Zuni

Over Labor Day Weekend we were invited to a reunion at an institution--culinary, not academic.

Zuni Cafe has occupied at least some part of an odd triangular block on upper Market Street in San Francisco since 1979. The restaurant was founded by the late Billy West, who wanted to open a place people wanted to hang out in from sunrise to midnight and beyond. We worked at Zuni for two years in the early 1990s, but our own relationship with the restaurant goes back to 1984, and a pre-concert dinner. We remember the now-legendary margarita, made with fresh lime and served in a Martini glass. We remember the ambience of the restaurant, which was a mix of California comfort, Southwestern-style, urban edge, and San Francisco attitude. We don't remember exactly what we ate, but we returned to Zuni many, many times with other friends for many, many memorable meals.

The original restaurant expanded in 1986, and a year later Judy Rodgers came aboard. We knew of her because of the reputation of Chez Panisse, where she had once worked. Under Rodgers, the Zuni menu evolved gradually, organically, away from Southwestern cuisine and toward something more Californian, more seasonal, more Mediterranean--more Zuni. Though we missed the guacamole served in genuine pumice molcajetes, the new dishes were so amazing they often stopped us mid-bite. We kept chewing, but slower; we wanted to savor every flavor as long as we possibly could: fresh fettucine tossed with sauteed cherry tomatoes in a reduction of light cream with a chiffonade of fresh basil. The roast chicken with the bread salad. The Gateau Victoire--a sublime flourless chocolate cake--with whipped cream. The dish we remember most was a cold summer soup of pureed yellow tomatoes drizzled with good-quality olive oil and seasoned with exactly the right amount of salt. When Darrell, our waiter, asked if we wanted any dessert, we said, "You're going to laugh, but--" "You want another bowl of that soup, don't you?" he said with a smile. "I totally understand..."

We ourselves went to work at Zuni in August 1990, and were still very young, and very immature. In various ways and nefarious means, we got caught up in the chaos and silliness that often obtains among restaurant co-workers, yet amid the individual and collective dysfunction, something lasting developed: already familiar with Rodgers' cuisine from a diner's point-of-view, we now had the chance to experience what it was like to taste it, serve it, and watch it in action, day after day, meal after meal. Working there, we were even more intrigued by Judy Rodgers. Towards her, publicly, we acted less than honorably and less than professionally, more like a brattish student in an exclusive academic institution; privately, we realized that she was sui generis, that we'd never met anyone like her, and that we'd never been in the presence of a palate as developed as hers. We marveled that she could taste so much food over and over, and know so quickly and so exactly what was good about it and what it still needed. We sensed that she was a genuine professional, the first we'd worked with so closely, and that she was possibly some kind of artist.

It was a culinary education like no other, our first opportunity to taste the work of a chef who cooked with the deepest possible thought and care about what she was doing. And because the Zuni menu changed every single day, we got to taste every new dish. We got to experience the flavors of foods that were seasonal, that had been chosen expressly for that seasonality, that had been combined with other flavors in ways that made it seem that cooking was the inevitable next stage in the life of the food, as if cooking was almost another form of ripening. Salmon with a piece of bacon and mesclun greens over French lentils. Lamb shank en daube. Pissaladieres. Fritto misto with sprigs of fresh sage and slices of lemon that had been lightly battered and fried to exactly the right amount of crispness; we wanted to eat nothing else. Ribeyes with lavender. Fennel, its edges perfectly browned. Fusilli with breadcrumbs, anchovies, garlic, and parsley. Eggs en cocotte. The wines. Rhone reds. Bandol. Vouvray. And cheeses. We grew up on Velveeta, and now we were eating Bleu d'Auvergne drizzled with wildflower honey with an unctuous glass of Muscat de Beaumes-de-Venise in the rare San Francisco sun. Creamy Fougerus. Salty, buttery Morbier. And of course, the classics: the oysters, the burger, the shoestring fries.

We left Zuni, and California, and went on to eat at other restaurants, cook in other kitchens, taste foods we never had before because...well, because you don't find Atlantic lobsters in the Pacific, because there's no taste like the succulence of fresh pate eaten on the side of the Route Napoleon in Provence, because the experience of fresh fried squash blossoms on the North Fork of Long Island in August is one worth having at least once. We didn't make it to the reunion; we didn't need to: the foods and flavors of Zuni are something we carry with us every day.