Wolfsbane

"Top 100 - 71, 1 star Oh great, many of you may be thinking, another tasting menu restaurant where dinner, including tax, tip and wine, will run a couple more than a grand. While the pricing puts dinner at Wolfsbane out of reach for many, those who have the means will find it to be a worthy addition to San Francisco’s splurge circuit. (A la carte options are available at the bar, on a walk-in only basis.) Chef Rupert Blease runs Wolfsbane with wife Carrie Blease and business partner Tommy Halvorson, whose restaurant Serpentine formerly occupied the building. Some of the dishes on the menu will be familiar to fans of the Bleases’ previous restaurant, Lord Stanley, which closed earlier this year. Cabbage is a highlight of the 10-course menu — no, really — sliced into ribbons and cloaked in buttermilk, dill and uni bottarga. The dish is emblematic of Blease’s cooking, which is aromatic and often pairs the savory (shaved matsutakes and aged Gouda) with an unexpected touch of sweet (shallot jam and pain d’epices). The space, a former tin can factory, has been softened by handmade hanging lanterns, cork walls and sprawling branches that give the impression of forest rewilding an abandoned warehouse. In 1915, the American Can Company built a tin can factory at the corner of 3rd and 22nd streets in San Francisco’s Dogpatch neighborhood. The factory’s boiler room would later become a restaurant, the space now occupied by fine-dining newcomer Wolfsbane. Owners Carrie and Rupert Blease, formerly of Lord Stanley, in collaboration with Tommy Halvorson, who ran Serpentine in the same Dogpatch space, reclaimed the industrial bones with lots of foliage, from huge leafy branches suspended as if mid-growth on the walls to live plants. Japanese-inspired lanterns, handmade by a former employee, and soft green velvet chairs warm the space, designed by Boor Projects. Thoughtful design touches continue throughout the $248 tasting menu, from a pick-your-own box full of knives to adorable, pig-shaped knife rests. "