This top splurge experience includes baby radishes to lust for . . . delicious dry-aged duck that's only tough if you can't use a knife correctly . . . and a three-figure tip
When in pursuit of an indelible, transcendent dinner out, in San Francisco, a bountiful place by any measure, to celebrate with my wife, Sara —who makes me happy because she's the charming gardener of my soul . . . because our relationship has happily marched on for some five decades now— I've thought hard about it for the past month. In the beginning, I began to reminisce about other monumental restaurant experiences with her over time. Joel Robuchon and his iconic mashed potatoes at Jamin (Jamin), in Paris, in the 1980s. Salmon tartare with sweet red onion creme fraiche cornets at The French Laundry (The French Laundry) in the late 1990s. Just-harvested fresh white truffles at Trattoria Cascina Schiavenza (Schiavenza) in Alba, Italy, in 2008.
Trying to equal or surpass those experiences surely should be possible in a place where culinary and wine giants sit on most every street corner. There are six Michelin Guide 3-stars and eight 2-stars within a reasonable Uber distance from home. So began the long —and delightful!— process of deciding where to dine. Gotta take a car service. Gonna try not to tip more than two entire dinners in another city. Gotta try to keep the meal under four hours. Gotta bring my own bottle of wine because I've got some good ones since moving here. Gotta ask around to get recommendations from food crazed local friends.
Well, Commis in Oakland, a Michelin Guide 2-star, got the nod. Not too far an Uber ride. Tantalizing reviews and history. An excitingly novel spot. First came the fight for a table. Here the battlefield is the website "tock." Once you've learned when reservations for the next 30 days are released, you anxiously log on to snag your preferred day and preferred time —probably not a weekend night and 5:30 p.m. vs. 9:15 p.m., for me. Then you cross your fingers. I scored a 5:30 on the Friday night after Thanksgiving. My first experience with that gatekeeper called tock.. If you score, then tock scores. It insists on a $100 deposit, for the table as they say, for each diner, with no refunds, no day or time changes, although to tock transferring your reservation to someone else is kosher.
Commis is a spare, modernist, and unapologetically boldly stark. This purposeful mood is carried out through every one of the dozen courses, in the flatware and the plates and bowls and serving platforms and hot stones that were set before us. The food is decidedly architectural. The shapes of each ingredient in each dish are intentionally crafted and purposely placed. Each dish is like a dainty, hand-painted piece of jewelry. Or a sculpture, such as at Scandinavian-flavored in2Design, a la Kate Middleton. Even the chop sticks were a hefty metal with a padded soft grip. One coolio knife apparently baffles diners. It accompanies the dry-aged duck breast, which I tried to cut with the non-cutting edge.
To me the duck was so tough! What my fingers told me was corroborated by a difficult chew in my mouth.
To the contrary, Sara said, "Oh, this duck is so tender!"
To me the waiter said, "By way of a reminder, cut the duck with the other side of the knife." Many a diner has been told that, even many a time, the waiter said as he smiled at me.
I turned the knife around. The duck became so so tender to the cut and to my mouth. Who knew mouth feel was influenced unconsciously by finger feel?
At no other restaurant have I ever encountered so many inscrutable foods: jellyfish, kohlrabi, house-made tofu, huckleberries, black vinegar, lovage, taro root, palm sugar, slow-poached egg, smoked dates, alliums of all sorts, malt, button mushroom tisane, chrysanthemum leaf oil, osmanthus tea, dried kale oil, chamomile glacé, pickled mustard seeds, oolong mousse, puffed forbidden rice, miso sweet potato tart, and fish sauce salted caramel. All at least interesting, I suppose.
Of all the ingredients I was charmed by the flavors, textures, colors, and whimsey of some: a diminutive radish with its greens; very-familiar diced beetroot; luscious smoked dates; silky poached black cod in clam broth; ethereal button-mushroom tisane or consommé; luscious dry-aged duck; and richly flavored, dainty, honey nut squash which I'd discovered in farm markets here.
Sara asked me after dinner if the meal was everything I had hoped for.
"No. Absolutely not!"
Really? Why did I say that? I had to think it over. Overnight.
The place wasn't classically lovely. There were precious few delightful aromas floating through the air. I wasn't familiar with any of the dishes or so few of the ingredients or so few of the preparations. The whole experience was mostly alien. It tickled my brain but not my heart or belly. Before the beginning of the meal, I was so desperate to make something about the place feel like a pair of old blue jeans. In my wine refrigerator at home is a Giuseppe Quintarelli, 2019 Bianco Secco Ca’ del Merlo (Kermit Lynch Wine Merchant) and Tablas Creek Vineyard 2019 Esprit Blanc de Tablas (Tablas Creek), both of which I'm dying to try! I chose a French white from a winery we’d actually visited —Domain (Leflaive) Feflaive— in a feeble effort to get a grip on this assuredly foreign, literally and figuratively, place. Well, it turned out to be past its prime —more tame and mellow but less vibrant.
Yup, I was underwhelmed. But that doesn't mean Commis is unworthy. It simply means my culinary experiences and my culinary biases leave me ill-equipped to judge Commis fairly. So be it. I did, however, sense brilliance in the kitchen. And I'm decidedly better for the experience of having eaten there. Time will tell just how much better.
But that may just be one of the points of dining out, to do so adventurously, to stretch yourself, to enter a new culinary territory.
Why not go to a restaurant with Thai and Chinese and American strains running through the heralded chef's background?
Why not step up to an entirely new trippy food experience?
Why not be OK not knowing if what you just ate was 2-star Michelin victuals or not and leave that judgement to the Michelin Guide(Michelin) and The San Francisco Chronicle(San Francisco Chronicle) restaurant critics?
Why not take pleasure in just having discovered sweet-tart huckleberries, incomparable dry-aged duck, or memorable smoked dates?
And so what if the singular transporting aroma of a night was an ethereal button mushroom tisane. . . .
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