Chef Loretta Keller is a San Francisco treasure since she opened Bizou in 1993, which became the long-beloved COCO500 in 2005. A chef alum of Jeremiah Tower’s revolutionary Stars restaurant, she has been cooking locally and organically for decades — I especially miss her stunning Moss Room restaurant in the California Academy of Sciences (I’ll never forget their epic Chablis winemaker dinner in 2010).
I’ve dined at all her ventures multiple times over the last 21 years, so delighted I was to see her return with business partner Clay Reynolds, cooking with chef de cuisine Audie Golder, to open Uccello Lounge on the ground floor of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music’s (SFCM) new Bowes Center. Floor-to-ceiling glass on the corner offers striking views of Davies Symphony Hall. The views set to live jazz, vocalists or classical music Thursday through Saturday from SFCM students is just heartwarming.
This is a special, unique newcomer, more meaningful when I learn chef Keller helped create an in-house food program to feed all Conservatory students housed upstairs. A horseshoe bar and tables mean you can linger over dinner with music or pop in for drinks and bites, cared for by the sweet staff. The menu reads kind of simple, but is more interesting than it looks at first glance. What sounds “typical” — truffled mushroom flatbread — is a highlight: a COCO500 classic of paper thin, crispy bread, umami-laden in truffles, Parmesan and sea salt, with a subtle, bright tang from crème fraîche.
The drink menu doesn’t break any ground. A balanced Baked Alaska cocktail (tequila, mezcal, yellow Chartreuse, herbs, citrus) gives way to a too-saccharine-sweet Tiki Tok: house r(h)um blend, orange liqueur, orgeat, strawberry, basil, citrus. Wines are the usual France, California, Oregon-type selections, but there are elegant classics like Pol Roger Reserve Champagne or 2020 Domaine Chagnoleau Chardonnay from France’s Macon-Villages by the glass.
A starter of shrimp and chips sounds basic, but Parmesan-esque crispy house “chips” (crackers) are crave-worthy on their own. An accompanying bowl of cool shrimp tossed in white cocktail sauce, horseradish and lovage, makes for a winning shrimp “salad.” It’s like shrimp cocktail married seafood tartare, a light, but flavorful starter.
The yin to the shrimp salad’s yang is a warm cup of Uccello cappuccino, a curried lobster mushroom broth, laced with saffron and chives, with a buttery stick of sourdough bread to dip in. While this was not my favorite bite of the night, the lobster mushroom-mild curry broth evokes curried lobster, though there is no lobster in the dish — a vegetarian soup to satisfy shellfish lovers.
The starter I wouldn’t have ordered but am delighted they insisted on is the shaved porcini salad. Admittedly, mushrooms were hated territory for me growing up, one of the many acquired tastes I had to train myself to appreciate over the years (and I did, though I enjoy some mushrooms more than others, but will eat all). Dressed in white balsamic vinaigrette with arugula, shaved Manchego cheese and pine nuts, the shocker in these paper thin, cold slivers of porcinis is they play like lardo or meat carpaccio salad: lean yet meaty… but this is shaved mushrooms!? Next to the shrimp cocktail, it’s another breezy starter that surprises, the sum of its parts surpassing its straightforward read on the menu.
Monterey King salmon is ideally medium rare — but with crispy skin — partnering with Summer’s glories over a summer squash pistou, contrasted by the crunch of pepitas (pumpkin seeds) and tart pickled rhubarb. Manti dumplings are one of my favorite Turkish dishes. Here, they go global in labneh yogurt with broccoli, manouri cheese, fava beans, chili, garlic and mint, a warm-cool melange of creamy, vegetal comfort in dumpling form.
On a recent Friday night, the charming, young Spencer Hoefert Trio played on, while the restaurant’s tables started to empty out after 10pm. But the bar kept buzzing later, lively with fellow musicians, neighborhood dwellers and others in for drinks and bites.
My friend and I were too full for dessert… so we tried two. Burnt honey ice cream was pleasing purity, showcasing California’s ever beautiful strawberries, dotted with pollen crisp and meadowfoam honey. But as one who is never much for cake, the marjolaine poppy seed cake won me over. Marjolaine is a classic French cake with layers of buttercream and ganache between sheets of cake. Here, the cake was ideally moist while the addition of plump, tart cherries, cherry leaf and tart sour cream made it sing.
There are flashier new restaurants, more boundary-pushing chefs and certainly hundreds of stronger drink lists. But the food here actually exceeded my expectations after perusing the simple menu. It’s gourmet and thoughtful, comforting yet interesting, approachable.
For music lovers, it’s a win: a new destination for live music with dinner and a way to hear and support burgeoning talent. I live for jazz and SF’s incomparable jazz clubs like Club Deluxe, Royal Cuckoo Organ Lounge and, of course, on the jazz hall side, the great SFJazz. But thinking of my beloved New Orleans, I long for dozens such clubs across the city.
Uccello (meaning bird in Italian) is not a jazz club, but it feels like it in live jazz mode. Where it diversifies musically — it could be jazz one night, classical/chamber music the next, a vocalist another — the space allows a showcase for young talent on the rise from the Conservatory. While they’re honing their chops here, the musicians I heard/saw were already richly skilled, weaving from jazz standards to improvisation with ease, blessed with a raw sincerity, lacking in seasoned cynicism.
Celebrating music and music students in our city with delicious food from one of our pioneering chefs makes Uccello a welcome addition to San Francisco’s thriving arts intersection of Civic Center and Hayes Valley.
// 200 Van Ness Avenue, www.uccellolounge.com
