San Franciso Focus
Crossing the Rubicon
by Janet Fletcher
June 1994
Robin Williams, Robert De Niro, and Francis Ford Coppola were eating elsewhere every time I went to Rubicon this spring. I didn't even spot anyone famous at this new San Francisco restaurant, other than Willie Brown at a center-stage table one evening. With a young companion at his elbow and a Wilkes Bashford bag at his feet, the dapper assembly speaker at least met expectations.
Rubicon may have a harder time fulfilling customer fantasies. With Williams, De Niro, and Coppola widely touted as investors, the restaurant has a celebrity sheen more familiar to diners in New York and Los Angeles. Not that the stars in the dining room have ever mattered as much to San Franciscans as the stars in the kitchen. Good food is what counts here.
And on that front, Rubicon boasts a high-voltage team that engenders great expectations. Proprietor Drew Nieporent runs two of Manhattan's most respected establishments: Montrachet and Tribeca Grill. For this, his first West Coast venture, he went after Traci Des Jardins, chef at San Francisco's acclaimed seafood restaurant Elka. Des Jardins' impressive resume also includes stints at Aqua--another San Francisco seafood house--and seven years with the supremely talented Joachim Splichal in Los Angeles. To manage the wine side, Nieporent recruited prominent master sommelier Larry Stone, most recently at Charlie Trotter's in Chicago.
Around here, names like those can fill a reservation book as surely as De Niro fills theaters. Since its opening in mid March--months behind schedule--the restaurant has drawn plenty of diners eager to look it up and down. Manager Tom Sudinsky says many are surprised to find so little glitz.
Postrio this isn't. Housed in a four-story former Wells Fargo depository that dates from 1908, Rubicon complements its dignified external facade with a quietly stylish, men's-clubbish interior. Cherry-wood chairs, cabinetry, and wall trim make a rich, bankerly statement, those lucky enough to secure an upholstered booth on the first floor sink into the cushy comfort of burgundy velvet.
Most diners will not be so lucky. Up those handsomely carpeted stairs is Siberia, an angular second-floor dining room that provides most of the restaurant's seating and none of the first floor's visual warmth. Uncurtained windows frame a view of the fire escape. With its fresh, new carpet and bare walls, the room has all the personality of an unfurnished model home. (Pictures are on the way, I'm told.) With no art, no music, no flowers, no aromas, at this stage it's not a room that touches the senses.
Des Jardins aims for the senses, however, with a small, appealing menu that incorporates several fresh ideas. Among the most improbable--and the most successful--is a starter of duck liver with rhubarb: the chef slices the rhubarb thinly and cooks it with just enough sugar to make a sweet-tart counterpoint to the unctuous liver. Her house-cured salmon seduces the eye, the gorgeous, wide slices draped over a mound of thin-sliced fennel salad and a lacy cake of julienned potatoes. It's a stylish and sophisticated conception, but the salmon could have been fresher.
Seafood dominated the list of first courses on Des Jardins' early menu, with oysters, salmon, tuna, and scallops filling half the slots. Some beautiful fillets of mackerel turned up as a special one evening, lightly floured and sauteed and served escabeche-style over gently pickled fennel and onions. For fish avoiders, choices were few--among them, a dainty goat cheese and leek tart on a crumbly cornmeal base. The kitchen partnered this weightless pastry with a mix of barely dressed springtime herbs--parsley, chives, chervil--and diced tomatoes.
It's not surprising that a chef who has worked at both Aqua and Elka would show a strong seafood bent; what is surprising is the lack of variety in the fish selections. It's hard to compose a sensible meal when the limited menu offers tuna, salmon, and scallops to start, and tuna, salmon, and John Dory as main courses. Des Jardins says she is working toward a larger menu, which may alleviate this problem.
In general, her main courses exemplify the welcome trend toward giving vegetable accompaniments more thought and prominence. With slices of seared rare tuna, she serves her own oven-dried tomatoes and a thick chickpea pancake flavored with mint and parsley. John Dory, a delicate white fish not unlike a large trout, arrives atop wilted bitter greens and sliced sunchokes and is surrounded by braised baby onions in truffle oil and dark, meaty juices--delicious, but overwhelming, companions. A crisp-skinned baby chicken scented with thyme had better-suited partners: sliced asparagus, exotic mushrooms, and a not-entirely-successful pasta gratin. In contrast, the kitchen offers a lamb preparation to make a carnivore grin--roast loin in thick slices accompanied by slow-roasted shoulder, shredded and wrapped cannelloni-style in a slice of baked eggplant.
An early lunch menu leaned to seafood, with a couple of pricey sandwiches and a pasta dish also in the lineup. As at dinner, dishes didn't always hit their mark. "Crisp" salmon was not crisp, although it was perfectly cooked; the olive-oil mashed potatoes served with it made it clear why generations of French and American cooks have mashed their potatoes with butter and cream. A crab and avocado salad with frisee and a microscopic dice of carrots and celery was fresh and light and springlike; but a hot portobello mushroom sandwich with sauteed onions and arugula was too awkward and messy to eat.
The dessert crew makes a superior apple tart served with ice cream and bits of praline. I also liked an elegant pair of citrus souffles--orange and lemon--served side by side on thin cake bases with a tangerine tuile (a lacy rolled cookie). How could the same pastry department produce such a lackluster plate of cookies or the bizarre concoction billed as "tropical fruits with a spiced infusion"?
Perhaps it's not so surprising. Rubicon is, in many ways, an uneven restaurant that is hard to either like or dislike. The place swarms with well-dressed staff, but there are still service lapses--hard to swallow in a restaurant with such lofty prices. Twice, servers delivering food didn't know--at a table for two--who had ordered what. A bottle of wine was presented to the gentleman at my table and not to me, although I had ordered it. An overeager busboy snatched plates too soon.
Even Stone's wine list is not the treasure trove I had hoped it would be. It is decidedly high-end, with an emphasis on vertical collections, Veuve Clicquot, and--surprise!--Francis Ford Coppola's Rubicon wine. The selection lacks appealing lower-priced reds.
It can't be easy for such a high-profile restaurant to meet the elevated expectations that diners bring to it. Like a fine bottle of Niebaum-Coppola Estate Cabernet Sauvignon, Rubicon may need some aging. With the talent and experience on this staff, it should evolve into one of the city's finer establishments.