Incanto

It seems fitting that this blog should start off where one restaurant is leaving off. Allow me to introduce you to the pork-a-licious world of Chris Cosentino.

I was first introduced to Cosentino’s style via Boccalone in the San Francisco Ferry Building. If you have yet to sample any of their products, stop reading right now and go. Seriously, I’ll wait.

Boccalone offers a wide variety of salumi products – a kaleidoscope of pork, if you will. And like any good foodie, I will always oblige and partake, and, perhaps in excess, consume all things pork related. Lardo, prosciutto, mortadella, salame, fresh sausages – whatever pork product it is, I am sampling it. I’ve gifted various Boccalone products to fellow pork lovers, have hunted down their pop-ups at various farmers markets, and I definitely have made the drive from my East Bay home to the San Francisco just for their salame. It is that good.

But Boccalone is just one small facet of the Cosentino empire. Where this really all started was his first restaurant, Incanto, set in the idyllic, family friendly neighborhood of Noe Valley. Incanto focuses on whole beast cooking – yes, friends, nose to tail and everything in between. Twelve years ago, this was something new in San Francisco, though certainly not in the Old World where the practice of whole beast cooking was born out of necessity.

Incanto has always been on my radar, though with the ever-growing nature of my “Restaurants to Try” list, I just never seemed to get around to it. The promise of going was abruptly brought to the top when word of Incanto closing reached my ears. I jumped online and was able to snag a precious reservation. Hallelujah!

With friend and cousin in tow, we made our way to sleepy Noe Valley for a 9:15 p.m. reservation. Beloved Incanto-philes packed the restaurant, just as hungry as I was to sample this restaurant for the last (first) time. And it did not disappoint.

We started the evening with a Porchetta di Testa, radish, capers, and tonnato sauce. This was a fantastic dish with which to commence the meal. I am a big fan of salt, but when it can be cut with the brightness and acid of ingredients like radish and capers – well, there’s no more to be said. The care put into that piece of porchetta was evident: a succulent, unctuous, and subtly briny flavor. This set the tone for the rest of the experience.

In addition to being a fan of salt, I am a fan of spice. Not the spicy-for-the-sake-of-spicy kind of spice, but the stand up and take notice variety. What happened next was the perfect softball pitch for a girl like me. We had the chili rigatoni, guanciale, onion and tomato. The rigatoni was fresh and perfectly al dente. But the heat coming through from the chilies really made this dish for me. While it did teeter on the edge of being overly spicy, it wasn’t to the point where the rest of the flavors became muddled into one spice bomb. What brought the dish forward without being one note was the guanciale and tomato. Guanciale, to the uninitiated, is the meat of a piggy’s jowl or cheek. It smells a wee bit like feet to me, but that doesn’t deter me from indulging. Think of this dish as a stepped up spaghetti and meatballs, using ingredients that are a bit more “exotic” than what your mama would make but just as deeply satisfying. Hell, if my mom made this for me as a kid, the revolution would have been televised.

For my main course, I leapt into the open arms of a sublime braised pork shoulder, polenta, mushrooms, and pickled ramps. YES. Braised pork shoulder seems to be one of those dishes that either hits the nail on the head or ends up being a sad version of what greatness could be. Thankfully, Cosentino and team got this one completely right. The meat was soft and flavorful, the polenta gave the pork a fluffy bed of hominess to rest in. It was like pulling a blanket over yourself and enjoying a delicious piece of meat. Not that I have any experience in hiding out under the covers with a piece of meat or anything – unless it’s bacon because that’s really just a snacky finger food, right? The comfort of the creamy polenta was taken further with the addition of earthy mushrooms while the pickled ramps gave you a cut of acidity. Hitting all parts of my palate, this dish was like coming home.

As a side dish, we had hay roasted calcots with aioli. I had never heard of calcots until this past spring. Apparently, a calcot is a fancy way of saying spring onions, which doesn’t seem all that notable. But, you want to roast them with hay and throw a creamy aioli on the side, okay, I am game! And just when I thought I couldn’t be any more surprised, this threw me overboard. It was smoked with HAY, people! That alone made me crazy. It’s not something I think of as being food-related or something I would want as part of my meal. Honestly I think of it as aggravating my allergies. But I was proven wrong. As soon as the server laid the dish down and freed the calcots from their parchment paper, you immediately smelled the hay. The smoking process also imparted the hay flavor into the calcot. I sort of imagined that this is what a horse feels like whilst grazing in open, Big Sky country, chowing down on hay. But said horse did not have the aioli to go with it. It was an unexpected dish that left a big impression. Cosentino, you kill me.

I am definitely the type of girl that needs a little sweet to round out a meal. The bay leaf panna cotta was the obvious choice. Taking an herb most used in savory cooking and using it in a dessert application piqued my interest. Admittedly, I am a bit of a panna cotta/creme brulee snob. There is nothing worse to me than eating a custard that has a bunch of holes in it. It ruins the whole thing for me. It should be smooth through and through, giving me zero air bubbles and delivering the flavor in one seamless bite. It should slick my palate, make me close my eyes and exhale while saying, damn that was a perfect bite. And the Bay Leaf Panna Cotta did just that. The bay leaf flavor was ultra delicate and the custard itself was perfectly smooth. And while the idea of making a panna cotta seems wildly difficult, legend has it that it really isn’t all that difficult to make. In that case, stay tuned for my next cooking project!

Subtlety and restraint seems to be the guiding forces in the food at Incanto. While the concept seems so overwhelming, the food was overwhelming in the best ways possible. Ingredients were given the space to shine, they were elevated to place I had not yet experienced. As a whole, the meal just sang a perfect aria. Incanto is now closed and has morphed into a more casual spot called Porcellino. If my meal there was any indication of what Porcellino will be in the near future, then it won’t take me years to go and check this place out. Until then, I will be secretly binging on salame from Boccalone.

Head to the Visuals to see some snaps!

Porcellino

Address: 1550 Church St, San Francisco, CA 94131

Phone: (415) 641-4500

www.porcellinosf.com

Happy Forking!