What happens when a well-regarded restaurant brings on a new chef, jettisons the menu in favor of an entirely different cuisine, and relocates across town?
You could argue that it’s become an entirely different restaurant, even if it retains the name. But in the case of Sons & Daughters (opens in new tab) — which, under the helm of chef Harrison Cheney, dumped its emphasis on New American fare for a “New Nordic” approach and moved from Lower Nob Hill to a much-larger space in the Mission in 2024 — it becomes a distilled version of itself.
Things have certainly gone well since the overhaul. Cheney reinvigorated a restaurant that had slid into a comfy middle age, winning the Michelin Guide’s California Young Chef Award in 2023 and shepherding Sons & Daughters from one Michelin star to two in 2024. Now, every element of his 24-course tasting menu is calibrated with one purpose in mind: earning that third Michelin star, a designation held by only three restaurants in San Francisco and 14 in the United States.
It’s no secret that he wants it badly. I put the question to him directly. “Obviously!” he says. “It’s 100% a goal.”
Cheney, 32, would be among the youngest chefs in the world to helm a three-Michelin-starred restaurant.
Dry-aged dairy cow with elderberries, coastal redwood, and grilled butter is among the standout bites.
The goal is newly within reach. As Noma’s Rene Redzepi, long the champion of the New Nordic movement, falls into disgrace amid accusations of abuse, Sons & Daughters is poised to pick up the mantle. It is the likeliest restaurant in San Francisco to ascend to that most rarefied stratum of culinary excellence, joining Quince, Benu, and Atelier Crenn. And Cheney, 32 and a native of London, would be the youngest leader of an American kitchen to oversee that remarkable feat.
Austere hedonism
New Nordic is as much an ideology as a cuisine. It takes Scandinavia’s scarcity as its starting point, applying enormous rigor to forage for and ferment everything possible, bottling the energy of a brief growing season to enjoy through the long, dark winter.
It is a nearly ferocious commitment to spin straw into gold and squeeze blood out of turnips. Humble ingredients like beets and buckwheat become almost equal in status to quail and tomatoes, as each has the potential to yield magic if worked upon with sufficient creativity and diligence.
At Sons & Daughters, the result is an austere hedonism. Dinner involves no seafood flown from Japan, very little beef, and, perhaps more surprising, almost no cheese. But there is caviar. And amid the tiny edible blossoms and the quail Scotch eggs with Périgord truffles, there are plenty of actual turnips.
“We’re very aware of the fact that we’re not for everyone,” Cheney says. “I don’t think all good things should be.”
Sons & Daughters took over the Mission space that formerly housed Osito.
My meal was three hours of dazzling intensity, starting with a quartet of little bites in the lounge once all parties had arrived. (There is but one seating each night.) The most notable involved a piece of beef — the only beef on the menu, in fact — aged for six weeks, then softened with butter and a pop of elderberries. It came from a dairy cow, an emblem of Cheney’s eagerness to challenge or even handicap himself. Cattle raised for beef develop more marbled fat and are slaughtered at around 18 months, while dairy cows have longer working lives, so their already-lean meat only grows tougher. In spite of its age, this beef was remarkably flavorful.
After that opening salvo, we were escorted from the lounge to the dining room, where guests are seated at tables oriented to observe the kitchen as the main event begins. Some dishes, such as a two-way presentation of lobster, are delicious through and through. The tail was grilled and arranged like strips of bacon over a foam made from spicebush syrup, while the claw was cooked in beer and wedged into a rye “tunnbröd,” or flatbread.
Other plates sound cerebral but turned out to be luscious, including a cut of venison with rehydrated beets and huckleberries, or teardrop-shaped shavings of raw and pickled turnips matched with a concentrated rose-and-quince juice.
And some are outright fearless, including an unphotogenic bowl of buckwheat over chestnuts and black trumpet mushrooms that looked like seaweed at the high-tide line but ate like a creamy pasta. “New Nordic carbonara,” as a server put it, adding that the buckwheat is sprouted in-house with UV light.
Tasting menus are often described as “a marathon, not a sprint,” and this one was an ultra. Diners pay for the privilege: Dinner at Sons & Daughters costs $315 per person, plus gratuity. There is no à la carte version, and the nine-pour wine pairing is $185, with a $385 reserve option and a $145 alcohol-free alternative.
Knackebrod with smoked whitefish roe and fall pumpkin.
The New Nordic menu involves lots of foraged and fermented ingredients.
Trout from Mt. Lassen with fermented root vegetables, dill vinegar, and currant wood oil.
By the final savory course, you could be forgiven for experiencing “haute cuisine fatigue.” And yes, simple, gratifying desserts await, including sweet wheat buns with birch syrup and brown butter. But you have to get through the final brainy bites, such as guacamole-green sorrel ice cream with a syrup like pine sap poured over pine needles.
The labor required to sustain this vision can occasionally feel, well, labored. The staff holds forth on the provenance of this or that item and extols the virtues of sustainability. You may be instructed not to touch a glass of wine that’s been poured, or a partridge may be presented, then whisked away until four more servings run their course, at which point it returns, also in two parts: a glossy, crisp portion of breast with a sauce made from its own fat, plus a section of leg skewered on a pick and piled high with a gravity-defying quantity of pluots, caviar, and paper-thin slices of walnuts.
Cheney’s ambition doesn’t take its foot off the gas for one second. But that’s the gamble. It’s what he imagines a third star requires of him.
The aura of Michelin
I ate at Sons & Daughters in mid-February. Redzepi’s downfall came a few weeks later. For years, he was the golden boy of the New Nordic movement, but after scores of former employees alleged a pattern of abuse (opens in new tab) that included physical violence, humiliating rituals, and threats of deportation, a disgraced Redzepi stepped down (opens in new tab) Wednesday night.
Cheney makes no secret of his ambition. A third Michelin star “is 100% a goal,” he says.
Cheney, who came up at Stockholm’s two-Michelin-starred Gastrologik, never worked with Redzepi and demurs when asked about the drama. But the sordid episode calls into question the adulation (opens in new tab) bestowed upon celebrity chefs. Critics can point out abuse, labor exploitation, Eurocentricism, and obscene prices, but the aura of Michelin never diminishes. Upon receiving the call that Atelier Crenn had been elevated to a third star, staffers reportedly wept.
It’s a moment that Cheney and the Sons & Daughters team hope to experience for themselves soon. He is guided by the belief that Sons & Daughters’ new home is the right platform for his abilities to shine, and the accolades will flow from that. “If you spend a day with us, you’d see I see and taste and touch everything. I’m involved in everything,” he says. “A control freak, but I think in a fun way, not a narcissistic way.”