Author: GCS

Americano
Hotel Vitale, San Francisco Embarcadero area
8 Mission St, inside hotel
http://www.americanorestaurant.com/info.html
Review date: March 2008

Carlos and I came into the City to have lunch at the Italian restaurant Americano inside SF’s newest boutique hotel. If you know where Nancy Oakes’ Boulevard restaurant is, the hotel is right across Mission Street.

It’s the usual bright/modern ‘60’s-ish/large bar décor, with an open kitchen (extremely noisy). The room is a very long rectangular space, with an odd alcove area at the far end that might do double-duty as a semi-private dining room for a group of 12 or so. 

Carlos has been yearning for a carbonara, so I was hoping Americano’s version would satisfy him and I wouldn’t have to make it at home (not my favorite pasta dish by a long shot).

No such luck.

It started off well. I’ve gotten Carlos into mussels at last, so he tried the Mussel Chowder, with saffron, fennel, tomato dice, with a garnish of fried leeks. He was a little surprised it was a clear soup – I should have warned him Italians don’t do cream soups. It was delightful, though; full of shellfish flavor and the leek garnish was perfect sweet little onion-y crisps.

I had an escarole salad with crumbled ricotta, chopped toasted walnuts and blood oranges – very good, decent vinaigrette and not overdressed.

They bring each table a white marble rectangle (which unfortunately resembles Styrofoam, as Carlos pointed out) with 3 holes drilled out – one for butter, one for sea salt, and one for red pepper flakes. I can’t help wondering what they’re doing with all those unused pepper flakes. I mean, even if you like chile pepper flakes, which we do, who’s going to use 2 tablespoons of the stuff for every table, every day and night?

The busboy comes around with a big basket and doles out a single bread roll to each person. This is a shame because the rolls were definitely freshly-baked that morning and outstanding. We both had the olive bread roll (there’s also herb and sourdough) and agreed it was one of the best olive breads we’ve had.

Carlos’ Bucatini Carbonara was not exactly classic. It had a bit of spinach, not quite enough speck. I was frankly surprised that they even used it, considering how easy it is to find decent pancetta in this town. Traditionally it uses guanciale (unsmoked cured hog jowl), which is a lot harder to find. They didn’t commit the sin of using any cream – a Carbonara is NOT an Alfredo – which was good. 

What was bad was they used a coddled egg atop a fairly small serving of bucatini. Now, the plates were warm – but a Carbonara can’t be properly mixed without the right amount of really steaming hot pasta (the heat of the pasta is what cooks the egg), and the amount of Parmesan was not quite sufficient. It really should be done in a saute pan in the kitchen, or even better, at tableside. 

So it was tasty, but there was too much thin sauce for not enough pasta. We got another olive bread roll, so Carlos could sop up the sauce. (For those who are interested, the current April/May 2008 issue of Fine Cooking has the classic Carbonara recipe on pg. 56)

I got the pork loin, four slices served over slices of fingerling potato salad, red onion marmalade, maple sage pesto, wilted arugula and rye croutons. It was a mish-mash of flavors – one of those dishes that if you cut everything up small and then chew it all together at once, you get whatever idea the chef was trying to get across with the overall dish.

What I got was that there was an overdose of balsamic vinegar on the red onions – I like the stuff, don’t get me wrong, but this batch was a bit heavy-handed. The potatoes were unevenly sprinkled with a white wine or Champagne vinegar, so some of the slices were sour and some weren’t. The maple sage and basil pesto was sickeningly sweet. And why the rye croutons were there, I have no idea. They were a very tiny dice and only about 1/8 cup total, so they certainly couldn’t balance either the pesto, the potatoes, or the onions with any neutral starch. 

Surprisingly, we saw several plates of the grilled hanger steak salad carried past, which looked like six good-sized, 1/2” thick slices over a pile of chicory and carrots. Why the steak salad, which was cheaper than the Carbonara, was so large compared to the wimpy portion of pasta Carlos got, I’d love to have explained to me. It didn’t make any economic sense to either of us.

No dessert, but I had a decaf coffee. The waitress made it fresh, but unfortunately it tasted worse than the cheapest supermarket coffee. Since I drink my coffee black, you could really taste all the ‘quackers’ in their blend. It was a freshly made, strong French roast, but with a bitter and sour taste in the mouth.

Service was excellent, BTW. Some of you may recall my puzzlement about Eccolo’s service, where the waiter took our order and then disappeared, leaving the busboy to bring all the courses. Since that restaurant was crowded for Valentine’s Day I found it very odd to see a lone busboy struggling through the non-existent aisles to serve three dozen people their various courses.

Americano seems to use a more democratic approach: we had a female waitperson who took the order, cleaned the table, and brought the coffee. The busboy brought the rolls, water and iced tea. Other servers brought the food and cleared the dishes. 

Got it? Not us, we’re now confused about the whole pecking order. But there was at least one staffperson for every 3 customers, which accounts for the very attentive but not pushy service.

I told Carlos we need to revisit Boulevard, long one of my favorites, for a comparison. There’s a lot more competition in this area than there was five years ago. Even though we were there on a Friday for lunch, the place was less than half-full. I wouldn’t be surprised to see some of these places close up in the next 2-3 years in a real shake-out.

Lunch for two: 2 starters, 2 entrees, 2 beverages, with tip: $80
Rating: Average. There’s better places for the money.