The day after the big food-blogging conference, we kind of wanted to stay in bed. The beautiful onslaught of meeting people, talking about photography, the after-party crush of 80s music and bodies crammed into a room, plus a couple of carnitas tacos at the free taco bar, had left us both exhausted. I needed another week or two to process the experience.
But after an hour of lolling in hotel bathrobes and reading the paper, with a toddler between us, we couldn’t sit there anymore. We were in San Francisco, for goodness’ sakes! And besides, we were hungry. What we needed was a quiet place, with great food, but not much fanfare. A place where we could sit with friends and enjoy some conversation, a little sunlight, and a good porchetta sandwich.
We ambled down to the Ferry Building Marketplace to meet our friend Heidi and her husband Wayne. Kind people that they are, they didn’t protest that we were late (walking down Market Street with a toddler who wants to wave at every person she passes is a beautiful social study, but it doesn’t help with promptness). Instead, they snagged a table outside and lined up the menus for us.
Everything looked good. Il Cane Rosso is relatively new, having opened in only September of this year, so you might not expect the folks who run it to have worked out all the kinks yet. However, this joint venture of Daniel Patterson (one of the city’s most respected chefs, at Coi) and Lauren Kiino (formerly of Delfina, now opening Bracina) has their food delicious, already.
This isn’t a traditional restaurant. It’s more like great take-away, in a small space, one of the many food establishments in the Ferry Building Marketplace. With this many choices, something has to be good to attract attention. Il Cane Rosso is that good. None of the dishes offered are particularly avant-garde or groundbreaking. Egg sandwiches, lentil minestrone, big salads with bacon and buttermilk vinaigrette.
Il Cane Rosso cooks with the best ingredients. To quote them:
“Although Italian in style, Cane Rosso’s food is purely local in origin. Our menu takes full advantage of the Bay Area’s fantastic local purveyors, including Prather Ranch, Soul Food Farm and Marin Sun Farms for pasture-raised meat, poultry and eggs; Star Route, Dirty Girl, Mariquita and County Line farms for produce; and Bellwether and Straus for dairy and cheese.”
With ingredients like this, there’s no need for flourishes. Just good food.
I had a few choices, gluten-free. Heidi had a lovely vegetarian lunch. But Danny knew. He had to have the porchetta sandwich.
The pork from the porchetta came from Marin Sun Farms. The porchetta had been roasted in the rotisserie oven at Il Cane Rosso. It came with fennel sauerkraut and aioli, on a baguette soft enough to chew without having it tear it with the teeth. On the plate were a few pickled vegetables.
And Danny, what did you think?
Oh man, that was amazing. There was this mostarda on it that gave the sandwich a bit of a kick, something unusual enough to make me think —hey, what was that? But mostly, it was the pork. Slow-roasted and tender. I could tell they cooked that right. I want another one right now.
I couldn’t eat that sandwich, because of the bread. But you could, if you went to Il Cane Rosso.
Il Cane Rosso, open daily for lunch and dinner, breakfasts on Saturdays and Sundays
One Ferry Building #41
San Francisco
PH: 415.391.7599.
www.canerossosf.com
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