S.F. diners eating up small-town vibe at city's new Town Hall

Nation's Restaurant News, Feb 23, 2004 by Alan J. Liddle

SAN FRANCISCO -- Foodies in this city are flocking to Town Hall meetings in numbers greater than the creators of the new, casual, American-cuisine restaurant had dared to imagine.

Town Hall was developed by veteran San Francisco manager-maitre d' Doug Washington and brothers Mitchell and Steven Rosenthal, who for nine years have been co-chefs of Wolfgang Puck's local outpost, Postrio. The brothers, who are New Jersey natives, now split their time between the two restaurants.

"It's been crazy," Washington said of the volume of customer traffic coming through the months-old restaurant.

Steven Rosenthal added, "Business is much greater than we expected."

Town Hall, on Howard Street at Fremont in the city's South of Market area, seats 85 people in the dining room, 14 at a high-top "communal" table and 14 in the bar. It also accommodates 20 diners on a seasonal patio and 40 in a second-story, private-party room.

Washington said the owners were caught off guard by the relatively high $45 dinner check average and $28 lunch ticket because prices for individual menu items are "moderate." With lunch sales rising daily and with as many as 210 covers a night this early in the venture's run, "My guess is that first-year sales might be $4.2 million," he said.

The restaurant took two years to develop at a cost of about $1.9 million, Washington indicated. He said the Dern Greinetz group, an investor in Postrio among other hospitality holdings, is a financial backer.

Steven Rosenthal said the name Town Hall is intended to evoke a "small-town gathering places back East." That's appropriate, he suggested, because the owners set out to create a "fun, casual haven" with "more of a neighborhood feel," where people can "hang out" and "enjoy our food."

According to Mitchell Rosenthal, the menu is "driven a lot by music--I've always loved the blues," as well as "my memories and Steven's memories of places where we've cooked and places where we are growing up." The chef noted that the menu also has benefited from the creative food for thought served up by Betty Fussell's book, "I Hear America Cooking: The Cooks and Recipes of American Regional Cuisine."

Recently on the menu were such dishes as butternut squash soup with spiced apples and cinnamon, $7; roasted veal-and-herb meatballs with green-peppercorn sauce, $9; wild-mushroom lasagna with salsa verde, $16; cedar-planked salmon with fennel and sherry vinegar aioli, $19; and peanut-and-tasso-crusted pork chop with celery root apple puree, $22.The popular slow-roasted duck with toasted wild rice, pecans, spiced dates and gingersnap gravy pays homage to time spent in New Orleans working for legendary chef Paul Prudhomme, Mitchell Rosenthal explained.

Paul O'Brien, who previously worked with the Rosenthals at Postrio, is Town Hall's chef de cuisine, and Janet Rikala Dalton is its pastry chef. Rikala Dalton, also a Postrio alumna, tempts four out of every five guests into ordering a $7 dessert, Washington said. Her recent repertoire featured the likes of butterscotch and chocolate pot de creme with a layer of butter-crunch and warm gingerbread pudding with cranberry hard sauce.

Town Hall is housed in the old but recently revived Marine Electric building, one of the first structures erected following San Francisco's devastating 1906 earthquake.

The restaurant's owners called on New York designer Mark Zeff to give their two-level space some personality. However, they wanted that feat accomplished in a manner that, as Steven Rosenthal put it, suggested "a restoration," not a "new, concept-driven creation."

The result of Zeff's collaboration with the owners was an old-meets-new ambience melding white walls; red-lacquered surfaces; exposed bricks, beams and seismic-safety hardware; pressed-tin tiles; ebony-stained oak floors; and rustic wooden tables and chairs. Prominent decor pieces include the open kitchen, the communal table and five light fixtures--with 74 spidery metal arms apiece--that once graced a movie house in New 2York's Spanish Harlem.

Describing the communal table and the steady and diverse stream of people who use it, Steven Rosenthal remarked, "It rocks"

Both foodwise and decorwise, the Rosenthals and Washington wanted to make Town Hall "something that didn't exist in San Francisco," he said.

"Here you have a lot of mama-and-papa places and 'big' restaurants, but we felt there wasn't much going on in the middle ground," Mitchell Rosenthal recalled of the thought process behind the development of Town Hall. Conceptually, he said, "we were aiming for something with great service and great food in a great space that didn't require people to spend too much money. And we kept using the word 'fun' to describe it."

Washington has worked at several high-visibility San Francisco restaurants, including Square One and Vertigo, both of which are no longer in business, as well as Postrio and Jardiniere. He said that along with a healthier-than-anticipated average ticket, he and his partners were surprised by customers' demands for upscale wines.