Square One: made from scratch and a touch of class

Nation's Restaurant News, May 8, 1989 by Alan Liddle

SQUARE ONE Made from scratch and a touch of class

Everything starts from scratch, or "Square One," daily at Joyce and Evan Goldstein's ambitious San Francisco-based restaurant of that name.

Quantifying Square One's popularity is easy: It has received a string of enviable reviews and enjoys an average daily cover count of 340 to 400.

Explaining why it is so popular is not quite as simple, though most customers would probably agree that the menu and the Goldsteins' hands-on management style are two of the biggest attractions.

The menu changes daily and pays special homage to the Mediterranean while showcasing foods from around the world. Among its recent entries:

. A white bean soup from the Tuscany region of Italy made with radicchio, tomato, rosemary, thyme, and aromatic vegetables.

. A Moroccan mixed grill of quail stuffed with honeyed onions and raisins, a lamb kebab, and spicy lamb sausage.

. A Sicilian specialty combining little meatballs of pork, Pecorino cheese, parsley, and bread crumbs, with mashed potatoes and a sauce of tomatoes, peas, artichokes, and lemon zest.

According to the Goldsteins, a mother-and-son team, Square One's per-person averages run $22 to $25 at lunch and $30 to $35 at dinner.

Ron Chez is their silent partner in the business.

Joyce Goldstein says the May 1984 opening of Square One Restaurant was a "logical extension of what I had done or was doing."

Among the experiences that led her to become a restaurateur were a two-year stint as manager and head cook at the Cafe at Chez Panisse in Berkeley and the time she spent teaching at a cooking school.

The two years she lived in Italy, 1959 and 1960, also had a profound influence on her career path and her decision to focus on Mediterranean foods.

"You know how you sometimes go somewhere, and it feels like `home.' [In Italy] I was home," she says. "[The food] was a natural for my mouth; I [intuitively] knew what it was supposed to taste and feel like."

For Evan, who at 27 is the nation's youngest master sommelier, the opening of Square One represented a chance to shape the wine profile of a restaurant. He had been denied that opportunity while he trained in the kitchens of European and California restaurants, including Auberge du Soleil in the Napa Valley, where he worked with the late Masataka "Masa" Kobayashi.

Joyce Goldstein says she relies on a 1,300-volume collection of cook books as well as her imagination to create menus. The biggest challenge in adapting recipes for use at Square One, she says, is finding ways to break down the components of a dish so it can be prepared to order.

The way Square One handles its version of the Portuguese dish, Arroz di Pato, is a good example of how she "adjusts" traditional dishes, Goldstein says.

Traditional Arroz di Pato is, in Goldstein's words, a "leaden" baked casserole of duck, lemon, sausage, parsley, egg, and rice. At Square One, she says, the cooks roast the duck and sausage separately and then combine them with a lemon risotto prepared on the stove top.

"It's the same taste in a different form," Goldstein says comparing the two versions of Arroz di Pato. "I'm not saying it [Square One's version] is a low-calorie dish, but it certainly is a lot lighter in the mouth."

When it comes to dealing with the 25-member kitchen staff on a one-to-one basis, Goldstein relies heavily on sous chef Paul Buscemi, who has been with the restaurant since it opened. Buscemi previously worked with Goldstein at Chez Panisse.

"The reasons Paul and I get along well are that we both taste food the same way and we organize and run the kitchen the same way," Goldstein explains. "We're both control junkies and like to feel like we know what is going on at all times. We expect the most out of people."

Goldstein admits that the ambience of Square One did not turn out as she expected.

"I thought it would be more of an informal place," she says. "I think it's become formal because we are downtown and people who come in see executives in suits."

Whatever the reasons, Goldstein says the restaurant's clientele wants "lots of elegant flower arrangements ... plates with logos ... [and] they want `drama' and `theater.'"

To meet the wine needs of most patrons, Evan Goldstein says he developed two lists: a 110-bottle working list, which consists of equal parts of domestic and imported wines priced at between $15 and $50, and the higher-priced, 280-bottle "reserve" list, which is rich in older California vintages.

Goldstein says that when it comes to pairing food and wine, his kitchen training "gives me one up" on wine pros, "who don't know food as intimately."

PHOTO : Owner Joyce Goldstein studies some international cookbooks.

PHOTO : Evan Goldstein, left, with pastry chef Jennifer Millar; Joyce Goldstein; sous chef Paul Buscemi; and Square One general manager Vivian Rodriguez.