For a lifetime I’ve been in love with American Southern food. Its ranges and its comforts, from Low Country to Creole or Cajun, and don’t even get me started on barbecue. Over two decades, I’ve taken countless road trips and repeat visits across the South to study its cuisines and its music. So it was a pleasant surprise to taste chef Celtin Hendrickson-Jones’ modern Southern cooking at the new Prelude restaurant, which opened August 29, 2024, in the Jay hotel.
In this realm, Oakland’s Burdell and James Beard-nominated chef Geoff Davis is turning Southern food on its head, Bay Area-style with nostalgia and a forward gaze. But Prelude is a more upscale approach to modern Southern. Prelude’s AvroKO-designed space is 1970’s chic, like the hotel it’s situated in, warm with velvets and earth tones, wood-beamed ceiling and glowing lighting, plus a gorgeous, light-filled bar.
Glorious local ties show up in the space’s ode to the Presidio’s eucalyptus groves, including eucalyptus wood, Debbie Bean’s leaf-stained glass panels, gold plaster on the ceiling resembling the light of the Golden State and carpet evoking the leafy floor of a eucalyptus grove.
Hendrickson-Jones’ cooking is soulful, though elegant. It’s even more surprising when you learn he’s Sacramento-born-and-raised. Thankfully, his vision wasn’t a retread of what’s commonly done, but a unique tribute to his mother and grandmother, who he learned cooking from, both from Alabama. His youth was full of home-cooked fried chicken, fruit salad and gumbo, Sunday dinners and holiday feasts.
Served on ode-to-grandma china painted with flowers and birds, chef’s heartfelt cooking is undergirded by his years at Michelin-starred restaurants, including Niku Steakhouse. Keeping in the Niku family, Prelude is the latest from Omakase Restaurant Group.
After studying at Johnson and Wales University, Hendrickson-Jones went to work for Omakase after a stint at Morimoto Napa. He was a sushi apprentice under the group’s executive chef Dustin Falcon, worked his way up from chef de partie to executive sous chef at two Michelin-starred Commis from 2016 to 2019, before serving as chef de cuisine at zero-waste Verdant in Tulum, Mexico. Pandemic brought him back to California, launching his own sandwich pop-up as well as a chef de cuisine role at Michelin-starred Niku Steakhouse focused on live-fire cooking.
So how does the food play out as his first restaurant? Starting with bites, Hendrickson-Jones’ sense of play is in full display with cornbread financiers accompanied by cultured Hokkaido uni butter. And on my visit, topped with Southern country ham. Yes, please. Deviled eggs draped in fried chicken skin, various pickles and fermented bites from their larder, plump dirty rice-stuffed chicken wings and especially pimento cheese dip scooped up with fish skin chips is all a good time, especially with cocktails.
Bar director Franco Bilbaeno (Angler SF, Michael Mina, Niku Steakhouse) also takes inspiration from the South in his cocktails. Think Country Pie, an apple pie-esque Scotch drink, or a pecan, brown butter and absinthe-touched rye whiskey and rum Shortstack cocktail.
I appreciated the Ramos Gin Fizz frothy lightness of his Magnolia Fizz (gin, roasted banana, citrus, cream, egg white, soda) and the savory, clean P.F.C. Martini (Meili vodka, white vermouth, black pepper, black garlic, buttermilk, pickle brine).
Back to shared small plates where, in some ways, the deepest joys lie. Yes, Golden Osetra caviar on heirloom corn johnny cakes with matsutake mushroom cream and sorghum syrup is an elevated chicken and waffles kind of dish where savory and sweet intermingle with briny and creamy. Veal sweetbreads become approachable for all when they’re chicken fried and in mustard plum sauce with dill and pickled carrots.
But it’s smoked catfish dumplings that jumped out to me on the menu — thankfully also on the bar menu. It ended up being the dish. In crayfish étouffée gravy with toasted bread to sop up the goodness, the dumplings hold chew, but are the size of gnocchi or gnudi with that kind of fluffy lightness contrasting dumpling density. They dissolve in the mouth, tasting like New Orleans with Italian spirit. It’s a unique revelation of a dish I’d dub “signature” already and the direction I’d love to see chef continue in.
Head sommelier Morgan Harris (formerly of Saison Hospitality) focuses on vintage Champagne plus key regions of California, France and Italy, emphasizing under-the-radar winemakers and vintage wines from major regions and producers before they were “big,” to further explore the concept of “prelude.” He walked us some through some deep cuts, small California producers, which is just where I wanted to go.
I also value good by-the-glass options like a lean 2023 A. Mendes Muros Antigos Alvarinho Blend from Portugal, the always lovely, aromatic 2023 Touriga Nacional Rosé from Arnot-Roberts, or a floral 2023 Abbazia di Novacella Kerner from one of my favorite wine regions anywhere: Alto Adige, Italy.
Though “small plates” held my fave dish, large plates were no slouch. Ever-silky, perfect, local Mt. Lassen trout was even silkier in smoked creamed corn with pole beans and trout roe for pop. A juicy, dry-aged pork chop is brightened by a fresh herb salad and fermented stone fruit BBQ sauce. In some ways, the vegetarian entrée particularly pleased, tasting like Thanksgiving with a loaf-like slice of “grilled stuffin” partnered with roasted cabbage in a chanterelle mushroom gravy.
Dessert appeals to nostalgia and childhood in the hard-to-beat banana cream pie on pretzel crust, laced with vanilla cream and dark chocolate. Hell, yes. Likewise, sorghum malted potato waffles soak up in stewed prunes and chocolate malt ice cream. Even if I liked the cream pie best, a creamsicle ambrosia salad is the most creative and breezy, served with Seascape strawberries, candied pecans and a blessed whisper of absinthe.
Best of all, their house version of “nutter butters” arrives with a booze-laced milk as a dessert-y, “cookies and milk” finish. Tasting like glorified peanut butter cookies, it was the perfect cap on a dinner that does, indeed, tribute the South, childhood and family, in a refined, progressive, farm-to-table, San Francisco kind of way. I can’t wait to see and taste how Prelude evolves.
// Inside The Jay, Autograph Collection, 433 Clay Street; www.preludesf.com
Virginia Miller is a San Francisco-based food & drink writer.
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