Food // Restaurants

Behind the scenes at S.F.'s Mr. Pollo

RESTAURANTS Intricate food, cozy setting command diners' appetites

A chef's anxiety dream: The cooks, dishwashers and waiters all call in sick. The kitchen is a tiny one from the corner store. Customers are forming outside the door, expecting an intricate four-course menu. You rush to take orders, fling ingredients in a pan and whirl to tackle a pile of dishes in the sink, head spinning through it all. As the line outside grows, you awake in a cold sweat.

For Manny Torres Gimenez, chef-partner of the 15-seat Mr. Pollo in San Francisco's Mission District, this nightmare is not just his reality. It's his professional dream.

A year and a half ago, he took over his neighborhood arepas joint when it threatened to close, and remained its sole employee for months.

"I just wanted to keep the arepas place alive," he remembers.

You don't say.

Gimenez - a chef whose Bay Area pedigree includes stints at the top-rated SPQR, Coi and Quince - has created something of an underground cult sensation at Mr. Pollo. He serves not only the original arepas menu, but also a four-course, daily-changing "Mission cuisine" style prix-fixe menu.

On a recent visit, that meant yellow beet soup with tofu-ginger-beet foam; confit octopus with parsnip puree, sunflower sprouts and kohlrabi; duck breast with wild watercress and peach sauce; and crisp fried pork belly with beans and Spanish radish.

Cost? $15.

It's a labor of love and people have taken note. His fan base, and team, has grown markedly in the last year.

I ate there on a rainy night not too long ago, cramming into a table after a two-hour wait in a nearby bar. Gimenez was off and his partner, Chris Cook - who acts as reservationist, host, waiter, manager and pastry chef - and chef Sean Naputi, who joined six months ago, were at the helm.

It was as if the door to the kitchen, which shields customers from the nitty-gritty, had blown sheer off. Cook practically sat down in my lap to take our order. Rap music blasted as Naputi juggled arepas, frogs legs and plates, occasionally rapping along. I saw a dolled-up woman take a bite, catch Naputi's eye and moan in appreciation. Naputi adjusted his tie.

The place certainly had soul.

"It's like our living room," Naputi, 27, said when I returned a few weeks later to work in the kitchen for a night.

Gimenez, 29, had begun that day - as he does all days - at the market, then designed the menu and prepped. However, he spent most of the night deep in the sink washing dishes.

He can't seem to believe his luck.

"I look at the customers. I don't even have to cook because it's all under control . . ." he trailed off. "It happened."

Finding the opportunity

In certain ways, the restaurant is the logical extension of Gimenez's training. He moved from Venezuela to Ohio for college, and ended up as a dishwasher at a local restaurant. From there, he worked his way up the restaurant chain, even doing stages at some of the top places in the country, including Nobu and the French Laundry.

He excelled at making the most of his opportunities. At Coi in North Beach, where he was allotted one pan for dinner service, he learned to work cleanly and efficiently, unable to risk burning anything. At Quince, where he was responsible for the meat program, he used the entire animal. And it was there, too, that two regular customers - nicknamed "the brothers" - came in expecting brand new dishes each night.

Now, in a small space where there's room for only a few pots and pans and waste is not an option, he changes the menu daily.

While the Beatles played in the background, the first seating of customers arrived. I picked through farm-fresh lamb's quarters and wild watercress while Naputi put a single duck breast on the flat-top grill.

The kitchen is small - one stove, one oven, a fryer, a fridge, a cutting board - but so, too, are the portions: the four courses are more like four three-bite plates. While the components are high quality, the $15 price tag made more sense when I saw the duck breast become 10 duck slivers to serve 10 customers - none of whom seemed to have a problem with the portions. It's still a deal.

Gimenez estimates his food cost to be 23 percent of his revenues - the industry average hovers around 30 percent, depending on the kind of establishment - and chalks his income up to minimizing staff and waste but jokingly refers to Mr. Pollo as a "nonprofit restaurant."

So why do it? "If I can get paid what I get paid at another restaurant, but do what I want? I'd rather do that."

Everyone's in the family

Last year, when Chris Cosentino of San Francisco's Incanto named Mr. Pollo the "Best Bang for your Buck" on the Food Network, the clientele grew.

As I helped plate 12 identical dishes that night, a mother and her two teenage daughters sat down. After seeing the Food Network clip, they'd made a special trip from Florida.

As you would for houseguests who had traveled cross-country, the team pulled out all the stops. Cook poured the mother a mixed drink from a secret back-of-the-house pitcher. Naputi cooked some off-the-menu dishes, then personally delivered the plates.

Moments later, Cook shimmied back to Gimenez, who was washing dishes.

"They loved it!" Cook crowed. "It just makes me so happy!"

Like a perfect host, Gimenez dried his soapy hands, scooted past the kitchen, inspected a plate, delivered it to a table, then went to introduce himself.

Mr. Pollo, 2823 Mission St. (near 25th Street), San Francisco; (415) 374-5546. Lunch and dinner daily. Cash only. No reservations.

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