Restaurants turn table on conventional dining

At a small sandwich shop in San Francisco's Ferry Building, dozens of strangers come together nightly to share a star chef's family-style meal at a picnic table in a tight corridor.

A converted stable in the Mission District has become temporary home to two top chefs' three-night-a-week dining experience - a sort of rave for food aficionados.

Across town, a newly transplanted Polish restaurateur is turning a Greyhound bus into a dining room on wheels.

Fueled by the economy, chef ennui and gourmets looking for the next cool thing, the Bay Area restaurant scene is reinventing itself, moving away from traditional white-tablecloth restaurants to more alternative forms of dining.

High-end chefs are setting up tiny luncheonettes in the back of warehouses, selling French food from taco trucks, and opening their restaurants at off hours to throw intimate dinner parties for paying guests.

For Jeremy Fox of Napa's acclaimed Ubuntu, the decision to hold occasional chef's dinners for the first 18 people to make reservations on nights when the restaurant was previously closed is about getting back a piece of himself. In the past two years, Fox became the darling of the chefs' world, and it got to be too much.

"It happened too quickly," Fox said of his instant fame. "Not that I'm not appreciative, but there were demands to do events and to say yes to everything. In the last couple of months, I made a huge life-changing decision to be happy."

For Fox, that means getting back to the kitchen and interacting with diners in a tight-knit family-style setting, where plates and wine are passed and stories told. Fox even plays his customers' favorite music and washes the dishes.

'Warm and comfortable'

The Bay Area's food-fixated seem to be eating it up. Fox said his first dinner sold "like a Beatles concert."

"The definition of fine dining is definitely changing," he said. "Now it's all about ingredients and a warm and comfortable place."

Brady Lowe, the Bill Graham of fine food, has been watching the tide change for some time. In 2002, he started an underground supper club in Atlanta. It was like a floating craps game - first in art galleries, then in people's homes. By 2008, he was partnering with Southern chefs, winemakers and local farmers.

Word spread, and soon he had more customers than space. That's when he took his show on the road: a 10-city tour where five local chefs and five local vintners created feasts using pork from five pigs.

In San Francisco, June's $125-a-person Cochon 555 event sold out. It turns out that swineophiles are not unlike Deadheads - several followed the culinary tour from city to city, Lowe said.

"People want to connect to a story of where their food comes from," the food promoter said. "They're looking for a full experience. They no longer want to spend a lot of money to go to a famous-chef restaurant where the chef isn't even there."

Tired of starchy tablecloth

When Joshua Skenes and his partner started Saison, an experimental Sunday-night restaurant in a converted barn in San Francisco, a few months ago, he wasn't sure how it would play out. Before he knew it, they were booked solid for two months out. Now he's serving dinner three nights a week and is planning to go to four.

The $70-per-person seven-course menu, with dishes such as slow-roasted veal, caviar and poulard agnolotti, changes frequently. The vibe is much like a home, where diners wander over to the action and talk to the cooks while sipping a glass of wine.

"We don't want it to be too rigid," said Skenes, who buys most of Saison's ingredients from small local farms.

As far as the restaurant's popularity: "There's been starch in the tablecloth for a long time," the chef said. "People are getting sick of it."

Stressing personal appeal

The appeal of places like Saison is that it's more friendly and personal than a traditional restaurant, Skenes said.

"It's like if Alain Ducasse said, 'I want to cook you a meal.' Who the hell wouldn't want to do that?" he asked.