Gastronomique: the Richmond's Rich Richmond.
Two food blogs, Life begins at 30 and Locavores have been organizing the Eat Local Challenge, an effort to support local producers and encourage awareness of what is on our plates, by eating for the whole month of August, food grown within some radius of where you live. We find it a noble goal. However, our participation could be summarized in our nodding with approval, maybe saying ‘you go, guys’, then eating Dungeness crab that has to be flown in from Alaska, or God knows where, since it is out-of-season locally. We would be apologetic about it, but there are only so many events one can participate in, and -thanks to SFist Sam’s masterly organized competition- we were busy impersonating Food TV’s Rachael Ray for a day.
As the saw goes, if you don’t go to the challenge, the challenge will come to you: we would be hard pressed not to eat anything local at The Richmond, a superb new restaurant in its namesake neighborhood. And you would be hard pressed not to eat anything good. Chef John Owyang honors his local ingredients by dressing them in deceptively simple preparations, which were almost always delicious.
Consider the panna cotta: a few slices of peach and a thin layer of peach coulis covers what could be described as an amazingly dense yet creamy plain yogurt. At first, the simplicity of the flavors surprises: one expects the pana cotta to be sweetened, or somehow enhanced. Then the purity of the contrast shines through: the perfect texture of the pana cotta, just a little bite from the few thin slices of peach, and the sweet silkiness of the coulis. Each ingredient is necessary for the dish to work, and the whole better than the sum of the parts.
The same applies to the plum with the most luscious home made vanilla ice cream we have ever tasted. Chef Owyang uses dairy from Strauss, and they must be proud to see their products turned into such ice cream or pana cotta. They might question the effervescent whipped cream, with soda water and creme de cacao blended in, and served with the chocolate torte. Its tanginess did take us by surprise, and by our second visit, the menu spelled out it was not a traditional whipped cream. Most of the produce come from Happy Boy Farms.
Before reaching the desserts, we had to traverse the three rooms which make up the restaurant. The first one contains a small bar counter, should you wait for your table, as we had to on our first visit without a reservation. The other two are dining rooms with white tablecloth and bright paintings of vineyards on the walls (the art is for sale and we assume it will rotate). The staff, led by a veteran maitre d’ whom we remember from his previous gig at the Plummed Horse in Saratoga, is professional and attentive. They brought us first a little amuse, a carefully carved piece of melon, the shape and type of which changed between our visits, with a mint sauce, a raspberry coulis and a touch of cream. Then came a warm loaf of home made bread with three butters, in kalamata olive, tarragon and sea salt flavors, which we should have eaten with the dinner, if only we could have stopped snacking on it.
We did not expect any of these varied butters or little amuse-bouche or fancy silverware, all staples of high end places, as the prices are definitely reasonable, with all entrees, except for the NY steak and a cheeseburger for $8.50, in the mid-to-high tens.
We sampled three appetizers from the short and seasonal menu: a roasted beet and carrot salad ($7.75), with a piece of goat cheese encased in a pastry crust. The pan seared diver scallops ($9.75) with a deconstructed clam chowder plates a pair of plump scallops with a few bits of julienned potatoes and bacon in a rich sauce. The trio of artisan cheese ($11.95) presented a rather plain Spanish Murcia wine goat cheese (being French, we are hard to please with cheese) on walnut levain bread, a foamed crescenza with a delicious heirloom tomato salsa with a few crispy potato chips stuck on top, and a pungent roquefort, a bit too sharp for our taste, mixed with some organic greens.
We sampled three entrees as well. A wild line-caught salmon ($15.95) which came atop a layer of mashed potatoes and a bourride, in a very vertical presentation layered in three colors: the bright peach color of the wild salmon, the fresh green of the potato puree laced with chives, and the yellow of the saffron in the bourride, a thick fish-infused cream. The New-York steak ($22.95) was also served vertically with pancetta and a little pastry not unlike that of the beet salad, but with camembert in it. We also had the wild mushroom ravioli ($14.95), three big pockets stuffed with mushrooms (we believe some chanterelle) and topped with sautéed squash with a thick herbed sauce. All presentations were beautifully conceived and presented in fine plates: the attention to the detail impressed us, especially for a neighborhood restaurant.
This is what we take out of The Richmond: very well-thought dishes, conceived and crafted with great care, all from first rate local ingredients. We wrongly thought it was a lack of inventiveness which prompted them to choose The Richmond as the restaurant’s name. We now realize it is actually quite fitting with the philosophy of the place: it is simple, it is precise, and it eschews gimmicks in favor of the more fundamental let-the-lingredients-shine ethos of, say, Chez Panisse. Eating local tastes very good there.
The Richmond
615 Balboa @ 7th
379-8988
Open for dinner only, Monday-Saturday