Press

Craig Stoll won the James Beard Award for Best Chef Pacific this year, which is quite a coup for a chef who owns a modest restaurant that was never meant to be more than a neighborhood hangout. Yet Stoll and his wife, Anne, have turned Delfina into a beloved destination for anyone who wants food with an authentic Italian spirit. When he opened Delfina, Stoll took a fresh look at the generic Italian cooking that had come to define many Bay Area restaurants, and focused on using pristine ingredients to celebrate the cuisine. In Delfina's decade in business, Stoll's approach has been replicated across the United States, enriching the dining scene and inspiring others to explore regional variations. A few years ago, Stoll added a pizzeria next door; he's opening a second one soon in Pacific Heights.

Inner Mission

Craig Stoll's Italian-centric menu applies the minimalist influences of the Old Country to the seasonal ingredients of California - The Cinque Terre by way of Chez Panisse. Here, after a rich opening volley of chicken liver crostini or ribolita, a rustic bread soup that Stoll reduces to a spongy disc, the chef trots out light salads and lovely pastas, like fazzoletti, al ragu, a disassembled lasagna, and wild nettle tagliatelle, scattered with pine nuts and a garden green nettle puree. The same philosophy applies to the second; kind salmon is dressed simply with melted leeks and Meyer lemon-caper butter, tomato-braised short ribs are topped with gremolata but accompanied only by polenta. It's elemental cooking, with flavors that have depth. Service is a study in efficiency, and the sleek interior is an understated portrait of neighborhood chic. Patrons often linger over coffee and the justly famous buttermilk panna cotta, which makes it even harder to get a seat. The wait is worth it. Delfina is a reminder that restaurants, like people, can be pleasantly mature without showing signs of age. (J.S.) 3621 18th Street (Bet. Dolores St. and Guerrero St.) (415) 552-4055 $$$ DRW (three stars)

American chefs sophisticate the ultimate comfort food

Across the United States, a new Italian cuisine is growing.  It is anchored in the traditions of the Old World but driven by the energy of the New.

At Alto, one of the hottest new restaurants in New York, chef  Scott Conant tops strangolapreti, gnocchilike pasta from northern Italy, with a sauce of guanciale, tomatoes and fava beans that is southern Italian.

Outside Seattle at Café Juanita, chef Holly Smith braises rabbit in Arneis wine and wild mushrooms, just as they might in Piedmont, but rests the pieces of rabbit against a chickpea crepe filled with salad, something few chefs in Italy would do.

At his Vetri Ristorante in Philadelphia, chef  Marc Vetri uses a technique for crespelle that he learned in Bergamo, not far from Milan, except with a totally different filling and sauce.

Today, as American chefs who cook Italian food reinvent the genre, Italian restaurants in the States are getting closer than ever to the essence of Italian taste.  Some might hew to regional Italian traditions unfamiliar to most Americans – Paul Bartolotta’s Sicilian-style fish roasted with olives and tomatoes at his Las Vegas restaurant, for example.  Others might reinterpret a dish, as chef Christopher Hille does at A 16 in San Francisco when he braises beef short ribs with a sauce of onions.  Neapolitans use the sauce to dress pasta and save the meat for another day; Hille serves them together as a main course.

The chefs whose stories, recipes and wine matches are featured in the pages that follow represent a new generation of Americans who understand the ingredients and the ideas behind Italian food.   They may not faithfully reproduce the dishes one finds in Italy, but they get to the essence, achieving the simplicity and mining the endless variety of flavors and textures.  They have changed the way we think of Italian food for the better.

This seems to confuse some critics, who like to hyphenate the food at these restaurants as “California-Italian” or “French-Italian,” as if beautifully presented meals, delivered with imagination, have to be French-inspired, rather than Italian.  Narrow perceptions of “true” Italian food persist.  Vetri, for example, roasts baby goat and serves it over soft polenta.  “I got an irate letter from a guest who complained that roast goat isn’t Italian,” Vetri shrugs, “but it’s inspired by one of the great restaurants of Piedmont, Da Cesare, which specializes in it.”

Anyone who has been to some of the top modern restaurants in Turin or Milan would recognize the look and feel of New York’s Alto in an instant.  The setting is sleek and bright, some say cold; the walls of the two-story dining room are formed of backlit wine bottles behind floor-to-ceiling glass.  The wine list of 800 selections covers big names and less familiar regions of Italy, but it also nods to France and California.  There are no red-checkered tablecloths.

Americans are becoming more sophisticated about Italian ingredients, such as prosciutto di Parma and white truffles from Piedmont.  “They know what bufala mozzarella is, and botarga, and they spell it with one ‘t’,” notes Tony May, who as owner of San Domenico restaurant in New York , which opened in 1988, was among the pioneers.  “We learned to differentiate between the various legumes, not just cannellini beans.  We are learning the names of the rices – vialone nano, arborio, carnarolli.  The customers appreciate the higher quality of pasta handmade by artisans in Italy.”

Another product Americans have grown to love is Italian wine, and Italy remains the No. 1 exporter of wine to the United States at least in part because there are so many Italian restaurants here.  “Other countries, such as Spain, make a lot of great wine too, but they don’t have so many restaurants here as a stage,” Says Piero Selvaggio, whose Valentino in Santa Monica, Calif., and Piero Selvaggio Valentino in Las Vegas each hold a Wine Spectator Grand Award.

Selvaggio’s lists are imposing documents, as are the lists at the two other Grand Award-winning Italian restaurants in the United States:  Felidia in New York and Casanova in Carmel, Calif.  While they embrace the great wines of France, California and other important stops on the wine trail, their glory is that they assemble a full roster of great wines from all over Italy.

“There is a real connection between the food and the wine in Italy,” notes Paul Bertolli, who made Oliveto in Oakland, Calif., into a destination Italian restaurant.  “I learned in Tuscany [that] one wine ..  really fit the food we were cooking better than another [and] it’s unthinkable to have an Italian meal without wine.”

Less-elaborate wine lists too have become much more sophisticated.  At San Pietro in New York, the focus is on southern Italy because the menu features the food of Campania.  Alto’s Italian options lean toward northern Italy, just as the food does.   Café Juanita is deep in Piedmontese wines, reflecting chef-owner Smith’s passion for that part of Italy.  The rise of these lists, and the popularity of Italian wine, parallel the rise of Italian cuisine. It would have really limited the range of Italian wine we have in the United States if the food (here) had stayed with veal Parmigiana and spaghetti and meatballs,” says Cristina Mariani-May, family proprietor of Banfi Vintners, a leading Italian wine importer.  “Americans would have stayed with Chianti in the flask.  They wouldn’t have been so willing to explore further, and we would not have the breadth we enjoy now.”

Virtually all of today’s leading U.S .– born Italian chefs have spent time in Italy.  The restauranteurs of the preceding generation had adapted their food to the ingredients and audience they could find here.  Members of the new generation have been to Italy and have filtered what they learned there through their modern American sensibilities.

In the mid-1980s, Bertolli, born in the United States to Italian parents, left his job cooking at Fourth Street Grill in Berkeley, Calif., to work on a farm near Florence, Italy.  There he saw an approach to food that he had never encountered as a chef in America.  “We would get fresh ricotta and pecorino from a Sardinian guy who lived down the road,” he recalls.  “I would wander out in the field with the women to pick salad for dinner.  We killed hogs and put up the cured meat.”

He returned from Italy to work at Chez Panisse, eventually stepping in as chef, turning what had been a country French cuisine toward Italy.  As chef of Chez Panisse, Bertolli built a wood-burning oven and spit-roasting grill, and traveled to Italy again and again to explore its various regions and bring back ideas and recipes.  Ten years after Bertolli left to open Oliveto, Italian dishes happily coexist on the Chez Panisse menu with French items in what is usually labeled “California cuisine.”  (Bertolli recently left the restaurant business to start a new venture, Fra Mani, to make air-dried Italian sausages and other cured meats on a commercial scale.)

Long before becoming a celebrity chef and restaurant mogul, Mario Batali spent three years in Italy cooking and eating.   Vetri parlayed a three-month job lined up for him in Bergamo into an 18-month tour through northern Italy, working his way from Venice to Orvieto.  Hille learned the craft of pizza-making in Naples, and his mushroom pizza at A16 in San Francisco features porcini, olive oil and Grana Padano cheese in a thin layer that emphasizes the crackle of the crust – glops of tomato sauce.

The patron saint of sending American chefs to Italy for seasoning is May.  Before he opened San Domenico, May sent his first chef, Bartolotta, to work there.  His current chef, Odette Fada, spends half the year in Italy to keep abreast of what the best chefs there are up to.  Encouraged by what this travel meant to his chefs, May initiated several programs through various trade organizations in the early 1990s to provide scholarships for American chefs to go to Italy to work and study.  Over the years, more than 300 Americans have been there on scholarships.

Craig Stoll was in the first of May’s groups to go, spending six months in Italy in 1991 and 1992.  “We [spent] three months in Turin, in a demonstration kitchen, and every day we would have a well-known chef from somewhere in Italy come and lecture.  Afternoons, we had lectures on wine, on truffles, we would go on field trips to see them make fontina in Val d’Aosta, to Parma to see Reggiano being made,” he recounts.  “For the second half of the program, I worked at Da Delfina in Tuscany.  It was learning the way of life, learning to cook the food.  I was able to see what made the flavors.  I learned the lessons by watching and cooking.”

After stints at Campton Place, Postrio and other (non-Italian) Bay-area restaurants, Stoll opened a cozy neighborhood joint in 1998 with his soon-to-be-wife, Anne, and called it Delfina.  Italian food lovers immediately recognized the Italian soul in Stoll’s calamaretti with white beans and in pastas that practically sing in dialect.

When these chefs returned from their exposure to real Italian food, they didn’t just copy what they had learned.  The modern restaurants they opened interpret the Italian dining experience through the distinct personalities of chefs who honor the Italian tradition as they see it.

The poster boy for this revolution must be Batali, who has gone from success to success since he and a friend opened the tiny Po restaurant in 1993.  Batali now has a small New York restaurant empire, including Bappo, Lupa, Esca and the most ambitious of all, the new Del Posto (which opened to late for inclusion in this story), as well as several popular series on the Food Network. 

The idea, says Batali, was to create the American equivalent of the great restaurants in Italy that celebrate the food of their particular region.  The cuisine, says Batali, must be “legitimate-tasting” but not a slavish reproduction of traditional dishes.  It looks at the best ingredients available in New York through the prism of an Italian culinary sensibility.

This has, in fact, become the model for the new wave of American Italian restaurants.  “People like Paul Bartolota and Scott Conant and Craig Stoll, they’re too smart to copy it exactly,” says Batali.  “It’s more important to get the idea right, the taste right.  That’s why it’s so good.”

Restaurants that serve the food of specific regions are also part of the mix.  A 16 in San Francisco devotes itself to the food of Campania, the province that includes Naples, the Amalfi Coast and the area around Pompeii.  In New York, I Trulli reproduces the dishes of Puglia, and Maremama narrows the focus even further by concentrating on a subregion of Tuscany.  Cosmopolitan cities such as San Francisco, Chicago and Los Angeles have their share of trattorias celebrating everything from Ischia to Sicily, but the big message has not been microfocused regional cuisines – it is that Italian cooking is a lot more extensive than most American realized.

So, what exactly is that Italian taste?  For Batali, it’s realizing that less is more.  “When you really eat great food in Italy, it’s two things on the plate and they both sing,” he says.  “It’s the celebration of a single flavor, with a few little extra tones.  It’s much more exciting than trying to decipher a complicated dish.”

For Stoll, it is not covering the flavor of really good ingredients with the same stocks in every dish, but instead using simply water or oil to frame the personalities of each ingredient.  “Every time I go back to Italy, I am retaught lessons about little things,” he says.  “For example, searing the meat with herbs or garlic, and then pulling it out, creates a whole different set of flavors than if you add the flavorings later.”

Bertolli found that once diners learned to trust him, he could introduce even bitter tastes.  “These are so much a part of the Italian flavor palette,” he says.  “Cardoons, the whole chicory family, escaroles, radicchios – those were tastes people [in California] got used to and came to love. There is also the taste of the fire, the idea of using fire to roast.  At Oliveto, we moved the roasting station into the dining room.  We couldn’t take arrista, the fire-roasted Tuscan shoulder-end pork loin, off the menu.  People loved it.”

Waitstaff
While newspapers and magazines (including this one) have heaped praise on the kitchen at Delfina like truck-stop cooks ladling out sausage gravy, great food - about as far from roadside fare as you can get - is not the only thing that makes this destination delightful. The stress of finding parking in the Mission disappears the second the staff welcomes you. Crusty bread appears. Dishes and wines are described with accuracy and even passion, and recommendations are offered. Best of all, servers and hosts seem to be enjoying the place as much as the people eating are. It's no wonder several staffers have been there since the place opened in late 1998. Or that happy diners have, too.

Chef Craig Atoll, who owns DELFINA with his wife, Anne, describes the place as “a bustling neighborhood trattoria.”  Bustling yes, with tons of locals and regulars.  The neighborhood?  That would be the revitalized but still funky Mission District.  And as for the trattoria part, the daily changing menu features Italian-inspired dishes like grilled calamari; spaghetti with garlic, tomatoes, and crushed red pepper; and buttermilk panna cotta.

“It’s the only new place that tastes right,” Carol Field, a novelist and writer of authoritative books on Italian food, told me on late-August morning at the Saturday San Francisco farmers’ market-foodie central in a food-crazed city.  “Right” is a foodie code for “really good”, so I made sure to dine at Delfina twice on that trip.  I saw why Field, a longtime friend thought it could be mentioned in the same breath as our Bay Area trinity of Chez Panisse, Oliveto and Zuni Café:  Delfina has their simplicity, basic Italian vocabulary, and desire to show off what’s local and freshest.  It also has the low prices that those restaurants had before they became landmarks.

Delfina now occupies two storefronts (it expanded last February) on a neat block in the Mission District that retains some 1960s Haight funk even as it undergoes the transformation that has revived the adjoining area known as South of Market.  It’s next door to the Lady Baltimore Cake Co., an unreconstructed 1960s bakery whose high layer cakes might well have inspired the artist Wayne Thiebaud, and near the Bi-Rite Market, a combination general and grocery store whose second-generation owner has restored it to its streamlined 1940s splendor.

The décor of the restaurant is industrial modern on a budget, with wooden benches, brushed-steel tabletops, and light-yellow walls exhibiting changing displays of art.  The hard surfaces and continual crowds make for loud dining, especially in the original half, which has a pleasant bar near the open kitchen:  the second storefront, which doubled the seating capacity to seventy, has the audial if not visual blessing of industrial gray quilting along the top of one wall.  The best place to sit is at the long counter in the new room, which offers views of the other diners and what they’re eating and also, by means of a tilted mirror under the quilt, a good view of kitchen activities.

Other friends warned me of long waits and indifferent service – the price of Delfina’s great popularity since it opened, three years ago.  Before each of my dinners there I called in the afternoon and got a (late) reservation.  I found the young, informal staff members, who sport the tattoos and body ornaments typical of the neighborhood, to be friendly, knowledgeable, and free of the arrogance that often typifies a hot-ticket place.

Delfina’s menu is short and printed daily, sparing everyone the recitation of specials.  It changed substantially over the three August nights I was in San Francisco, demonstrating the chef’s close attention to what comes available each morning.  But several dishes never go off the menu, and when I tasted them, I understood why.  One is an appetizer of grilled fresh calamari with warm white-bean salad, a common enough dish but unusually good in this case – less for the fresh squid (I live in Boston, where it’s easy to come by) than for the white beans, seasoned with local sage and garlic.  I liked the homemade lamb sausage with picked onions, too – especially for the tiny flageolet beans to the side, celadon-green Chiclets shapes with the delicate flavor of baby limas.  Another standard is roast chicken (served with mashed Yukon gold potatoes and shiitake mushrooms), a contender, together with Zuni’s version, for the city’s best, and for similar reasons – good locally raised chicken, heavy use of herbs, and expert roasting.  Then there’s the price: $12.00.

The menu fixture I would happily eat every night is a salad of bitter greens pancetta, walnuts, and Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese.  The peppery greens are maroon-accented with shredded radicchio, the toasted walnuts are almost as meaty as the locally cured pancetta, and the balsamic vinaigrette is as creamy as an old-fashioned boiled dressing.  I would also take a chance on any pasta dish, given the full, immediate flavor of the two I tried:  soft fresh tagliarini tossed with summer squash and squash blossoms, and al dente spaghetti with plum tomatoes, garlic, and chili flakes.

The wines, most of them Californian or Italian, are reasonably priced, with a good selection by the glass.  I considered it part of experiencing the local culture to try the Cold Heaven viognier, from the Edna Valley, which offers the full, fruity body people want in Chardonnay without the boring oak.  A better match with most the menu, though, is the spicy Schuetz Oles zinfandel, from the Napa Valley. The desserts are plain and very tempting:  a buttermilk panna cotta, for example, and a lattice-topped plum tart with deep-purple juices bubbling over dark strips of pastry.

Many chefs try dishes like these, but they don’t have the skill of Delfina’s chef, Craig Stoll, who worked for a time in Italy but trained mostly in Bay Area restaurants.  One of the tricks he took from Italy is sautéing pasta for a minute or two with its sauce and final ingredients before sending it out (those mirrors give a very good view of thestoves).  He naturally absorbed the Bay Area ethos of buying from local farms – an ethos that emanated from Chez Panisse and that I wish pervaded the entire country, not just a few enlightened pockets.

Delfina’s success has already been a local inspiration.   Stoll and his partner and wife, Anne Stoll, opened their restaurant “on credit cards”, a talented young chef named Tasha Prysi told me during my stay, with a starry, I-can-do-it-too light in her eyes.  I hope she does follow their example, soon – and in a less blessed city.

Delfina, 3621 Eighteenth Street, San Francisco, 415-552-4055.  Dinner 5:30 – 10:00 Sunday through Thursday and until 11:00 Friday and Saturday.  Reservations and Visa and MasterCard accepted.

THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY

Turn this page and you’ll see the future of American food:  our 10 Best New Chefs of 2001.  To find them, we sifted through hundreds of nominations from restaurant critics, chefs and other trusted sources, then sent our editors on a nationwide eating binge.  One thing the winners have in common is that each has been in charge of restaurant kitchens in the United States for less than five years.  Another is that their food surprised us, thrilled us, made us put down our forks in wide-eyed admiration – and pick them up again, fast.  So get ready to meet tomorrow’s stars, introduced ere through interviews and recipes that show off their talent.  And know that the future is in good hands.

Crag Stoll’s gnocchi with sweet peas and tomatoes prove that the simplest dishes can be the most delicious.

Craig Stoll delfina San Francisco

WHY Because he reinvigorates the culinary union of Northern California and Northern Italy.

BORN 1965, New York City

EDUCATION the Culinary Institute of America, Hyde Park, NY
Experience  Campton Place and Splendido, San Francisco; Da Delfina, Artimino, Tuscany, Italy.

WHAT HE LEARNED IN ITALY   “To understand my ingredients.  If we served sheep’s milk ricotta at night, I had spent the day with the cheesemaker.  I’d met the sheep.”

HOW HE APPLIES THAT BACK HOME “If I buy fava bean, I want to know which row they were picked from.”

FAVORITE LOCAL SPOT  Thep Phenom.  “The best Thai food in the universe.”

PET PEEVE When waiters say “Enjoy.”

FOOD VICE Jolly Ranchers.  “I’m trying to work them into a dessert.”

INGREDIENT CRUSH  Farro

AMBITION To open a pizzeria, or some other Italian neighborhood joint.

ABOUT HIS RECIPE (page 151)  Stoll’s Gnocchi with Sweet Peas, Tomatoes and Sage Brown Butter is colorful, with its bright greens and yellow, as well as eminently uncomplicated. 

One of the draws of Delfina when it opened 18 months ago was the fact that the tiny Mission District restaurant, with the outstanding food of Craig Stoll and the cheerful front-of-the-house personality of Anne Spencer, felt like a find.

Late last year, the duo acquired the storefront next door, and early this year they remodeled the space and doubled the seating capacity.

That expansion struck fear into those of us who were captured by Delfina's rustic charm, and raised a lot of questions: Could Stoll produce the same food? Would the place seem the same?

When you enter the expanded dining room, it's obvious that this restaurant has arrived. The hardwood floor, wood benches, brushed stainless-steel tabletops and pendant lights made from sandblasted beakers give the space a trendy ambience that belies Stoll's rustic food.

It looks great, but does the restaurant now offer style over substance? On a busy Saturday night, we found the answers to our questions.

The food is every bit as good, if not better, and the prices are still in line. The most expensive main course is $15.

For those of us who love food, Stoll's cooking is a revelation. However, those who like to be dazzled with exotic combinations will be disappointed. Like Paul Bertolli at Oliveto in Oakland, Stoll takes an authentic approach to his cooking. This simple, straightforward method is one of the most difficult to perfect.

He serves Jewish-style artichokes ($8.50), for example; the only other time I've had those was in Rome. The artichokes are cut down to re semble a sunflower and then fried twice so they're crunchy and almost leathery, with a super-creamy heart. Served with a chiffonade of basil and lemon wedges, they are superb.

His grilled calamari salad ($7) is unsurpassed for both flavor and tenderness. The smoky squid is arranged over white beans with feathery greens and olives. And this is the first time this year I've gotten good white asparagus ($9.75), its complex sweetness accentuated with light smokiness from the wood oven, complemented by a lemony vinaigrette and shards of Parmesan cheese.

Among main courses, I loved the bronzed roast chicken ($10) set on an oval plate in a pool of mushroom-enriched juices. Creamy mashed potatoes were served on the side. I also ordered the chard ($3.50), perfectly mellowed with lemon and garlic. The halibut ($15) is some of the best fish I've had. Juicy and full flavored, it's accompanied by pieces of asparagus, fava beans and a fragrant tarragon butter.

Desserts (all $5) are simple and satisfying, too: a creamy panna cotta that tastes like buttermilk, and a marvelous crusty strawberry-rhubarb galette.

Even with all the changes in the interior, the restaurant maintains a sense of place with the wait staff. Most servers wear black tops, from modest to low cut. Accessories include piercings, tattoos and hair colors not found in nature. It's a slice of the neighborhood, and in many cases, they do their job better than many tuxedoed traditionalists.

From start to finish, the meal was nearly perfect. Not only has Delfina survived its expansion, it's grown in stature.

San Francisco Chronicle, Friday, April 21, 2000