Tucked away in an S.F. Victorian, this tiny new restaurant is reinventing the French bistro

French restaurants haven’t fared well in San Francisco in the past few years. The cuisine has seen a succession of blows in the closures of high-profile Francophone institutions like Fringale, Le P’tit Laurent and La Folie, suggesting that the days of classic French dining might be well past us.

Given that context, Mijoté, a new French bistro in the Mission District, might seem like a risky endeavor — but its contemporary take on Parisian cuisine brings a tarragon-scented gust of fresh air to the scene.

A native of Japan, Mijoté chef and co-owner Kosuke Tada spent years working in French restaurants: first in Japan, then in France. The restaurant’s name is taken from the French word for “simmered,” the first term he learned in his studies. His style of ingredient-focused and seasonal cooking is philosophically in-line with California cuisine, but it also reflects the changes that have occurred in the French culinary scene in the past decade. You won’t find French bistro standards like Gruyere-topped onion soup, escargots swimming in butter or entrecôte served with paper cones of frites here. Instead, Tada and his wife, co-owner Grace Mitchell Tada, have opened a bistro that reflects the lighter — and frankly, more flavorful — fare that represents the cutting edge of French cuisine.

In the past decade, Parisians have developed a (rather Californian) taste for simple and light bistro cooking. The couple ran this concept as a pop-up for East Bay natural wine nerds for the last five years, gaining a strong fan base and a series of consistently sold-out events. Taken in tandem with the Bay Area’s vibrant natural wine scene, the conditions here feel just right for a restaurant like Mijoté.

Obviously, I’m a big fan, though that might also have to do with the fact that I’m feeling lots of choice paralysis lately. I love that all you have to go on here is a tiny square of paper that tells you exactly what you’re getting for dinner, with the hardest decision being whether you’d like a $10 cheese plate before dessert. Dinner is four courses ($82), the wine is natural, and that’s really all you need to know.

Mijoté Chef-owner Kosuke Tada works at what used to be a sushi counter while diners Michael Lim and Lise Statelman look on.

Adahlia Cole/Special to The Chronicle

The menu at Mijoté, which opened in the first floor of a Victorian house in April, is a series of lowercase nouns that seems so abstract it might as well be experimental poetry. One week’s menu featured “maitake, hazelnut, lemon,” a line that told me everything and nothing about what I was going to eat. Without verbs or other context clues, you might imagine those three ingredients would be stacked in a weird kebab. It’s almost like an improv comedy prompt, where you have to suddenly make a logical connection between a beach ball and a fire engine.

What came out was a roasted clump of maitake mushroom, its savoriness concentrated in its most caramelized protrusions, sauced by a frothy espuma of white wine and brown butter; hazelnut pesto, with a hint of lemon zest, added a third tier of nuttiness to the dish.

Every composition is a creative — and often surprising — configuration of ingredients. On my third visit, the standout was a Jenga stack of bigeye tuna sashimi, blanched heirloom carrots and paper-thin slices of nectarine, garnished with verdant-tasting carrot greens and a rhubarb-piquillo pepper salsa. It was a pleasure to topple: to compare the sweetness of the carrots with the tart-sweet of the fruit, and to find the stone fruits echoed two courses later, with plumped cherries swimming in a beef demi-glace.

A dish of carrot, mussel and turmeric is served with Josey Baker bread at Mijoté. The restaurant is breathing new life into French cuisine in San Francisco.

Adahlia Cole/Special to The Chronicle

Crusty Josey Baker sourdough is included for sauce-sopping purposes, and the slabs are cut thickly, as if sliced by someone truly ravenous. On all of my visits, the savory dishes were also showcases for Tada’s mind for sauces, carefully pooled to the side or spooned over the plate at the table. There was a floral beurre blanc, beaming with a saffron infusion that transported sauteed Monterey squids and wok-cooked Swiss chard into a Venusian spectacle. On another day, a turban of halibut crudo, with a dollop of intense dill salsa verde, rested on a creamy horseradish sauce interrupted by droplets of herbal oil.

The dishes make great use of infused oils and concentrated extracts, which leave distinct impressions on your palate. You’d expect a strawberry dessert to use the berry as the main heavy hitter, but here, a combination of raw fennel bulb and verdant fennel granita swerves it into licorice country.

To wit, the simply worded menu belies the coherence of the four courses. Chef Tada sketches out his weekly menus with a satisfying amount of connective tissue: the kinds of callbacks and Easter eggs that keep you invested the whole way through. According to the restaurant, the menu changes by “the seasons, the weather, the team’s emotions, and the offerings of our local producers.”

Kosuke Ikeue pours wine for guests at Mijoté, a thrilling new French restaurant in San Francisco.

Adahlia Cole/Special to The Chronicle

Food Guide

Parklet at Cotogna, 490 Pacific Avenue in San Francisco, Calif., on Thursday, July 30, 2020. in San Francisco, Calif., on Thursday, July 30, 2020. Due to indoor dining being prohibited due to coronavirus pandemic, many San Francisco restaurants have put up "shared spaces platforms" where tables and chairs have been placed on sidewalks and parking spaces.

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The Tadas have created a space that’s just as uncomplicated as the cooking. With a long wooden chef’s counter commanding most of the small dining room, it’s obvious that this was once Sasaki, a 12-seat sushi bar, though that sense of slow-paced austerity is gone in favor of a more lively, packed-in vibe. Instead of nigiri, chefs pass floral-patterned plates of sticky braised beef cheeks over the counter. Vintage posters of French wine regions cover the walls, and a chalkboard of the night’s by-the-glass offerings is the focal point of the room — similar to Ordinaire, the Oakland wine bar that formerly played host to the Tadas’ pop-up.

From a diner’s perspective, this seems like one of the more elegant pop-up-to-restaurant transitions out there, with little of the awkwardness and scaling problems that tend to dog businesses making the leap to brick-and-mortar. What’s clear is that the serving staff, while casual, are attentive and professional, and the kitchen turns out the courses like clockwork. You’ll be out of there in about an hour and a half, full but not so full that you couldn’t skip your way down Harrison Street.

Soleil Ho is The San Francisco Chronicle’s restaurant critic. Email: soleil@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @hooleil

 

Mijoté

2400 Harrison St., at 20th Street, San Francisco. www.mijotesf.com

Hours: 5-9 p.m. Friday-Tuesday.

Accessibility: Separate ramp entrance.

Noise level: Difficult to converse at peak times.

Meal for two, without drinks: $210.

What to order: Server recommendations for wine are spot-on.

Meat-free options: Vegetarian menu available by request. No vegan option.

Drinks: Wine, with an emphasis on natural varieties.

Transportation: Near 12-Folsom/Pacific and 27-Bryant Muni lines. Street parking. Bicycle racks in front of restaurant.

Best practices: Indoor seating only, with proof of vaccination required. Walk-ins sometimes available. Reservations highly recommended.