By Paul Reidinger

Year's end leaves one in a sober mood – or, if not quite sober, reflective. The more tempus fugits, the stronger one's sense of tempus's fugiting. As for sobriety: New Year's Eve vitiatingly looms – but until that first Veuve Clicquot cork pops, we have our wits about us, such as they are, and we pause to consider the year now ending: fifth of the new millennium and of what was once mistakenly believed to be a Bush restoration, subsequently exposed as a seizure of power by a claque of rogues and blackguards whom history is sure to regard as among the most reprehensible, and blockheaded, of their sorry kind. Also, in cheerier news of a roundup vein, a Chicago-style pizza place opened in Hayes Valley, in the old Powell's space (Powell's having moved to Fillmore just below Geary), while the California Culinary Academy launched a student-run restaurant in its new facility at the edge of Potrero Hill.

As a onetime dweller in Chicago, a Wrigleyvilleian at the moment when Wrigleyville was convulsed by its first night baseball games, I am at liberty to say that deep-dish pizza in that windswept city of the plain is as good as reputation makes it. There is Bacio's, and Edwardo's, and the incomparable Lou Malnati's, which reputedly adds butter to its crust for that subtle but unmistakable pastry effect. Buttery pizza crust, with fatty sausage, pepperoni, and tons of cheese: That is Chicago.

You catch a hint of that butteriness at Patxi's Chicago Pizza, a deep-dish operation that opened earlier in the fall in a shoebox of exposed brick and wood beams that could easily have been lifted right out of River North. (There is another, and older, Patxi's, in Palo Alto, but I have not confirmed its River North cred.) Deep-dish pizza has always been problematic in San Francisco, despite the city's having Italian roots as deep in their way as Chicago's; I have never been quite sure why.

Patxi's (the word, with its improbable "tx," makes me think of Basque wine and is pronounced "PAH-cheese") means to provide a point of reference, but we are obliged to say that the results are so far mixed. The look is one of handsome understatement, the service friendly and attentive, the prices low, and the food generally quite good. We were impressed that the Caesar salad ($8.50 for the large version) was not only showered with thick parmesan shavings but outfitted with whole anchovy filets; the Greek salad ($4.50 for a small), meantime, was a density of julienne peppers, sweet red onion, pitted (!) kalamata olives, and a wealth of feta cubes, all bathing in a lemon-oregano vinaigrette.

As for the pizza: It's available by the slice, a daily double each of thin-crust and deep-dish. The thin-crust offerings tend to be simple and good: a crisp, rigid base topped by, say, tomato sauce and melted mozzarella ($3) or melted mozzarella and pepperoni ($3.50). Since, despite advancing age, I cannot resist the devilish lure of pepperoni, I was drawn to a deep-dish slice of pepperoni with jalapeño slices ($4.50). The good news is that there was a wealth of sauce, cheese, and pepper rounds, though not of pepperoni rounds. The less good news was that the sauce, while effective as a kind of shmear across the thin-crust pies, seemed a little too purely tomatoey in the deep-dish application. And the deep-dish wasn't even that deep; while Malnati's pies achieve a true pie- or quichelike profoundity, Patxi's are the pizzaland equivalent of wading pools. But this doesn't mean they don't taste good – they do – and since too many of us are too fat anyway, a slice of deep-dish on the svelte side can't be a bad thing.

. . .

The Windy City vibe is less pronounced at the corner of Rhode Island and 16th Streets, where last year the California Culinary Academy opened a second campus in one of those glassy, lofty-looking buildings that have been popping up lately all over the north face of Potrero Hill. The new facility, like its Polk Street sibling, includes a student-run restaurant: Bistro 350, an airy, glassy, quasi-industrial space whose menu is a curious mix of bravado and caution.

When you glance at a bill of fare and find yourself reading about a "duo" of soup or a "trio" of pork, you know you are in tasting-menu country. But these are students, and while some of them doubtless will go on to cook at Masa's or the French Laundry, their wings are not, for the moment, fully extended. Our duo of soup ($3) featured a small cup of mixed roast squash soup with caramelized chanterelles and a pleasantly earthy chestnut soup; the trio of pork ($10) consisted of lumps of boneless meat grilled, braised, and au confit, with some sauerkraut and slices of poached pear for sweet-tart contrast – good if not quite focused, but for the money, one did not mind being experimented on. The tomato-avocado tartare ($6), a kind of one-story napoleon with a roof of smoked salmon atop a mixed dice of tomatoes and avocado, was quite good, as was a wild mushroom tartlet ($5), a mat of thatched pastry like a miniature place setting, topped with a dice of diced mushrooms and baby herbs. Not quite like a slice of Malnati's, but not bad.

Patxi's Chicago Pizza. 511 Hayes (at Laguna), SF. (415) 558-9991. Daily, 10:30 a.m.-10 p.m.. Beer and wine. MasterCard, Visa. Noisy. Wheelchair accessible.

Bistro 350. 350 Rhode Island (at 16th St.), SF. (415) 216-4329. Lunch: Tues.-Fri., 11:30 a.m.-1 p.m. Dinner: Tues.-Fri., 6-8 p.m. Full bar. American Express, Diners Club, MasterCard, Visa. Not noisy. Wheelchair accessible.