Chefs Laura and Sayat Ozyilmaz are known in the Bay Area for their restaurant Dalida, championing Eastern Mediterranean food in the Presidio. But on Tuesday, March 3, the couple opens their second San Francisco restaurant, Maria Isabel, in Presidio Heights, this time focusing on Mexican cuisine. Laura is drawing on her childhood experiences in Mexico for the menu; she was born in Guerrero, and paired with her father’s roots in Sinaloa, those two states influence the dishes served at the restaurant.
Beyond the food, it’s personal in other ways for Laura. Maria Isabel is the combined names of her sister and mother, respectively. But it’s also about connection, building a home away from home for people to experience, she says. “As a Mexican immigrant, growing up in Mexico and then coming and establishing yourself in a different country, especially when family is away from home, you feel attached to your roots, and you want to build community, and you want to be connected with your home,” Laura says. “What’s a better way to do it than to share what I grew up eating, and what I grew up experiencing, and what my hometown is and my culture and my roots are.”
The menu is a mix of coastal dishes, but also “the meat dishes that everybody eats,” Laura says. The idea behind the menu, and the same ethos they carry into Dalida, is to offer more specific and precise regional traditions of Mexican food to celebrate and go deep into. “We like breadth, but we also like the depth of a cuisine,” Sayat says.
One of the areas of Mexican food that the menu deep dives into is maiz, or heirloom corn from Mexico, showcasing the grains as part of their masa program. Take the infladita de frijoles y habas dish, which Sayat describes as a “puffed blue corn masa” that turns into a crispy shell, stuffed with a locally sourced heirloom bean salad, and a hoja santa mole verde. Chochoyotes and mushrooms is a Oaxacan dish made with masa dumplings — Sayat likens it to a “masa gnocchi” — served in a clear mushroom broth and with huitlacoche, an edible fungus delicacy that grows on top of corn. The artichoke tetela is a triangular, stuffed pocket made with gold masa and crispy artichoke chips; a mole blanco coats the bottom of the dish and everything is topped with salsa macha made with chapolines, or little crickets.
Pulpo enamorado tostada Isabel Baer/Postcard Communications
Dungeness crab tortita ahogada Isabel Baer/Postcard Communications
Chochoyotes and mushrooms Isabel Baer/Postcard Communications
Rockfish pescadillas Isabel Baer/Postcard Communications
The moles are a point of pride on the menu, popping up in dishes such as the artichoke tetela, but also the duck carnitas enmoladas. Moles are a special occasion dish, Laura explains, and at Maria Isabel the kitchen is achieving those flavors using California and Mexican ingredients. The duck enmoladas are plated with rhubarb manchamanteles, which Laura says is a lighter mole that “feels a little bit fruitier,” with seasonal rhubarb adding that fruitier note. “It’s something that feels rich, very comforting,” she says of the enmoladas. “Whenever I think about mole, I do feel like, ‘Wow, mole is going to be a nice dinner.’ It is good to be celebratory.”
But it may be the ceviche Acapulqueño that shows some of the nuance in flavors and ingredients that Laura injects into her dishes. This is a cooked ceviche, different from the Peruvian, citrus-cooked versions that dominate Bay Area menus. But rather than the fully traditional version that shortcuts the dish’s flavors through ketchup, Fanta soda, and a bit of Maggi seasoning combined with cooked shrimp, Laura’s expressing those seasonings using marigold flowers for a broth and sauce, along with black pepper, vinegar, and preserved Seville oranges. The Maria Isabel version uses that sauce with poached shrimp and raw scallop, topped with oregano oil.
“What has been very important to us, and to me, is to embrace my community and find a way to express the sense of place. Of course, pay a lot of respect to the tradition, but also making sure that people understand it.” Laura points to the Choco Ta-Corn on the dessert menu as an example — her smart take on the American Choco Taco. The dessert infuses corn into the corn ice cream, the chocolate, and the masa waffle shell. “So all those [Mexican] aspects, but also embracing a little bit of those ideas that feel a little bit more San Francisco, or more American,” she says. It’s also worth noting what they won’t have on the menu. “We don’t have chips and salsa or guacamole,” Sayat says firmly. You’ll see those items when they make sense, such as a salsa borracha that accompanies the rib-eye carne asada, or an avocado mousse that comes with a couple of other dishes. “But the idea is, we’re not eating bowls of chips and salsa together,” he adds. “We have a lot more ground to cover, culturally.”
Isabel Baer/Postcard Communications
Isabel Baer/Postcard Communications
Bar director Evan Williams developed the beverage menu with a focus on Mexican spirits such as sotol, bacanora, raicilla, and lechuguilla, along with gin and whiskey in production in Mexico. Wine director Jerry McGie will highlight bottles sourced from California, Mexico, and South America. At opening, wines by the glass highlight female wine producers, just one of a few expressions of the female-led restaurant.
In starting their pop-up Istanbul Modern and later Dalida, Sayat says Laura was supportive, as they both felt 10 years ago the time was right for Eastern Mediterranean food. “She is the best Middle Eastern chef that isn’t Middle Eastern, in my opinion,” he says. And with Dalida, Sayat says, he had an opportunity to connect with his culture. It allowed him to bridge his different identities, to connect with being Turkish and being Armenian. But as Dalida is meaningful for him, he’s happy that Laura is experiencing something similar with Maria Isabel.
“What I’m hearing from Laura is her ability to connect deeper with her culture,” Sayat says. “So it’s not just us becoming a conduit for diners to connect with our cultures, but this whole exercise allows us to connect deeper with our upbringing, with our families, with the people that we loved and grew up with — and I’m just really excited about that for my wife.”
Maria Isabel (500 Presidio Avenue, San Francisco) debuts on Tuesday, March 3, and is open from 5 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. Reservations are available via OpenTable.
Aguachile negro Isabel Baer/Postcard Communications
A hand-painted mural by Emily Parkinson, with a view of the ‘Maria’ dining room, representing Laura’s sister Isabel Baer/Postcard Communications
Isabel Baer/Postcard Communications
Isabel Baer/Postcard Communications
The ‘Isabel’ dining room, named after Laura’s mother, features browns and greens; the interiors are designed by Jenne Wicht of JAK W. Isabel Baer/Postcard Communications
Isabel Baer/Postcard Communications