Though many in the food world have been raving about Saison and chef Joshua Skenes' cooking for years, local critic Michael Bauer was slow to come around to it in the beginning, and slower still to lavish any real love on the place until yesterday's update review. Now that they have valet parking, Mr. Bauer says, he's finally ready to let the restaurant, which already holds three Michelin stars, into his four-star club.

The headline, "Saison grows up - and gets 4 stars," kind of belies Bauer's bias. It suggests that the restaurant has had a lot of growing up to do, even though most who have eaten there, including New York Times critic Pete Wells and Bon Appetit's Andrew Knowlton, and the Michelin inspectors, would probably say the restaurant was plenty mature and sophisticated two years ago, and has been ever since.

There was a relocation in between there, in December of 2012, and Bauer notes some of the growing into the new Townsend Street space that he observed, including some new carpet that marks the otherwise unmarked division between kitchen and dining room. And valet parking was a big issue for Bauer when he last checked in on the place a year ago, giving it four stars for food but taking points off for service and atmosphere — he also wasn't in love with the industrial-chic interior at first, saying that, "The hard-edged interior throws out the window everything we have come to think of as luxury dining."

Now he focuses on the "unique ballet of flavors and textures," and he says "the service has become smooth, understated, and seemingly effortless," which I would argue it was two years ago.

The other three restaurants in the city that have notched two Michelin stars — Coi, Benu, and Quince, were all given the Chronicle's four-star seal of approval years ago — with Quince getting the honor even before earning that second star from Michelin last fall. The Bay Area's only three-star Michelin spots, French Laundry and the Restaurant at Meadowood, also boast four Chronicle stars, as does Manresa, which also has a deuce from Michelin. The only restaurants that Bauer still loves at the four-star level that Michelin would disagree with are La Folie and Chez Panisse.

In any event, Skenes is surely breathing a sigh of relief that he's finally won over his toughest critic. Now, onto the goal of being the first three-star Michelin restaurant in San Francisco proper.