Wine Spectator
San Francisco's Best Restaurants
A Guide to the City's Top Restaurants, Wine Bars, and Hotels
By Harvey Steiman
FOOD 92 ; WINE 94 ; SERVICE 91 ; AMBIANCE 90 ; WEIGHTED AVERAGE 92
Rubicon remains one of San Francisco's best wine and food destinations. With chef Stuart Brioza flexing some serious culinary chops and a Grand Award-winning wine list the restaurant delivers a strong one-two punch.
Star sommelier Larry Stone, still a partner, now devotes his time to managing fellow partner Francis Ford Coppola's Rubicon Estate winery in Napa Valley. Cezar Kusik keeps the wine list going nicely and can pair with the best of them.
The food is a snap to match. Brioza puts focus squarely on main ingredients and reveals a refined touch with seasonings. A signature dish of crispy spiced quail toned down the spices and featured the buttermilk-marinated bird in tiny pieces, like a miniature fried chicken. Tart onions and lemon confit with basil played off the richness and made the dish ideal for a crisp white wine. "Cloverdale rabbit in various preparations" offered a lineup of roasted olive-infused saddle, an olive-encrusted leg and a slice of grilled breast meat, with purees of fava beans and eggplant for dipping. We drank red Burgundy with it, but it was a dish that could make any red wine on the list of more than 1,800 options look good.
California Cabernet classics such as Diamond Creek, Shafer Hillside Select and, of course, Rubicon (dating back to 1978) are the hear of the list, supplemented by impressive, if less-familiar, wines from California, Australia, and South America. Burgundy is stronger than Bordeaux, with tidy verticals of Leflaive, Ramonet, Mortet, and Emmanuel Rouget the stars.
Rubicon's setting, in a converted brick warehouse, evokes a comfy bisto more than a fancy restaurant, softened by luxurious touches such as a shelf of oversize glass art objects and striking paintings. Service is efficiently friendly, and the waitstaff knows the menu inside out.
Traci Des Jardins put Rubicon on the map in 1994; Brioza has the menu singing better than any chef here since. Given the riches of the wine cellar, that's a real bonus. Rumors have been swirling concerning the restaurant's imminent demise - New Yorkbased proprietor Drew Nieporent continues to wrestle with an unfavorable lease, negogiated just before the dot-com bust - but Rubicon itself is as good as ever.