Sens and Sensibility

I return for lunch and am somewhat stunned to prefer this meal to dinner; not usually the case, but then lunch is a livelier, busier scene here in what is, after all, a massive office complex atop fancy shops. My friends are already ensconced in a comfy leather loveseat and chairs with a cozy view, picking at a dish of fabulous assorted olives drenched in good oil, and a plate of fluffy ricotta, which is improved with a sprinkle from the small dish of sea salt alongside. I'm flustered from the effort of finding parking, and order a Lemon Drop: cold vodka, Gewürtztraminer grape juice, lemon, powdered sugar. It's icy and revivifying. We share roasted beets — red, gold, and chioggia— topped with sesame-crusted cubes of rather bland manouri cheese, and try to order avgolemono soup, but the soup of the day comes instead: a deep-flavored dark mushroom broth in which float chanterelles, barley, baby leeks, and sesame dumplings.

My mouth now waters, remembering my Tabil lamb burger, soft and savory under its blanket of feta, harissa aioli, and coriander-onion confit, the whole enfolded by a pillowy brioche bun and sided with hot-spiced french fries. Just as delicious were the wood-oven-roasted chicken meatballs, made with thigh meat, surrounded by saffroned pearl couscous, sweet peppers, and fennel in a little round metal casserole. The sea bass stifado was stewed with fat Gulf prawns, clams, and mussels, scented with preserved sweet limes and the exciting seasonal accent of cardoons. I was less enamored of our two vegetable sides: the briam, which turned out to be a rather ordinary baked layering of seasonal squash and onion; and chewy, underspiced spinach falafel, nicely dressed with chopped cucumbers in yogurt. We shared an exceedingly reasonable carafe ($18) of a light, fresh white wine from the Alto Adige.

Again with the gifts! This time it was because one of my friends, who works in Embarcadero 4, is already a lunch regular — he'd dined there the day before, was returning on the morrow — and it was his birthday. So we got a semolina cake with rosemary-caramel ice cream and hazelnuts; a chocolate panna cotta atop a firm sesame cake; and my favorite, a poached pear with a buckwheat cake and brown butter crème anglaise. The barely sweetened, unusually textured little cakes are three variations on a rarely seen theme.

Sens, in French, means meaning. My sense of the place is that I mean to return.