Wookiee Hut Cuisine presents:
 Incanto
 Location 1550 Church Street, Noe Valley, San Francisco, CA
415-641-4500
 Review by Susu, MaceVindaloo, Diasala, Diana













Now and again, it's important to be challenged and to go outside your comfort zone. That's where expectations, fear, disgust, wonder, and many other things meet and merge. How you come into it, or how you get out of it, is always educational and can serve to change your life and outlook.

We'd heard of Chris Cozentino through the Food Network's Next Iron Chef series; he'd beaten five other contestants toward acquiring the New Iron Chef position, and was bested by only two others. His food came across as innovative yet old-fashioned, a bit over the edge, and erudite. It was challenging to understand as well as to eat. We longed to try his creations, even though they often seemed so challenging as to be dangerous.

Cozentino heads an Italian-Californian restaurant in the Noe Valley neighborhood of San Francisco. The restaurant is on the ground floor, and he makes salumi upstairs. The decor makes it look a bit like a monastery, and a bit like a cheese or wine cav. Samples of his salamis and hams (with pig's tail attached!) are in a glass case as you walk in. It's a bit shocking for some, too visceral.

The chef is known for his support of "sustainable agriculture," the practice and preaching of organic-ness, buying locally, supporting farmers, etc. He's also a big believer in what could be called the Chez Panisse ethos, to look after the earth and your people. So he offers still or sparkeling water without charge to his diners. And he charges a flat 5% on the check, explaining that it ensures the people in the back of the house have health insurance and are fairly compensated, too. He could have just upped his food costs by 5%, but instead decided to tell the diner where the money was going.

Cozentino is also known for advocating the use of all parts of an animal — whether as salami or as less processed items. For some, these two concepts are intertwined and the same. This is more adventurous that some stomachs and minds can stand, especially when the innards are not hidden in a stuffing or smothered under onions.

Thus, ordering innards and scraps would not only test us — the diners — but also test the chef who prepared them. This is at the heart of adventurous dining experience. Do our philosophies mix and match? Does it taste good?

We started with antipasto, featuring house-created brown sugar salami, pistachio mortadella, two types of head cheese, paté de campagne with grainy mustard, pickled ramps and baby fennel, and fresh radishes with sea salt. All of it was surprisingly mild tasting. We were expecting more aggressive, bold spicing; the chef seems to do this during his television cooking stint, after all. It was as if avowing challenged us with head cheeses, he felt he needed to not blow his whole stack on this one dish. Or maybe, it was his way of leading us in, and not burning us out too early?

The other dishes ordered:

  • Pig's trotters with fois gras — extremely flavorful, rich. Gelatinous tendons (or maybe it was fat) were left in, making the dish earthy and rich.

  • Beef heart tartare with white melba toast — but what a huge serving of chopped heart with vegetables! It's very rich and beefy tasting, but the cold mass was a bit off-putting in that quantity.

  • Handkerchief pasta with pork ragu — this is apparently the restaurant's signature dish. It was a lighter beef version of bolognese and very rich and delicious.

  • Cavatelli with mortadella, yellowfoot mushrooms, cheese — very mild. There were pistachios in the sausage, but we didn't think it did anything for the chunks of mortadella other than giving it color. Disappointing yet good flavor overall. We probably had too high expectations?.

  • Capunti with nettles tossed with chicken, mushrooms, cheese. The pasta is a bright green capunti — a mix between gnocchi and orzo? The cheese was delicious.

  • Tilemaker's stew with beef and pears on grilled bread — a pot roasted, braised stew. Good flavor, difficult (overcooked stewed) texture; many people would find this comforting and fall-off-the-bone. We assume it's called "tilemaker" for the grilled bread beneath, which was delicious and had great texture and char. the carrots were firm, delicious and cut really nicely.

  • Risotto with radicchio and Barolo wine — very rich, creamy, well-balanced. The rich cheese was balanced by the bitterness of the radicchio.

  • Milk-braised pork with polenta — good soft polenta with a strong corn taste.

  • Ginger cake with butterscotch sauce, vanilla ice cream — it was almost chocolatey and very moist and tender.

  • Moscato jelly with citrus salad — refreshing, mild.

  • Bay leaf and vanilla pannecotta — couldn't perceive the bay leaf, nicely smooth.

  • Red wine — $40 good mild wine, went with everything. Good value.

  • Mystery flight of dessert wines.

  • Coffee

  • Sparkling water, still or sparkling offered for free.

    Some of the dishes seemed like the very best things you can make from superlative leftovers. I think it's because Cozentino does take the sustainability, waste-nothing ethos very seriously. And for most of us, it was simply good food; for at least two of us, it looked like stellar second-day assemblies. Not that that's a bad thing!

    The meal was indeed challenging. At points, it was delicious and could almost be called revelational. At other times, the effort was too ambitious in that some cuts or techniques simply provided their inventors with good food with no resources, but in themselves, could never be more than they were.

    Disappointment came with this revelation because we'd hoped that a practitioner of Cozentino's talent and passion could imbue a beef heart or scraps of pig meat into something transcendental. That is likely an unreasonable expectation, or does that mean he's not equal to the task? We didn't want to be "prove it me tourists" but ...

    We saw Cozentino at the kitchen pass all night, expediting orders. This is traditional at dinnertime in most restaurants; the chef then judges and finished every dish. He's responsible for it all, including training his cooks to execute his dishes as he taught them to do. If you want the chef's cooking efforts, you'd probably do better to go to the restaurant at lunchtime.

    Service was clumsy — they couldn't do something as simple as recall who ordered what. We hate when a server shows up with plates in hand and says, "Who ordered the fois?" That's what the pad and paper are for! However, when asked to wrap up some food, they didn't bring it out again till the end of the meal, the table number neatly penned on the page.

    Like Cozentino's food, the service was patchy. The intention was always clear, fortunately, and it didn't detract from the experience.

    The great atmotphere, the very good food, the excellent wine made the $100 per person — including wine, tip, crew service charge, etc. — a decent deal, despite everything not firing on all cylindars all the time. Or maybe they were, and we still have some growing up to do? It was challenging and educational and we did learn a lot!
    Disclaimer: The opinions and observations noted are the property of the author. Neither Wookieehut nor any associates makes any claims or lucre from the posting of this report or review. This webpage is presented by Wookieehut.com. Enjoy!