Like many young, creatively ambitious chefs these days, Jonathan Tu, 32, and Chris Wolff, 29, have already roamed the world's culinary capitals and honed their skills, like journeymen craftsmen of yore, in multiply starred kitchens, in preparation for settling into a stage to call their own. That stage, still in its infant, pop-up form, is called Journeymen, evoking that idea of travel and sense of slow, patient development — or, alternately for baseball fans as the East Bay Express's Luke Tsai noted last fall, a "utility infielder who’s been around the block a few times." Now, Journeymen has an upcoming post-Valentine's dinner set for their new, monthly home at Blackwater Station in Oakland's Temescal district, for which there are still tickets, as well as two more in March and April, the latter of which will be collaboration with friends from the Vancouver pop-up Elementa.

Tu is currently working in the kitchen at Iyasare, the Berkeley Japanese spot from former Yoshi's chef Sho Kamio that's won raves in the local press. And Wolff is working at Blackwater Station. Both left jobs in San Francisco last year — Wolff at Bar Tartine, where he went to learn more about the chefs' notably hand-crafted approach to all aspects of the restaurant, and Tu at Rich Table. They met while working in the Michelin two-star kitchen of Restaurant Viajante in London, which has since closed, and between they've also worked the lines at wd-50 in New York, Le Chateaubriand in Paris, and Wolfgang Puck's Spago in Vail, CO.

Wolff tells SFist, "Jon and I both have day cooking gigs in Oakland now so that we can spend evenings developing our business plan and working on more pop-ups," and the February 15 dinner is a five-course tasting menu featuring things like nasturtium and burrata soup, and a snack of Gulf shrimp with fermented iceberg lettuce.

While they don't shy away from modern techniques (Tu joked to the EBX, "When they invented the stove a long time ago, people who were cooking over a campfire were like, ‘What is this new technique? We don’t need it.'"), their style seems to be a contemporary, not overly complex take on California/Euro/Asian ideas with intense flavors. They also have a beef ribeye dish that began last spring, which involves the grilled steak and fat cap infused with garlic, thyme, and seaweed and served with rendered bone marrow — the February preparation sounds slightly different, with citron and enoki mushrooms.

And because this is a pop-up and these two are just starting out, prices are pretty reasonable, with the per-person cost for these dinners starting around $60.

Look for Journeymen to attract some more attention in the months ahead as they settle into a monthly routine, and prepare for bigger things.