Commis

• Cuisine(s): California, New American
  Hours: Sun 5pm-9:30pm, Wed-Sat 5:30pm-9:30pm
  Price: $$$$
  Payment Types: All Major Credit Cards, cash
• Attire: Casual to formal
  Features: Prix Fixe, Vegetarian Friendly, Wheelchair Accessible
  Serving: Dinner
  Alcohol: Beer/Wine
• Reservations: Accepted, Required
  Parking: No Parking, Street

Description

Commis is a destination restaurant for an indie-rock generation, diners who prize preciousness over pomp and relish the weird places that individual vision can take a gifted artist. The walls are gallery-white, the staff is tiny, the wine list filled with inexpensive and relatively obscure labels. The restaurant serves only a three-course prix-fixe dinner for $59, yet the meal is composed with haute cuisine sensibilities. Chef-owner James Syhabout, who has trained under world-renowned chefs like Ferran Adria and David Kinch, is preternaturally attuned to the harmonics of flavor. He seems to build each dish by tracing all of the fourths and thirds that vibrate around an ingredient, then amplifying them with unexpected touches - malt powder sprinkled over a savoy cabbage soup, for instance, or a bacon-seaweed broth surrounding roast ling cod and braised daikon - so that the rest of us can sense them, too.