Bagel expectations
Loveski, best SoMa restaurants, San Anselmo listings, Lielle, MORE
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REAL ESTATE • On the Market
Three properties that came to market in San Anselmo in the last 30 days.
→ 355 Butterfield Rd (San Anselmo) • 4BR/2.1BA • 2605 SF • Ask: $1.299M • original owner 1968 build w/ secluded back yard • Days on market: 10 • Agent: Diana Gorsiski, Vanguard.
→ 1199 Butterfield Rd (San Anselmo, above) • 3BR/2BA • 2428 SF • Ask: $2.995M • MCM classic w/ gated drive on half-acre lot • Days on market:13 • Agent: Greg Shumsky, City Real Estate.
→ 57 Summit Rd (San Anselmo) • 5BR/5.1BA • 5316 SF • Ask: $3.14M • resort-style home w/ sweeping view from Mt Tam to SF skyline • Days on the market: 17 • Agent: Radhi Aherni, Outpost Real Estate.
REAL ESTATE LINKS: What a $24M home sale tells us about San Francisco’s comeback • Private club The Bay Club buys its entire Greenwich St block • Long-vacant mansion at 2830 Pacific Ave. changes hands for $27.5M.
GOODS & SERVICES • FOUND Café
Bagel Brahmin
The Skinny: Chef Christopher Kostow, who remains on an extended, fire-related hiatus from his lauded Napa spot Restaurant at Meadowood, got into the bagel business in 2022 with the opening of Loveski Deli at Napa’s Oxbow Public Market. His modern take on Jewish deli fare — in particular. the Montreal-by-way-of-Cali-style bagels — became a hit spawning a Larkspur location, and in March, an outpost in the heart of SF’s Jackson Square.
The Vibe: The spacious former Postscript Cafe at the corner of Jackson and Montgomery makes for a mellow morning or afternoon pitstop, with ample counter space in the many-windowed front room; more standing space can be found near the service counter. And the place does triple duty as a fancy coffee counter, bagel shop, and deli-café with upscale grab-and-go items.
The Food: Kostow knows his way around a bagel, and the version here is dense, flavorful, and chewy. Options are fairly straightforward (the Everything bagels are extra seed-y), but the unique picks include the gluten-free Everything, and the “Famous” Yeast bagels, which are crusted in cheesy-delicious nutritional yeast. This could easily become your new favorite bagel.
Bagel sandwich options include avocado and radish with pea shoots and miso-vegetable cream cheese; heirloom tomato with plain cream cheese, olive oil, and Jacobsen salt; smoked salmon with onion spread, capers and dill; and pastrami, egg, and cheese with harissa mayo. Among regular sandwich options is a terrific tuna melt on griddled rye, and a chopped Reuben, mostly what you’d expect aside from the hard left turn that is an addition of kimchee. And true to its Jewish deli stylings, there’s an excellent matzoh ball soup on offer, too.
The refrigerator case offers delights including fresh crudité packed in jars with the housemade soybean hummus, tuna salad and chickpea salad along with fresh green salads, and Kostow’s perfect version of an egg salad sandwich on Japanese milk bread.
The Drink: Baristas from Postscript have stayed on to make top-notch coffee drinks, and there are also rich smoothies available like the Marine Layer, featuring blueberries, banana, pineapple, blue spirulina, almond butter, almond milk, sea moss gel, hemp seeds, vanilla, coconut probiotic, and cream.
Why It’s FOUND: You aren’t going to find a better bagel downtown, or possibly anywhere in town. FiDi denizens now have a great new morning or midday option that is the opposite of the generic and bland soup-and-sandwich spots on every block. Also, don’t sleep on the malted chocolate chip cookies.–Jay Barmann
→ Loveski Deli (FiDi) • 499 Jackson St • Mon-Fri 7a-7p, Sat-Sun 8a-5p.
GOODS & SERVICES LINKS: Bottle shop Full Proof opens in the Castro • Smart beds are getting too chatty • How AI is reshaping the fragrance industry • 50 things for spring • Which sunglasses tribe are you?
GETAWAYS • Los Angeles
Fresh dynamism
Chef Marcus Jernmark has said that dinner at his new restaurant Lielle is neither a tasting menu nor a Nordic interpretation of California produce. At a moment when controversy swirls around a certain high-profile Nordic tasting menu in Los Angeles, it turned out to be a prescient stance.
On a bland stretch of Pico in the space that used to house Bicyclette (and Mantzke a flight up), the restaurant is easy to miss, the building’s upstairs windows still dark. Down the few steps into the souterrain-like entrance, though, it’s all soft lighting and earth tones, sleek and inviting, serious and friendly.
The Nordic influences at Lielle are indeed subtle, like a delicate hint of pine in a proudly Californian salad — served ever so warm — of artichokes and citrus. Jernmark’s resume includes stops at Frantzen in Stockholm and Per Se and Aquavit in New York. His understanding of Southern California produce is powerfully apparent; I’m not aware of anywhere else you can enjoy peak-season grilled artichokes, smoky and tender against the brightness of oro blanco and astringency of ruby red grapefruit. Sheets of black truffle and lardo draped across the dish bind everything together with earthiness and luxury.
The ample truffle isn’t a supplement, and that spirit of generosity suffuses the four-course progression, from the unlisted amuse-bouches — house-made, 36-hour fermented sourdough, stunningly light and fluffy for a whole wheat bread, served with butter and radishes — to the whole grilled abalone, perched atop a pile of silken, buttery grains of rice and a deep mushroom sauce.
The generosity stopped me from springing for some supplements: delicate chawanmushi with a concentrated matsutake mushroom dashi, and a spaghetti all’assesina (tangles of delicate, scorched pasta in a subtle uni sauce, topped with pearly raw shrimp “cocktail”). But even without any additions, the core meal is beyond sufficient. It ends with a dessert both pristine and satisfying: a lobe of sea buckthorn sorbet swimming in an airy oolong tea cream, on crunchy candied pepitas. It’s playful, thoughtful, a little Nordic, a little Californian, and absolutely moreish.
A hushed temple to gastronomy, this isn’t. It is, however, an exceptionally refined restaurant in a warm and comfortable cellar-like room, with ’80s soft rock and ’90s hip hop bumping a few notches above respectability. The music and ambient conviviality, absorbed by the cork-lined barrel vaults overhead, allow the meal to be both intimate, private, and revelrous. Service is attentive and familiar, with chefs coming out of the kitchen to deliver courses, and possibly a snippet of advice, such as Jernmark’s to sweep “a scarpetta of bread” through the vinaigrette of the artichoke dish.
The kitchen also promises dynamism. In its first month of operation, a squab dish has transformed from slices of breast arrayed across a plate with the bird’s heart brashly skewered on a spear of bay leaves to a humbler plating of the whole breast, gently pink and juicy, served atop grilled spinach hiding a chewy beet.
Ultimately, Lielle is bringing a fine dining experience to Los Angeles that’s otherwise hard to find. It’s wildly creative and warm, and at $150 per, rather inoffensively priced. –Oliver Erteman
→ Lielle (Los Angeles) • 9575 W Pico Blvd • Tue-Sat 530-9p • Reserve.
GETAWAYS LINKS: Shasta County’s showstopping Burney Falls now requires reservations • Ojai favorite Ojai Rotie expanding to Carprinteria • Why Las Vegas buffet culture is dying.
RESTAURANTS • The Nines
Dining, SoMa
FOUND’s 9 favorite restaurants in the neighborhood. See also: Nopa, Hayes Valley, Marina, Chinatown, Castro, Inner Sunset, Noe Valley, Inner Richmond, Outer Richmond.
Kona’s Street Market (Third St, above), Pacific Cocktail Haven spin-off, cocktails and highballs, solid NA list, walk-ins only