
3870 17th St., San Francisco
Castro neighborhood
PH: 415.621.3870
Open for dinner, Tue.–Sun., 5 to 10 p.m. (till 10:30 p.m. on Friday and Saturday)
Reservations, major credit cards accepted
www.frances-sf.com
Chef/Owner Melissa Perello just can’t seem to shake her fine-dining background. The young chef, who has helmed the kitchens of remarkable restaurants such as Charles Nob Hill and the Fifth Floor, has opened what is intended to be a casual family neighborhood restaurant in the city’s Castro district.
But the French-influenced dishes that come out of the kitchen of her new Frances restaurant – named after her grandmother – are far from casual. While they aspire to be simple and comforting, the dishes are beautifully plated and tantalizing to the taste buds.
This highly anticipated restaurant, which opened late last year, has garnered so much praise and attention that it’s nearly deafening. In fact, just last week Frances was named a semi-finalist in the Best New Restaurant category for the prestigious James Beard Awards for 2010.

The restaurant in the heart of the residential area of the Castro was once the home of a Hawaiian eatery and briefly a Filipino-fusion restaurant. The space isn’t very large, and that’s the first complaint you’ll probably hear about Frances. The tables along the wall are squeezed to get maximum seating and people waiting for a table crowd the tiny front area in what is probably a bar if you can see past the gathering.
The décor is contemporary and warm, with a high-end touch that gets a bit of whimsy from the funky letterings Frances uses for its signage and imprint on its daily changing menu.
The menu reflects the California trend of sustainable and market-driven dishes, and Chef Perello has designed it with an interesting starter category called bouchées – five small plates each priced at $6.50.


At Frances, the pork trotters was served like a crab cake, with the trotter formed into a disc and then pan-fried and served with a gribiche sauce and pickled baby vegetables. The plating was so beautiful (as was the tiny bowl) but I felt the trotter cakes didn’t really showcase the pig. While it tasted fine, to me it didn’t remind me of pork. Cute though.
We could have gotten a few other bouchées but instead wandered into the appetizer section that featured a soup, salad and gnocchi (and one other item). Ken went for the Roasted Parsnip Soup ($8), which was a smart choice because a lot of the early buzz has been for Perello’s seasonal soups.

I guess the waiter was helping Ken mix all the ingredients, but basically it just ruined the photo op for me. :( The soup just looked like a beige bowl of gloop, but Ken said he enjoyed the body of the parsnip soup and thought the contrasting tartness from the apples was a nice touch. I think he called it “delightful.”

The salad looked refreshing and elegant, with a variety of citrus from blood oranges to an unusually orange citrus that was almost like kumquat in thickness and color but was too sweet to be kumquat. I appreciated the variety of interesting citrus selected to blend with the rest of the salad.


I’ve read others who felt what is offered in this dish is small for the $22 price tag, but Ken said the scallops were cooked perfectly and the hearty farro made the dish feel more substantial.


We neared the end of our meal and as Ken and I looked over the dessert options, there weren’t anything that intrigued me. My rule with dessert is to go for something I probably can’t get anywhere else. So that means I generally skip the chocolate cakes or crème brulee options unless they’re made with a unique ingredient.

I haven’t written much about the wine selection at Frances because both Ken and I skipped drinking (I’m still on my wine cleanse). But Frances has a top-notch sommelier in Paul Einbund, formerly of the two Michelin-star Coi. Along with developing a strong list of wine, Einbund has created a house blend of red and white that’s sold for $1 per ounce. So you get a decanter of wine at the table and the server deducts how much you’ve drank to determine your total cost.
Our dinner, which lasted almost two hours, didn’t feel rushed or hurried. Frances’ servers are professional and friendly, and the food really shines despite the cramp quarters. (Along with the tight space, be prepared for a lot of noise. Ironically, I couldn’t hear over the din of buzz when talking to Ken across the table, but I could hear clearly the people talking sitting on both sides of me.)
With most hyped new restaurants in town, high expectations can dampen the experience because who can really live up to such standards. But at Frances with the talents of the kitchen headed by Perello, this is one overly hyped restaurant that rises to the occasion and meets the expectations head on.
Single guy rating: 4.25 stars (A Welcomed Addition)
Explanation of the single guy's rating system:
1 star = perfect for college students
2 stars = perfect for new diners
3 stars = perfect for foodies
4 stars = perfect for expense accounts
5 stars = perfect for any guy's dream dinner
Food paparrazi

Technical note: To all you camera nerds, this is the first restaurant review that all the photos were taken with my Canon DSLR Rebel camera using my new Canon EF 50mm fixed f/1.4 lens. I got this lens as a Christmas gift, and I’ve been testing using it out at restaurants. I love the photos I get in well-lit restaurants serving up small portions (the lens take really close up shots so it’s difficult to capture a large plate unless I back up a lot).
I don’t know how often I’ll use my big DSLR camera because it’s still a bit awkward to be holding up the camera and taking pictures in a restaurant. I’ll probably use it for restaurants that have an open layout (where the room is big and people won’t notice me as much) and when I’m dining alone (I can pretend to be playing with my camera) so I’m not embarrassing my dining partner. So most of my reviews will probably still use photos from my point-and-shoot Fuji. See if you can tell the difference.
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