Incanto Interior
I grew up eating offal and love it to this day. DD will be the first to tell you that if I see organ meats featured on a menu, they’re quickly registered on the mental shortlist of items to order. Back in the Philippines, we never referred to offal as such, no “nasty bits” references, no euphemisms about “eating nose to tail.” We simply ate what our kitchen, or the restaurants we frequented, produced, whether it was a platter of kidneys, a sautee of chicken liver, or simmered calfs’ brains floating in a chinese herb soup. I grew up learning how to ask for the pigeon head for the pleasure of cracking its skull open to get at the creamy goodness within.
I had known about Chef Chris Cosentino of Incanto for some time – even before he began to receive first local, then nationwide acclaim for being a proponent of nose-to-tail, sustainable whole beast eating, for his offal dinners, for championing the off-cuts and using every part of the animal. Still, it took a while until we finally made it over to outer Noe Valley, where on any given day, there will likely be perhaps more than the usual suspects of organ meats on Incanto’s ever-changing menu.
But you can also reserve for a special all-offal dinner – the Quinto Quarto.* For $75, you get a custom all-offal 5-course meal with optional wine pairings. You’re required to book a week in advance, and I recall that during our first visit the restaurant coordinated with me to ensure we were visiting when Chef was actually in the kitchen.
What follows here is an account of the first of 2 dinners we attended – this first one in September, 2009. We subsequently returned in 2011, but that’s for another post.
Custom Quinto Quarto Menus
We went with a friend – Mike – whom we call Swiss for obvious reasons. We were pleased to see that they had prepared menus for us and loved the fact that with our wine they also provided us with small paper disks bearing the name of the pairing wrapped around the stems of our glasses so that we could easily take them home for future reference.
Overall during that first meal everything was delicious and well-executed, though even DD had to admit that there was nothing on the menu that seemed truly unusual, or something that required us to truly screw up our courage to try something different. We might have steeled ourselves too well. We might have entertained visions of brains, cow lips, kidneys, “fries” or those “oysters”… we were prepared for the unthinkable of unthinkables…but all in all, the Quinto Quarto tasting menu at Incanto that evening was – well – as tame as could be expected.
Pancetta-wrapped dates stuffed with duck liver
Amuse: Pancetta-wrapped dates stuffed with duck liver.
An off-menu item, and a surprise from the kitchen. A play on your regular bacon and dates – sweet and savoury – perhaps a little too sweet. The bacon had an additional coating of something cloying that made the pairing with the date just a tad too saccharine for me, but I also am not a big fan of the fruit. Sprinkled atop were sunflower sprouts, “…because ducks like to eat sunflowers…” dutifully repeated our server several times. I could taste the fatty pork, the dried sticky sweetness of the fruit, the unctuousness of the duck liver. I think I may have tried to separate the date from the bacon and liver as I finished the dish.
Chili and Tuna Bones
First course: Chili and Bones.
These were enormous central bones of tuna, tossed and topped with an intensely piquant topping of parsley, garlic, capers, mint and chili. Urged to use our hands, we nibbled on the remaining bits of flesh clinging and encountered the occasional chewy spinal cord. While I hadn’t necessarily thought of bones as offal (I guess they are after all, parts of the creature normally cast away), this was one of the more interesting and unique dishes to us. Our lips became tingly after a while because of the chili, but on the whole, and despite its being a tad messy, we enjoyed this offering very much.
Pastramied ox tongue
Second Course: Pastramied ox tongue, cornichons, red onion & rye.
This was Chef’s play on pastrami on rye, and it was excellent. All of us had had tongue before, and liked it; these tongue slices were uber-tender and very thinly sliced. The cornichon, vinegar sauce and rye seeds sprinkled over the dish added layers of flavours and textures, and provided a nice acidic contrast to the richness.
Spaghettini with house-cured pork liver
X Course, off-menu: Spaghettini with olive oil, parsley, egg yolk & finely shaved house-cured pork liver.
The kitchen surprised us with another extra dish, and it was rich, garlicky and delicious. I didn’t think I really tasted the liver, though – it was so finely shaved, like bottarga, but without the salty, fishy aggressiveness of the dried roe.
Trippa Napoletano
Third Course: Spicy trippa Napolitano, tomato, red onion & mint.
Tripe is one of my absolute favourite dishes, and I grew up eating tons of little dishes of honeycomb when my family used to go to weekly dimsum. This was a great version, the tripe tender but still carrying some bite, unlike A16’s trippa dish, where the pieces of stomach were so utterly tender they were practically melting into the sauce. (Not necessarily a bad thing, though.)
Trotter Cake, Foie Gras
Fourth Course: Trotter cake, foie gras, grape jelly & pine nuts.
By far the richest and most flavourful dish of the evening – all the tastes and textures came together in the most orgasmic way (though I have to admit I’m such a sucker for that fatty liver, especially if it’s seared…). However, I and DD found ourselves too full to finish, and we had to cry uncle, and beg for tips to reheat the dish once we got home.
According to our server, from the chef himself: Crank up your oven to the highest setting (in our case, 500 degrees F), warm a pan (pan should not be hot; just warm), cover the pan with the foie inside and put it in your hot oven for 2-5 minutes. This method worked perfectly. In the past, DD and I have had problems with overheating the pan so the foie just melted away. This technique helped maintain the liver’s structural integrity and tastiness.
Bloodacotta
FifthCourse: (Chocolate) Bloodacotta.
Delicious, creamy, chocolatey, rich. Everything I’d want in a dessert. What one might normally expect out of a chocolately panna cotta, but slightly richer, thicker, and less clearly gelatinous.
Chef Consentino is clearly a talented cook, and we definitely wanted to return. After reading this account of a recent Head to Tail dinner, with more edgy preparations of offal, I’ll certainly make an effort to book next year.
*June, 2011: checking the Incanto website, I no longer found a reference to the Quinto Quarto dinners. I’m not sure if they’re still offered as an option. Googling “incanto il quinto quarto” brings up the original page, but it’s not readily linked from their top-level pages on the website. Best to call ahead of time to find out.
Incanto
1550 Church Street
(bet 27th and 28th Streets)
San Francisco, CA
415.641.4500
