The Men in White

To make it as a chef in SF, you can’t just conjure up a trendy menu and lease a flashy space. Faced with diners who can sniff a fraud a mile away, you have to offer not only talent but something that comes from the heart.

HARVEST SEASON
“It’s time for a renaissance—there are so many underrepresented cultures here,” says Jay Foster, who’s been building his reputation with fried-chicken-and-a-glass-of-wine joints, beginning with Emmy’s Spaghetti Shack and the BlueJay Café. Sprucing up a tawdry corner of the Tenderloin with Farmer Brown, Foster’s mission is to serve a great gumbo while strengthening the local African-American community—he’s enlisted the African-American Farmers of California to provide his produce.

DREAM CATCHER
Meanwhile, Daniel Patterson has managed to simultaneously open Coi, one of this year’s best new restaurants, and make his journalism debut—in The New York Times Magazine. That first pot-stirring article (several have followed), which ran last November, explored the correlation between the Chez Panisse effect and SF’s conservative menus. “It opened up a subterranean dialogue,” says the cerebral chef, who’s not afraid to ask diners to rub essential oil on their wrists as part of their first course. “I’d rather eat something slightly flawed than something without any soul to it.”

NEW WAVE
Patterson’s not the only one cultivating a passion beyond the kitchen. Joel Huff, who last year took over the stoves at Silks, the restaurant at the Mandarin Oriental hotel, has cooked on four continents, yet he describes himself as a guy for whom cooking is a job and surfing, his life. “Fortunately, I’m bad at surfing, and I’m good at my job.” Good enough to have garnered three and a half stars from Michael Bauer and to be named one of five “Chefs to Watch” by Esquire’s John Mariani. Where does Huff see himself in 10 years? “I’d like to open a three-star Michelin in Ventura—and make it.”