Hi Lo Northern California BBQ | Patricia Unterman on Food

BBQ eludes me.? Even as a? committed omnivore, BBQ never took hold of my culinary longings until I went to Hi Lo, the sleek, airy, unabashedly San Francisco style barbecue place across the street from sister restaurant Hog and Rocks. There, I fell in love. I think Hi Lo is the best restaurant to open in San Francisco this year.? The food?all of it?is utterly scrumptious and reflects local values; and the easy going, moderately priced, order-at-the- counter concept elevates ?fast casual? to an art form.

Customers walk up a few stairs into a high ceilinged, loft-like space with walls of charred wood and a dining hall full of handsome refectory tables with benches.? Picking up a single page menu?food on one side, drinks including easy drinking house cocktails on the other? from a stand at the front, they order at the open kitchen at the back. Groups, large and small,? stake out a place at the communal tables, or upstairs in a mezzanine filled with individual tables.? Food and drink is delivered.? (The tab can remain open with payment at the counter by credit card, allowing for additional drinks and dishes during the meal conveniently brought by the wait staff/runners.)

First things first:? the food, starring St. Louis-cut spare ribs ($13),? long, crisp edged and dry-rubbed with a mixture of Four Barrel coffee and spices. I clearly tasted the bone and the meat itself, gently seasoned by smoke.?? A perky, fruity, sweet/tart Texas red sauce blessedly comes on the side, along with spears of superbly crunchy, barely cured new pickles and a soft, brioche-style pull-apart roll with honey butter. All are arranged on a piece of butcher paper on a tray. If any ribs are left, you just wrap them in the butcher paper and stick them in your bag.

Beef brisket ($15) at Hi Lo includes slices from the deckle, the fat-laced cap on the brisket that butchers usually remove and grind into hamburger.? This? buttery, smoke-tinged cut is meat nirvana. I use the red sauce on the lean slices, which are still moist and tasty, but do not deliver the ecstacy of the deckle.

Sake-braised pork belly ($12), two soft, round slices in Japanese glaze with pickled cucumber salad and watermelon radishes represents bbq light, even though we are talking about slabs of rolled fresh bacon. The fat has been rendered so gently that the belly somehow conflates unctuous and clean? .

Spectacularly delicious sides must be ordered. Long baked in the wood oven, Iacopi butter beans come out miraculously creamy, flavored with smoke, big hunks of crusty pork, and the sweet and sour bbq sauce ($7).? Collard greens ($7) retain fresh flavor and color yet are tender and deep, seasoned with vinegar and house-smoked bacon $7).? Cheesy, creamy, stone-milled grits ($7) topped with black trumpet mushrooms could be a main course, they are so satisfying.? As is true of all the cooking here, the excitement comes from the brightness of flavor and the distinctiveness of texture, not bludgeoning richness.

Even though Hi Lo is a bbq place, the kitchen excels at sharable ?plates? of salad. One beauty of earthy, coal roasted baby beets ($10), citrus, sharp blue cheese and a muscular preserved lemon vinaigrette that pulls it all together, sets up the palate for bbq.? Another of big hunks of house smoked trout and asparagus with a poached eggs and a mustard relish ($13) has the heft of a main course.? Who says you can?t precede bbq with bbq, especially if there are duck wings ($10) coated in a vinegary Buffalo-style red sauce, paired with apple and fennel slaw and a dry ?dip? of spicy hot peanut crumbs?

A bag of warm butterscotch cookies ($5), can be nibbled on the way home, while an ethereal strawberry short cake ($7), disappears on the spot,

The chef/couple behind this fantastic food, Ryan Ostler and Katharine Zacher, ran pop up counters at Bruno?s in the Mission, where I first tasted their cooking, and The Broken Record, a dive bar in the Excelsior.? Then they opened their own cafe at Google where they prepared breakfast and lunch for 1000 from scratch, locally sourcing every ingredient. They worked 14 hours a day, learned volume and considered it the ideal preparation for the global bbq they are creating for Hi Lo. They may not be doing this kind of volume yet, but with food this exciting and a system rigged for quick service, it won?t be long. I?ll be first in line.

3416 19th Street, (between Valencia and Mission) San Francisco; 415 874-9921; hilobbqsf.com; nightly from 5:30 p.m. to around 10 p.m.

Source: http://untermanonfood.com/hi-lo-northern-california-bbq/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=hi-lo-northern-california-bbq

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