Sur la hill

By Paul Reidinger

LEST WE FORGET that the restaurant is essentially a French invention, we of this city are treated to periodic intervals of Gallic chic, in which virtually every other restaurant that opens purports to be some kind of bistro or brasserie, serving the French classics (boeuf bourguignon, blanquettes de veau) or, as at Chez Papa Bistrot, the more maritime, Provençal dishes of Nice, Toulon, and Marseilles.

I say "purports" because, despite similarities in food and, to a much lesser extent, appearance, American bistros and brasseries are birds of quite a different feather from their French counterparts. Even a place like Chez Papa, which opened on Potrero Hill a few months ago and features many a server fluent in French – not to mention many a familiar dish from the south of France – doesn't really resemble any bistro or brasserie I've ever been to in France.

For one thing, it looks totally California – designed – with its sienna walls (devoid of art or indeed any decoration), zinc-top tables, and small display kitchen. There is no sense of evolution, of the restaurant's having been lived in; just the abruptness of one business replacing another. (The space had been a dessert shop in its previous incarnation.)

Of course, this isn't bad so much as unromantic. Equally unromantic is the food. It's good, it's consistent, it's skillfully prepared from quality ingredients: cooking-school food, in other words. When last I saw Ola Fendert, the executive chef, he was whipping up fairly fancy northern Italian food at Bruno's at the height of dot-com fever. Before that, he'd been cooking French-style seafood at Plouf (whose principals have a big hand in Chez Papa); he's also cooked at Scala's Bistro (Italian again) and Alain Rondelli (haute cuisine).

I do not question Fendert's qualifications and skills as a chef. They are impressive. But I wonder what he'd be cooking if he owned the restaurant instead of having been hired to provide content for someone else's idea. Chez Papa feels like a restaurant version of one of those new NFL teams, playing in some new stadium, with a roster of players assembled from other teams. It's perhaps in this sense that the restaurant feels utterly American and utterly un-French.

The dishes, as a whole, do strike a nice balance between elegance and comfort. One of the best items is a brochette of prawns marinated in pastis ($10), the licorice-flavored aperitif of Provençe. You can actually taste the pastis, mingled with the smoke of the grill. And we liked a kind of potato salad ($7.50), quartered Yukon golds tossed with chopped asparagus and artichoke, overlaid with wafers of Parmesan cheese, and dressed with a Dijon-mustard vinaigrette speckled with whole mustard seeds.

The same dressing recurred on a lovely lunchtime salade niçoise ($12), a kind of deconstructed version, with chunks of lightly seared ahi, (more) Yukon golds and artichoke hearts, black olives, and cherry tomatoes, each item in its own place. The niçoise was as full of low-fat virtue as the croque paysan ($7) – a glistening open-face sandwich of ham, Gruyère cheese, and béchamel sauce – was devoid of it, especially with a side of delicate frites and aioli ($3).

The only dish I flatly did not like was the plate of Marseilles-style mussels ($8), baked in a tomato-garlic broth with fresh herbs. Tasted off to me. My companion disagreed and gobbled it all up. Next day he caught cold: coincidence? Meantime, I moved on to a plate of lightly grilled ahi steak ($20), the fish wedged midway between a bed of emergo beans (big, white, flat ovals) sautéed with bacon and sage, and a cap of slightly overchilled herb butter. A nice dish, but pricey.

It must be said, as a general matter, that Chez Papa's prices are no bargain. None of the first courses costs less than $6; most are at least $8, and several run into double digits. And main courses are in the high teens, or higher. A roast half-chicken for $16? That seems almost late-'90s-ishly steep for a neighborhood place.

But, at least for the moment, big prices aren't keeping big crowds away. We found lines at the door during our visits. And while sidewalk tables help relieve some of the stress, the restaurant's location, well up the north face of Potrero Hill, means the wind is often inconveniently rustling the hair of the would-be al fresco set. The action is mostly inside; it's there you can see the new face of the neighborhood: the patriarchs in khakis, accompanied by trophy wives and, from previous marriages, sets of handsome scions, fretting about their inheritances; a scattering of queers; quite a few groups of women; older and younger folks, the cool, the uncool, and the unclassifiable – a fairly diverse group, if you overlook the general affluence.

Other people might have been feeling the wind a bit over these past two years, but they are eating at other places. The big groups awaiting their near-bistro experience at Chez Papa look increasingly like, shall we say, king-of-the-hill types.