Simple Pleasures

With Coi, chef Daniel Patterson leaves the drama behind to create a new fine-dining experience.

Many things about Coi are unexpected: The upscale restaurant owned by Daniel Patterson is just steps away from the North Beach strip club Centerfolds, but it’s as serene as its name (pronounced kwa, it’s French for “quiet”). It also couldn’t be more different from Patterson’s last gig, the see-and-be-seen Frisson, which always seemed an odd fit for such an introspective chef.

After leaving Frisson, Patterson decided that he’d have to do it himself again to maintain his vision (from 2000 to 2003, he was the co-owner, along with his then-wife, of Elisabeth Daniel). “We opened Coi with a few core values, including the integrity of the experience and the goal of just being nice to people,” he says. “I don’t go to places where the food is good but there’s a lot of attitude.”

Coi’s interior, designed by Scott Kester and influenced by a modern Japanese aesthetic, is understated. A small, narrow lounge looking out onto Broadway leads to a windowless, nine-table dining room lined with banquettes in tones of cream and chocolate. Taken together, the low ceilings, the grass-cloth wallpaper and the waitstaff dressed in suits create the feeling of dining in a luxury private jet—or a members-only club. Minimalism is consistent throughout: The cuisine doesn’t come on white, flying-saucer-sized plates. Instead, Patterson’s food is served on rustic, dark-brown Heath ceramics and in lidded, handcrafted sandstone French bowls that resemble clay pots. “I’ve gone the Bernardaud route before, and that’s become a symbol of an experience which is of high caliber but stilted,” says Patterson.

Artful twists in his cooking are subtle. Guests have the option of ordering a four-course à la carte dinner menu ($75) or a set eleven-course tasting menu ($105). An amuse-bouche of foamy carrot-ginger soup awakens the palate with its thin slices of pickled mango. Picture-perfect raw scallops are simply dressed with Meyer lemon, McEvoy olive oil and sel gris, then strewn with nasturtium petals and avocado shavings. And Patterson’s signature sautéed sea bream with braised lettuce and pork belly—a dish he served at Frisson—gets a hint of citrus from fragrant litsea cubeba (exotic verbena) oil.

“I wanted to create the anti-glitz restaurant, without the feeling that we’re trying to be something that we’re not,” says Patterson. While other chefs have made restaurant dining more complicated—by sending out three variations of a single dish or inventing obscure menu categories—Patterson has, in getting back to the basics, created a fresh experience.

Coi 373 Broadway, 415-393-9000

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