2004 Critic's Choice Awards
Best Maitre d' / Doug Washington
Best Chefs / Mitchell and Steven Rosenthal
2004 Reader's Poll Winner
Best New Restaurant
Town Hall
'San Francisco' Magazine August 2004
Best Maitre d / Doug Washington
When a favorite Postrio customer called in a panic after screwing up the dessert she'd made to serve at a dinner party, Washington, then the Postio maitre d', and pastry chef Janet Rikala Dalton snuck into her home through the service entrance with a tray of creme brulee. But the secret was out when the blowtorch they used to caramelize the custards set off the fire alarm.
Best Chefs / Mitchell and Steven Rosenthal
'It would be a lot easier as a chef to fall in love with a single cuisine,' says Mitchell Rosenthal. Instead, when the 43-year-old New Jersey native and his brother, Steven, two years his junior, decided to open Town Hall together last November, they drew on every cuisine they'd ever loved. There's the gumbo from Mitch's days in the New Orleans kitchen of Paul Prudhomme back in the mid-eighties, the frisee salad topped with a poached egg from the bistros they fell in love with in Paris, and even the chopped liver Steve learned to make at the New Jersey deli where they worked as teenagers.
'This food come from our memories. It's what we grew up with and what we've learned over the years as cooks. It may not be what you'd find at the Four Seasons or Le Cirque,' says Mitch, listing just two of the restaurants on his long resume, 'but it comes from those experiences. It doesn't seem right to call it American regional — the best I can say is that this food is us.'
The crowds that have been blacking out the SoMa restaurant's reservation book since the day the brothers first flipped the switch on the enormous chandeliers they pulled from a movie theater in Spanish Harlem seem to agree. As long as they can eat Bakewell biscuits with Jonston Smithfield ham and slow-roasted duck in gingersnap gravy, people don't care much what the Rosenthals call their menu.
Life at the helm of the city's hottest restaurant is nothing new to these two. They've lived through the high times before, back in the early nineties, when they first cooked for the then-trendy Postrio (still a tough reservation to score). That's where they befriended front-of-the-house man Doug Washington, their partner at Town Hall, and Janet Rikala Dalton, this year's Critics' Choice for best pastry chef, whom they brought on board.
Believe it or not, the brothers are still working the stoves at Postrio, trading off nights, even as they manage their latest hit. But the craziness is worth it, they insist. 'Opening a restaurant together is something we always knew we'd have to try at least once,' says Steve. 'We wanted to open something that was the kind of place where we would want to go,' adds Mitch. 'The idea is so much from our guts. We haven't made a lot of compromises.'
Washington sees another reason for the Rosenthals' success: 'They couldn't do this without each other, and they're smart enough to know it.'
2004 Reader's Poll Winner
Best New Restaurant
Well, now everyone is in agreement. Town Hall also captured both the Best Chefs and Best Pastry Chef categories in our Critics' Choice Awards this year.
--
<BACK TO REVIEWS>
