haonusa's » San Francisco, CA

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Chefs, like fine wines, don’t always travel well. For many years, Hiro Sone and his wife, Lissa Doumani, presided at small Terra in the Wine Country’s St. Helena. Now, they have opened splendid Ame in the new St. Regis Hotel, a temple befitting the delicious food. The dining room’s understated elegance — polished dark mesquite floors and rich brown walls – sets a serene mood for properly lit tables covered with white linens. They stand like brilliant islands, ready to receive the carefully constructed plates. Sone is a chef equally at home in the East or West. Seafood, particularly raw fish, is his specialty, and it appears in both crudo presentations, as in Italy, or as Japanese sashimi. But he also visits France, with matolete of eel with foie gras and down home America with roasted beet salad and goat cheese Ranch dressing. Several sashimi selections appear at the top of the menu, and might include sea bream over monkfish liver or poke wrapped in seaweed like sushi. Sake marinated Alaskan cod with shrimp dumplings is Sone’s signature dish at Terra. Happily it appears at Ame, which means rain in Japanese. The couple describes their cuisine as New American. Considering San Francisco’s diversity, that’s not far off the mark.

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