Michael and Lindsay Tusk have been somewhat tight-lipped about what their reimagined Quince will be like. But on Tuesday evening, the public will finally get a taste of what they’ve been cooking up.
The Michelin three-star restaurant, closed temporarily since January, is making its debut tonight, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. The space will be smaller than it was previously, with only 40 seats, but the food and the atmosphere will be more expansive than ever. Previously just a tasting-menu restaurant, Quince will still have that option ($270 for four courses and $360 for 10) but it will also serve a la carte dishes in the bar and lounge spaces, plus lunch starting next year.
“We feel reinvigorated and a little bit freer and looser,” Lindsay told the Chronicle, “maybe not holding on to what is so expected of a three-star Michelin restaurant. It’s much more personal. I think we’re going to have a lot more fun.”
Tomales Bay golden nugget oyster, pomegranate, Monterey seaweed
Øivind Haug
Details about the menu are still scarce, but it will focus on local meat and seafood, and produce from the restaurant’s partner farm, Fresh Run Farm, in Bolinas. Dishes will be lighter and more forward-looking than those previously served, Michael told the San Francisco Chronicle, and might include spiny lobsters, squab grown for Quince in Sonoma, and porcini mushrooms that the staff has been preserving. He and his team will emphasize freshness, with oysters served the same day they’re harvested from the water and carrots plated just hours after being pulled from the soil.
The design, meanwhile, is vastly different from Quince’s prior incarnation. Walking in, guests will pass through a plant-filled courtyard, and the entire front of the restaurant has been replaced with French doors that open out onto the city. The dining room…