S.F bistro specialist Hirigoyen 'Basquing' in new glory with Piperade

Nation's Restaurant News, Dec 9, 2002 by Alan Liddle

Can San Francisco chef-restaurateur Gerald Hirigoyen help push Basque cooking further into the American culinary spotlight than it ever has ventured?

Though Basque cooking is far from common in these parts, many West Coast restaurant-trend watchers are not willing to sell short Hirigoyen and his goal of moving that cuisine into the mainstream through his new San Francisco venture, Piperade. After all, it was Hirigoyen, who, with the 1991 opening of 50-seat Fringale in San Francisco, helped elevate authentic bistro cooking in this country at a time when many high-end French restaurants were fading from the scene and the American cuisine wave was washing over the nation.

Hirigoyen is still a partner in and the executive chef of Fringale, which remains popular today despite the scores of casual French restaurants that have opened nearby since its debut.

Only time will tell if Hirigoyen can turn his interest in Basque-inspired fare into n commercial success that has staying power. Still, early three-star reviews of Piperade by local critics have to be encouraging to the restaurateur, who is co-author of "The Basque Kitchen" cookbook from HarperCollins.

To open Piperade on Battery Street in late September, Hirigoyen bought out J.B. Lorda, his partner in an existing restaurant at the site called Pastis. Hirigoyen then teamed up with his wife, partner and cookbook-collaborator, Cameron, to transform French-flavored Pastis into a dining establishment that borrows from the food preparation of his ancestors.

The Basque are a people who inhabit a stretch of the Western Pyrenees mountain range on the Bay of Biscay, a region that runs through both France and Spain. Hirigoyen is a native of the Basque-populated area of France, and the cooking of his homeland reflects the culinary traditions of that country and Spain, as does the food at 85-seat Piperade.

"West Coast Basque" is the term Hirigoyen uses to describe the food he creates by adapting the cuisine of his homeland to work with regional produce and contemporary taste buds. Traditional Basque cooking includes many slow-simmered concoctions, including the dish of stewed onions, peppers, tomatoes and garlic, or Piperade, after which the weeks-old restaurant is named.

Among the "tipia," or small plates, served at Piperade are white-bean salad with egg, chives and marinated anchovies; sauteed sea scallops with chorizo, apple and arugula; and a selection of Basque cheeses with cherry preserves and quince paste. The "handia," or big plates, helping to win the new restaurant critical acclaim include sauteed Monterey Bay squid with grapes, foie gras and fingerling potatoes; breast of chicken with tarragon jus, bacon and pearl onions; and steamed Pacific snapper with fried-garlic vinaigrette.

Piperade sells classic Basque dishes as daily specials, and recently offered braised veal sweetbreads with Madeira and stew of yellow-fin tuna and potatoes. Master sommelier Emmanuel Kemiji of Miura Vineyards consulted on the wine list, which spotlights a number of Basque labels.

Small plates range in price from $6 to $10, big plates run $15 to $17, daily specials are $17 and desserts cost $6.50. Those are moderate prices compared with tariffs charged by many San Francisco restaurants sporting a name-brand chef.

The approachable price points found at Piperade, combined with the comfort-food label that can be applied to many of the dishes served there, should make the concept easier to market in the economically hard-hit San Francisco Bay area. Consumer confidence here is about as depleted as the wallets carried by the many former technology, tourism and dot-com industry workers who are now out of work or underemployed.

With the opening of Piperade, Hirigoyen moves back onto the radar of the Bay Area foodies and opinion-leading San Francisco visitors who have helped push culinary trends here eastward during the past two decades. Though Hirigoyen long has been lauded--Food & Wine Magazine named him one of the 10 best chefs in America in 1994, and he was named San Francisco Focus magazine's chef of the year in 1995--he has maintained a fairly low profile the past few years.