Incanto - San Francisco
Tuesday, June 28, 2011 at 12:39PM Another day in San Francisco, another impeccable amazing meal. For this one we joined @thedapperdiner at Incanto, home kitchen of Chef Chris Cosentino, a.k.a. @offalchris. Incanto is a special breed of restaurant, where sustainability and good conscience reign supreme. Cosentino's menu is meat-heavy, and at the forefront of a 'whole animal' movement. The daily-changing menu is likely to include heart, liver, kidneys and all sorts of animal parts typically left off of menus and allowed to go to waste - music to my Filipino ears.
The chef's attitude towards honoring the animal is matched by the entire staff's attitude in honoring the guest, and much effort goes into providing a casual and welcoming environment for the diner. Friendly servers helped guide us through the menu as we munched on bread and olive tampanade. The chef can be seen making tableside cameos to chat with guests.
Given the chef's devotion to meat, we had to get the Boccalone charcuterie platter (below), which included delicious things like country pate, cooked prosciutto, mortadella, and shaved head cheese.
We tackled the most delicate appetizer first, a beautifully clean-tasting bluefish crudo served atop slices of plums and sprinkled with elder flowers (below). Bluefish is the kind of fish where freshness is crucial (otherwise the flesh can become really mushy and gray), and here, it was obvious that we were eating only the very best quality.
Much more decadent were the trotters with foie gras, strawberries and red clover (below). The trotters and the foie melted together in our mouths, with mildly sweet accents from the strawberries.
Next, we moved on to an appetizer special of backfat, potatoes, nettles, and shaved summer truffles (below). Amidst all of these amazing ingredients, we were impressed with the texture of the thinly sliced earthy fungus and crisped potatoes. They provided wonderful textural balance with the unctuous broth, which had a wonderful fullness to it, thanks to the backfat.
As a special treat, Chef Cosentino brought out a special appetizer he had whipped up for the evening, morels and button mushroom roasted in foie gras (below), served en papillote (in parchment). The pairing was really nicely balanced, as the richness of the foie highlighted (as opposed to upstaged) the nutty, earthy flavors of the different fungi.
We moved onto the pasta phase of the evening with the wandkerchief pasta & rustic pork ragù (below), which we topped with a fried egg at the recommendation of our server. You'd think that the meaty and full-bodied ragù couldn't possibly benefit from the decadent addition of a runny egg. You'd be wrong.
Even better? The spaghettini, Sardinian cured tuna heart, egg yolk & parsley (below). This dish melded the piquant ocean taste of the tuna heart with the unctuous egg yolk perfectly. This salty treat was one of my favorites in a night filled with amazing dishes.
We were starting to feel a little full, but we soldiered on, since we had ordered two of the entrees. First up was the pork shoulder, purslane, potato & mushrooms (below). The plating was exquisite, and the meat fell apart with only slight pressure from our forks.
Our last savory dish of the evening was the lamb served two ways (beautiful thick slices of perfectly rare meat and a wake-your-mouth-up flavorful sausage patty) with celery root (below).
For dessert, we split two of Incanto's sweet offerings. First, a chocolate cake bread pudding (below, left) gifted us with a dense, moist mouthful of chocolate-ness. More unique was the surprisingly herby bay leaf panna cotta & Early Sweets cherries (below, right), a delicate, almost savory dish that I'm planning to attempt at home.
After dinner, we sat stuffed, and chatted with Chef Cosentino in his tripe shoes. In addition to being a great guy, he gave us many dining suggestions for our next trip to the City By The Bay. For more Cosentino, you've got to check out his unaired pilot 'Chef Unleashed' in which he makes blood pancakes from a freshly killed deer and serves heart and liver tartare to Texas ranchers. Incanto is also known for its Leg of Beast Dinners, which, with a special reservation, serves a 3-course meal to a group of diners with a braised beef shank as the centerpiece. If we keep having dining experiences like this on our trips up I-5, we'll have to make San Francisco runs bi-monthly events...
San Francisco in Reviews: On The Town
Reader Comments (4)
Unfortunately I haven't been out to Incanto but I know I should! What were Cosentino's dining suggestions?
Darin- You should DEFINITELY check out Incanto next trip up. Chris' biggest suggestion was a place called Spices (there are three of them, he was insistent that the one on Clement is the only way to go). He was telling us about their 'Gangsta Hot Pot' dish. We nearly went the next day, but got sidetracked. He also recommended Ragazza for pizza. We did Tony's this trip instead, and it blew any and all LA pizzas out of the water (that post is coming up soon).
Incanto rules! My favorite restaurant in SF if not just about the entire world. CHEF UNLEASHED looks like an incredible show. I'd rather see that every night than most of the stuff on Food Network....
Right? I love this guy. And his food.