reincarnation of an old-fashioned diner (lastly, it was a café called Titanic).
As we sat, chef Leary brought us the daily changing menu, and, to our great joy, a bottle of water. This is a pet peeve of us, as most restaurants in the US have a bus boy overfill our glass with more ice than water,and never at the right time. We sorely miss the concept of the water jar. We started with marinated anchovies with shaved fennel and parmesan shreds, very fresh and very nicely contrasted. The asparagus topped with a poached egg was perfectly executed, even though I would have enjoyed mayonnaise or hollandaise instead of the mustardy condiment on the side.
The dish I enjoyed the most was the beef stroganoff. The meat had a distinctly gamey favor, which has us conjecture it was grass fed beef. Boy was it good. Haddock had a halibut ceviche, which looked like a generous heap of fish and celery, but was a bit too similar to the way the anchovies were prepared, especially since the menu had only a few more items, such a mushroom soup or smoked salmon, served on toasted bread with an onion confit.
While the food was artfully conceived and executed, we could not help but notice that Leary was a bit too busy. He warmed up a bit later, but he is a natural born chef, not a waiter. Haddock, having been there earlier in his career, was impressed at the energy expensed by Leary, and could not help but advise him to get some help and take some rest, before he burns out. We can only concur, and we did notived that, since the Guardian review, Canteen does not serve breakfast/lunch on Mondays and Tuesdays any more. Nevertheless, we thoroughly enjoyed our lunch, both thanks to the food, and thanks to Haddock. Who would have thought a blogger would not be an agoraphobic social misfit in pajamas, like us, but a very personable lunch companion?
Canteen.
817 Sutter (at Jones), S.F.
(415) 928-8870.
Dinner 7 days a week, Lunch Wed-Sun