You can’t travel a city block in San Francisco without tripping over a burrito or a tasting menu — yet you can count the number of Mexican fine dining restaurants in the Bay Area on one hand.
Here, that movement was heralded by Cala, from Gabriela Cámara, whose Contramar is the other leading light of Mexico City’s fine dining scene, and Californios, from Val M. Cantu, currently the city’s only dedicated Mexican tasting menu restaurant. Both set new standards for Mexican food in the Bay Area when they opened in 2015. Two years later, Californios became the first Mexican restaurant in the country to receive two Michelin stars. Since then, however, while Mexican fine dining never stopped booming in L.A (Holbox) and New York (Corima) and New Orleans (Acamaya), in the Bay Area, Cala has closed and little else has opened, leaving a void between the Bay Area’s burrito bounty and Cantu’s meditative Cal-Mexican cooking.
Maria Isabel is the third restaurant from chef couple Sayat and Laura Ozyilmaz, and the first to focus on Mexican cuisine after a decade of highlighting the Eastern Mediterranean food of Sayat’s background.
Kristen Murakoshi/For the S.F. Chronicle
Into this fallow scene arrives Maria Isabel, the Bay Area’s most ambitious new Mexican restaurant to open in years. It builds on the Californian and Mexico City influences of the last decade while establishing new depths of Mexican food and drink for the region. From Laura and Sayat Ozyilmaz, the couple behind the acclaimed Dalida in the Presidio, Maria Isabel equally reflects Laura’s life in Mexico — her childhood in Acapulco, studies in Mexico City, honeymoon in Oaxaca — and the couple’s years working at Michelin-starred kitchens around the globe, such as Eleven Madison Park in New York City, Mugaritz in Spain and Saison in San Francisco.
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Maria Isabel is elegant but not as formal as Californios, and with that it offers flexibility — it’s as amenable to snacks and drinks as it is to the big night out. The dining area next to the kitchen, which is brighter and warmer, is dedicated to Laura’s sister Maria, while the bar area nods to her mother, Isabel, with its dark walls, ceiling and floor. The restaurant is meant to appeal to 30-something couples but also, Sayat said, the “80-year-old folks from the fancy homes in Laurel Heights.”
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Returning to Mexican food after dedicating the past decade to the Eastern Mediterranean cooking of Sayat’s Turkish background feels “natural,” and “easier in a way that I don’t have to try too hard,” Laura said. She sees this as the “right time” for Maria Isabel because of the growing awareness of Mexican cuisine — a byproduct, she said, of booming American tourism in Mexico City, which has been driven, in no small part, by food.
Maria Isabel’s bar program is expansive, with wines from Valle De Guadalupe as well as a deep roster of agave spirits beyond tequila and mezcal, such as raicilla, sotol and various regional “agave distillates.”
Kristen Murakoshi/For the S.F. Chronicle
I’d venture that no other restaurant in the Bay Area currently offers as much diversity of Mexican gastronomy as Maria Isabel, which draws not just on Laura’s upbringing in the states of Guerrero and Sinaloa, but on a deep reverence for the regionality of Mexican food and drink: Nayarit-style grilled fish, Oaxacan-style manchamanteles mole, Toluca-style green chorizo, as well as a rolodex of spirits beyond mezcal and tequila, such as raicilla, sotol, bacanora, corn whiskey and several that are simply designated as “agave distillates.” The restaurant even has a singular drinking chocolate program, which includes pozol, a beverage thickened with masa that originates in Tabasco, and chilate, a favorite of Laura’s from Guerrero that incorporates rice and cinnamon.
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Opulent touches are stitched throughout the menu: Buñuelos are garnished with caviar ($32), masa dumplings called chochoyotes ($36) are accompanied by bone marrow, and sweet corn tamales are embellished with uni ($32). They can at times feel like gratuitous attempts to justify the cost to a skeptical, well-heeled diner, however — the bone marrow was a distraction from the chochoyotes and mushrooms, while the subtlety of the sea urchin lost in the sweetness of the corn tamal.
Maria Isabel is better distinguished by its commitments to tradition, such as making its masa in-house, which imbues sopes (fried corn pucks), tetelas (triangle-shaped masa pockets) and tortillas with aromatic complexity. The tortillas, though, still need some work: On multiple occasions, they were prone to break apart, which was most notable in tacos.
Left: The Choco Ta-Corn, available on the seven-course tasting menu, is a play on the Choco Taco that infuses corn into every aspect: the ice cream, the chocolate, and the masa waffle shell.
Right: The chorizos y queso fundido pairs green and red chorizo in homage to Mexico City restaurant Contramar’s famed pescado a la talla dish.
Photos by Kristen Murakoshi/For The S.F. Chronicle
Above: The Choco Ta-Corn, available on the seven-course tasting menu, is a play on the Choco Taco that infuses corn into every aspect: the ice cream, the chocolate, and the masa waffle shell.
Below: The chorizos y queso fundido pairs green and red chorizo in homage to Mexico City restaurant Contramar’s famed pescado a la talla dish.
Photos by Kristen Murakoshi/For The S.F. Chronicle
Seafood is a throughline, showing the influence of both Mexico City flair and Laura’s life in coastal Mexico while veering in intriguing new directions. Maria Isabel excels at grilled fish. The Nayarit-style black cod zarandeado ($54) is as juicy as it is fatty, and served with a peppery Yucatan-inspired sauce called recado rojo — think fish with flavors reminiscent of al pastor. The aguachile is nothing short of a stunner, raw yellowtail slivers marinated in black sauce, brightened with lime juice and thickened with almonds. Burnt chiles and tortillas supply smoky depth, while squid ink tints the sauce and imparts an intoxicating oceanic aroma. This is my kind of aguachile — so acidic, so blistering that it makes the average crudo feel like it was dressed in maple syrup.
The Mexico City references continue with the chorizo fundido — two sausages, a chile-based red and an herb-based green, over a pool of stretchy cheese, accompanied by sourdough flour tortillas — Laura’s homage to Camara, taking on the half-green, half-red appearance of Contramar’s famed pescado a la talla. It also establishes a bridge between Dalida and Maria Isabel: the former takes inspiration from a stand in Guerrero’s capital city of Chilpancingo that specializes chorizo almendrado, a red chorizo with raisins and almonds, while the latter contains eastern Mediterranean touches such as apricots and pistachios.
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What most firmly grounds Maria Isabel here is its distinctly Bay Area approach to seasonality. It’s apparent in dishes such as the asparagus ensalada, an ensemble of spears, jicama and cucumbers coated in a tamarind dressing that’s inspired by tamarind candies and revels in the Mexican palate’s fondness for agridulce (sour-sweet). The spring tasting menu ($90), meanwhile, produced a refreshing opening course that was half-salad, half-raspado, consisting of quelites, Mexican greens from the couple’s Presidio garden, topped with a cactus fruit sorbet.
Left: Seafood is one the strengths of Maria Isabel, as seen in the black cod zarandeado, served with pineapple recado rojo, heirloom bean sopes and queso fresco.
Right: Another homage to a famed Mexico City dish is the duck carnitas enmoladas, which references Pujol’s iconic mole dish.
Photos by Kristen Murakoshi/For The S.F. Chronicle
Above: Seafood is one the strengths of Maria Isabel, as seen in the black cod zarandeado, served with pineapple recado rojo, heirloom bean sopes and queso fresco.
Below: Another homage to a famed Mexico City dish is the duck carnitas enmoladas, which references Pujol’s iconic mole dish.
Photos by Kristen Murakoshi/For The S.F. Chronicle
The seven-course tasting menu is a well-paced, comprehensive exhibition of Laura’s capabilities. In spring, the hits were numerous: the aforementioned sorbet salad, a smoked mussel sope that tasted of country ham, and black cod showered in an acidic shrimp broth that was fortified with coconut milk and flavored with pungent hoja santa.
The most show-stopping dish however, was the enmolada, a rolled taco stuffed with duck carnitas and accompanied by a pantone of moles — Laura’s response to Pujol’s signature mole dish, though it’s far from mere imitation. At the ends were two Oaxacan moles, a negro that incorporates chilhuacle peppers and dark chocolate, and a manchamanteles, made from various fruits, such as pineapples and cherries. In the middle were two Guerrerense moles: a verde, the brightest of the bunch, and a mole blanco, the richest, made with white chocolate and corn. It was an art gallery for basking in the nuances of mole, on a plate.
In the Bay Area’s lamentably slow-moving Mexican fine dining scene, which has seen little growth in the last five years, Maria Isabel feels way overdue. It represents something new, even compared to the cohort of the last decade, as a restaurant co-owned by a Mexican immigrant who studied cooking in Mexico and put down roots in San Francisco. Hopefully, it’s a sign that there’s far more like it to come — the Bay Area is ready for it.
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Left: Maria Isabel has a dedicated drinking chocolate program that includes posol con mandarina negra (top left), tascalate (top right) and chilate.
Right: Laura Ozyilmaz (right) spent years cooking in Michelin-starred kitchens around the world, which is readily apparent at Maria Isabel.
Photos by Kristen Murakoshi/For The S.F. Chronicle
Above: Maria Isabel has a dedicated drinking chocolate program that includes posol con mandarina negra (top left), tascalate (top right) and chilate.
Below: Laura Ozyilmaz (right) spent years cooking in Michelin-starred kitchens around the world, which is readily apparent at Maria Isabel.
Photos by Kristen Murakoshi/For The S.F. Chronicle
Maria Isabel
500 Presidio Ave., San Francisco. mariaisabelsf.com
Hours: 5-9 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday.
Accessibility: Two steps entering the dining room left of the entrance.
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Meal for two, without drinks: $75-$200
What to order: Aguachile negro ($23), lamb ribs barbacoa ($46), black cod zarandeado ($54)
Meat-free options: Snacks, salads such as asparagus ensalada ($18), some maiz plates like tetelas ($19)
Pro moves: The tasting menu ($90) offers a comprehensive way to experience the restaurant’s talents. Choco Ta-corn dessert ($14) is mandatory.