The first time I ate at Lord Stanley, I didn’t have dinner. I had third dinner. I was on a tear through the land of figs and Soylent, a city so flush with produce and capital that checking out new restaurants required eating incessantly. So, at 9:30 p.m., I took a seat at the communal table on Lord Stanley’s mezzanine, overlooking a stylish room outfitted in enough shades of ivory to please the most austere Kinfolk reader.
Before long, a server set down what looked like pappardelle but were in fact paper-thin ribbons of white sweet potatoes, transformed through oil, salt, and the heat of a plancha into crunchy wisps. I picked one up with my fingers and ate it like a chip. Genius! It was like that moment in Pleasantville when the world changed from black-and-white to Technicolor. Already, I loved it here. But where…was I?
Lord Stanley sounds like the name of a British pub; indeed, its chefs, Carrie Blease (a California native) and her husband, Rupert Blease (a Brit), named it for their favorite UK watering hole. They’ve cooked at Blue Hill (her) and Per Se (him), developing the original style on display in their Russian Hill restaurant, where they offer both a seven-course tasting and an à la carte menu. Though they serve meat and fish, the Bleases have what I’ll call a Cesar Millan-ness with vegetables: Cipolline onion petals, filled with a thimble of puréed sherry-vinegar soubise, tasted like the purest distillation of an onion. Grilled trumpet mushrooms were paired with “almond dip,” the two elements magnifying each other’s depth and earthiness.
I knew from pictures that every plate that comes out of the Bleases’ kitchen is as pretty as a painting. But only after that first night at Lord Stanley did I believe that food this beautiful could taste this good.
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