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Trestle is adding a new factor to its formula for affordable prix fixe dining ($38 for three courses with an optional $10 pasta course supplement). They’ve hired new executive chef Claudio Dell’Anno, most associated with the Michelin-starred Italian restaurant, Ciccio, he opened in his native Belgium — though he’s also known to Belgian TV audiences for winning a hit reality TV show there. Now, after a stint in LA as sous chef at Bestia and executive chef at Papilles, Dell’Anno is in the kitchen at Trestle, where he’s sticking to the prix fixe format but infusing it with his new perspective.
“It’s a unique thing to find someone with a fresh vision of San Francisco,” says Ryan Cole, partner at Hi Neighbor Hospitality Group, which encompasses Stones Throw, Fat Angel and Corridor. After three years at Trestle, “we’re an established restaurant. But the cooking now has a noticeably different style [under the new chef].”
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Dell’Anno says he aims to take familiar dishes and add a moment of excitement to them. A summer tomato soup with black olive and basil, for example, is served with a chilled tomato “marshmallow” that gives it a cool burst. A recent menu included a glazed salmon: “Everybody knows a glazed salmon,” Dell’Anno says, “but I like to put in extra effort and time to make it really complex.”
Dell’Anno will also draw on his experience at Bestia, a super busy environment of “organized chaos.” Like Bestia, Trestle does “an unprecedented number of covers per night... so it’s going to be an incredible challenge.”
Hi Neighbor’s executive chef Jason Halverson will continue to oversee the group’s restaurants. Jason Kirmse is still picking reasonably priced beer and wine. And pastry chef Tara Lewis remains on her dessert game, serving milk chocolate custard and blackberry buckle cake as the final course on Trestle’s menu. But it’s fair to say the Hi Neighbor group is shaking things up overall, recently hiring SF chef Robin Song to run flagship restaurant Stones Throw.
