Bull kelp. Hay roasted beets . Coastal grasses. Wild Sprouts and flowers. I wouldn’t be surprised if a few of us has tried to poison these pesky ingredients in our garden, and yet, they are all featured on the Coi menu.

If this dining concept was offered ten years ago, there would be much less appreciation for locally sourced ingredients. A restaurant serving edible flowers, weeds and strange vegetables freshly dug up by the head chef from the neighborhood? Preposterous! Fine dining was once all about the ability to source extravagant and exotic ingredients globally to sit on your bone china plate alongside perfectly polished silverware. Chefs heavily relied on their relationships with their purveyors and providores for a delivery of the finest fish from Tsukiji, the fleur de sel from the Caspian sea, the funghi from Alba. It was about the pride of being able to source something that the next restaurant couldn’t.

We can see a trending shift in the fine dining world with an opposite school of thought, a very noticeable concept made popular by the current number one restaurant in the world, Noma. Chefs are no longer just chefs, but inquisitive foragers of seasonal and local ingredients. They believe that an ingredient should be appreciated when it is at its season’s best, and consumed fresh without the complications of transportation and heavy refrigeration – all factors that takes away their true flavor. It is very true, that scent and sweetness of a freshly picked apple will never compare to one imported from Mexico sold at your supermarket. It is almost a concept of terroir in food, except that it was hard to preserve in oak, ripen with age and bottled for later enjoyment. It is now.

When I heard that Coi was a favorable choice amongst the foragers such as René Redzepi from Noma, I knew I had to visit, since my plans to fly to Denmark for a meal doesn’t seem to be on my plans for 2011. The waiter told me in conversation that fellow forager Peter Gilmore (Quay) from Sydney also dined at Coi just a few weeks ago.

You can only imagine my embarrassment when I was corrected by my ignorant and incorrect pronunciation of Coi (I said “Koi”). Coi (pronounced “Qua”) is an ancient Masonic French word that stands for serenity. Situated in the red light district of San Francisco, you’ll find the modern lettering and ambient light a contrast to the bright pink neon signs and photos of buxom blondes of the Hustler club right next door.

When you enter Coi, the textures and natural shades of mahogany red and bamboo green against the tiny displays of pebble configurations alongside dried sea grass indeed sends you to a hidden serenity.

The table tops in the first dining room were all polished cuts of the cross section of an old tree trunk, while the softer ambient back dining room where decorated with framed MRIs of the cross section fruits and vegetables – they make great guessing games in between courses (the answers are onion, cantaloupe, corn and pumpkin).

The menu is unlike the usual offering. On the left side of the page is a list of all the locally sourced ingredients from the area that will be featured for the night, and on the right, the tasting menu of how the featured ingredients will be performing on your plate. It has a very high vegetarian focus. In fact, out of the entire 12 course tasting menu, only two were seafood dishes, and only one contained beef. A word of warning to the carnivores – this may not be for you. There were even a few dishes reminiscent of fresh cut grass where you would think it was made for the cow to enjoy before you decide to eat the cow.

A few outstanding moments included the “Crab Melt”, especially during the peak of the Dungeness crab season, the sweet white flesh roasted with a transparent film of lardo, and a surprising drizzle of intense wheatgrass that perfectly cut through the fat. The “Savory chanterelle porridge” (first of all, extra points for not naming it a congee) was beautifully multi directional, the slippery chanterelle bringing a nice level of umami to the warm rice porridge, the accompanied sprinkling of the root vegetable “chips” made it that much more of a textural delight. I would be very interested in what Peter Gilmore thought of his own version of the “congee” in the Quay menu. I think Coi takes the crown on this dish.

Coi’s interpretation of the American coffee cake also deserves a mention. It was closer to a warm sticky date pudding, served with raw milk ice (and no traces of that pungent dairy taste) and light citrus notes of lime. The different temperatures and spectrum of sweet to creamy to sour gave the dinner a perfect ending.

May I present our tasting menu for the night:

Frozen Mandarin Sour
Angostura bitters, kumquat, Satsuma ice

Clam
Geoduck and manila, bull kelp, meyer lemon, wild fennel

Pasture
Beets roasted in hay, fresh cheese, wild sprouts and flowers

Crab melt, California style
Steffan’s Lardo, wheatgrass

Farm Egg
Cauliflower,  nettle-dandelion salsa verde (with an egg yolk center)

Earth and Sea
Steamed tofu mousseline, mushroom dashi, yuba, fresh seaweed

Savory chanterelle porridge
Crisp root vegetables, cress, sherry

Prather ranch beef
Potato, coastal grasses, Monterey cypress

Grilled cheese
Tomm d’ossau, rye, onion, pickled daikon
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Fennel sorbet
Ruby grapefruit, campari, pomelo

Coffee Cake
Medjool date, raw milk ice, lime

You’ll look twice before you weed your garden again. Instead you’ll think “I wonder how that tastes?”

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