By Paul Reidinger

Universal cafe opened in 1993: a tough year in a sequence of tough years for the city, a curiously good year in a sequence of curiously good years for nondowntown restaurants in the city. A chronicle of the Bay Area from the late 1980s into the early '90s can be succinctly summarized: stock-market crash, earthquake, war, recession, base closures, huge fire, race riots. It is a list of woes that would not seem out of place in the Book of Job, but it was the earthquake, oddly, that most affected the city's restaurant culture. With the Bay Bridge shut for a month and the region's elevated, double-deck freeways exposed as collapsible perils in need of immediate demolishment or hugely expensive retrofitting, the city became nearly Olympian in its inaccessibility to suburban diners, and restaurants that had taken root near the traditional portals of automotive entry found that the usual suburban traffic on which they depended was no longer flowing through those portals at its accustomed volume.

Out in the neighborhoods, meanwhile, real-estate prices drooped after the '80s boom, and adventurous young chefs took their chances. Some of the city's best neighborhood restaurants, among them Liberty Cafe, Firefly, Avenue 9, and Universal Cafe, opened in the early '90s, and most of them are still going (one exception: Avenue 9) and are still among the best restaurants in town.

Universal changed hands a year ago April, when founders Gail Defferari and Bob Voorhees sold the place to a troika of employees, including Leslie Carr Avalos, who is now the chef. A central theme, then, is continuity, and even the neighborhood seems to have cooperated; it seemed out of the way 12 years ago, and it still does. The nearest restaurants of note – Blowfish and Slow Club – are several blocks away, and Universal itself looks much as it did when it opened. It is a deep, narrow box with a plateglass face to the street, a few brushed-steel pieces on the sidewalk for the al fresco minded, a colored concrete floor, marble-topped tables to match the long marble-topped bar, and a large chalkboard just inside the entryway, on which the day's specials (including wines) are listed. If you're thinking noise, you're not wrong, though we found lunchtime to be louder than dinnertime. In the evenings the pace is a little gentler, a bit less hectic, and each table is warmed and soothed by a votive candle. It's like being in a chapel of food.

The eminences who have publicly complained of late about the stasis and lack of imagination in California cooking are probably overdue for a visit to Universal, which sings the songs of the seasons in a voice edged with passion. No, there are no foams or essences or gelées, no duos or trios of this or that, but there is both a simple elegance and a lustiness to the food that lingers in the memory. Example: a grilled flatbread ($11), basically a pizza with a daringly thin crust, was topped with melted leeks, broad, thin rounds of salume, and – for me, the stroke of genius – blobs of ricotta cheese. Ricotta is a close relation of cottage cheese and can seem equally bland, but here it acted as a sensuous buffer, softening the garlic-salty bite of the cured meat.

The food is full of these striking little touches: a hint of mint, say, in split pea soup with ham ($6); slices of ripe persimmon in an arugula salad ($8) with those wintertime familiars walnuts, goat cheese, and pomegranate seeds; and slivers of endive forming a bed for the meaty crab cakes ($12). Complaint: The crab cakes had overstayed their welcome in the frying pan, and their hue had passed beyond rich gold or bronze to some darker shade suggesting they'd been burnt, or nearly so. I thought they should have been sent back but was overruled and that was the end of the matter.

Beef brisket ($20) was a bit fatty but sublimely fork-tender, and both the spaetzle and roasted root vegetables underneath (carrots, turnips, parsnips, potatoes) nearly melted into the meat drippings. Another gorgeously simple jus was to be found at the bottom of pappardelle ($15) tossed with duck confit, chanterelles, braised chard, and pecorino cheese; although I've rarely if ever had an unsatisfying plate of pasta, I cannot recall one better than this. As for dessert: If you believe there can be no rival to Delfina's flawless buttermilk panna cotta, check out Universal's saffron-scented version. It looks like a crottin of goat cheese and is presented with pipings of honey and sections of red grapefruit.

At lunch one notes the focaccia, tender as a pillow and flecked with herbs. The olive-oil bread serves as the basis for some splendid sandwiches, among them a juicy lamb burger ($12.50) embellished with a pissaladière-ish combination of caramelized onions, goat cheese, and braised endive; and grilled boneless chicken breast with aioli and cole slaw and, on the side, a little heap of mixed baby greens with tangy vinaigrette (NB "tangy" is code for "they added sugar," or some other sweetener, which is necessary to balance the sourness of the vinegar.)

Such sandwiches naturally cry out for fries, and Universal's ($5) are perfect: crisp sticks with a bit of skin still on some of them and a pot of aioli to dunk them in. Beware the scale, however. The immense stack (which looks like something beavers might have put together) is more than enough for two people, even if they're hungry. At Universal, they won't be for long.

Universal Cafe. 2814 19th St. (at Bryant), SF. (415) 821-4608. Lunch: Fri., 11:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m. Dinner: Sun., Tues.-Thurs., 5:30-9:30 p.m., Fri.-Sat., 5:30-10:30 p.m. Brunch: Sat.-Sun., 9 a.m.-2:30 p.m. Beer and wine. American Express, Diners Club, MasterCard, Visa. Wheelchair accessible.