All right, does everybody have their permission slips signed and have you teamed up with your travel buddies? Today we are going on a field trip outside the comfort of Alive Magazine’s Circulation for the first time since this column’s inception.
Today we visit a San Francisco icon that recently did for me what I certainly hope it will soon do for you. It peeled back the layer of my analytical restaurant mind and altered my perception of “messing with greatness” as if to say, “you aren’t ready for this level of the game.” Let’s step back for a minute.
Fog City Diner was opened in 1985 but the property has always been a food and drink haven. At one time, it was for sailors first and last meal before shipping off or arriving from duty overseas in WWII or serving the railroad workers as the city seemed to spring up around the location on the waterfront.
I remember my parents making special trips there to feel a part of the “city lifestyle” so when I got to go my first time; I was awash in nostalgia for a time I never knew myself.
The restaurant was boxy, toting a small but traditional bar and heavy wooden tables, with low-lining, bulky booths along the windows. Brass handles on the bar accompanied the brass plaque letting me know some history of the place. The retro metal exterior made the outside look like an airstream trailer, and the inside felt like a train car, and I loved it. Being there just felt like the fog was coming in off the bay, and the many television shows and movie representations made me feel as if I was in the place where I might run into a celebrity at any minute.
Then I didn’t go for a while, as East Bay life got in the way, but when a business colleague of mine suggested we meet there, I was instantly giddy.
I walked in only to find the place had been given a massive facelift. Enter the proverbial surgical tools that proceeded to peel my skull back. The site I beheld was remarkable. Never, in all my time in the business, had I seen a full renovation bring a small space into the current century, all the while still protecting the old world charm and classic San Francisco feel.
Soft light throughout the now angular floor space allows the huge wood fire oven in the exhibition kitchen to be the focal point that local Architect Michael Guthrie intended. And as if the oven weren’t enough of a vehicle to inject the smoky goodness of open fire to not only the food but the very ambiance, he placed a seven foot grill right next to it. Ask yourself: Have you ever been pelted in the olfactory senses with the nuance of wood smoke and said, “eww, gross?” I .didn’t think so. We think lodge, comfort, warm, inviting—and then we think, yum!
They didn’t close for six months and gut the place, simply to rebuild the interior and lose the “diner” in the title; they overhauled the menu as well, and nailed the sights and smells with the tastes.
Small bites and shareable entrees promote family style eating, with classics like deviled eggs but with a quinoa bacon bit or Brussels Sprouts with Asian Pear Ponzu. Entrees have smoke, like the Whole Wood Fired Chicken or Smoked Trout served on an alder plank with veggie options to accompany them, like the Grilled Mission Fig Salad served with Point Reyes Blue Prosciutto.
The low-lining booths along the windows are still there but there are a lot more of them to look through, and there are no worries about finding a seat at the bar to enjoy their 16 wines on tap—that’s right—on tap!
Usually renovation is desperate, but here it is just right!
Fog City 1300 Battery St, San Francisco, California (415) 982-2000 · fogcitydiner.com
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