Whatever its effect on other industries, the subprime mortgage crisis has yet to result in a subprime rib crisis. New York strip is selling briskly, too.

This became apparent a few weeks back, when I finally made my way to Epic Roasthouse, Pat Kuleto’s splashy steakhouse by the bay. I sat in a broad-backed leather chair in the bar upstairs, carving a slab of meat large enough to feed a puma and feeling like I should have worn a business suit. It was midweek at 8 p.m., and the place was packed: in every corner, postwork happy people; in every hand, a drink. Through a window to the east, the Bay Bridge reached out gracefully toward Treasure Island. To the west, in fast-rising Rincon Hill, gleaming residential towers poked their heads up through the fog.

Those high-end condos, like the busy steakhouse bar, belied the gloomy reports we’ve all been hearing. Limp consumer spending? Not in this invigorated swatch of the city, where demand for fatty protein remains turgid and the landscape looks like something sponsored by Cialis, with freshly erected priapisms thrusting toward the sky.

Were I running for public office, I might subject you to my campaign mantra: It’s Dick Cheney’s country, and we’re just dining in it, stuffing our faces in a nation under growing corporate control. But this isn’t a stump speech. And since such righteousness rings hollow from a guy who just inhaled a $54 porterhouse, I’ll shy away from talk of the two Americas. Let’s just say that two dining scenes have emerged in San Francisco, making this year and this city an odd, conflicted time and place to eat.

On the one hand, the shifting local climate seems especially conducive to gigantasaurus restaurants—big, chest-puffing creatures that subsist on the free spending of expense-account travelers and the condo-dwelling nouveau riche. As we speak, Nancy Oakes, Charles Phan, and Michael Mina rank among the homegrown chefs with plans to spread their brands into swish South of Market developments. Then comes news that Tavern on the Green, a New York City institution, is getting ready to expand into the culture-free zone of the Sony Metreon. Throw in Waterbar, Epic’s seafood-driven sibling (the two cost a combined $20 million to construct), and you get the sinking sense that we should open some casinos and call ourselves Las Vegas. It’s hard for me to get excited about any of

this.

Yet development alone doesn’t mean the end of dining—in fact, quite the opposite—and condominiums can’t kill cuisine. Besides, if shiny pleasure domes represent our restaurant future, smaller, nuanced forces still run counter to that trend. I came across them this year in well-established warrens of the city, but also in the shadow of newly minted luxury towers. What makes such restaurants work isn’t always easy to define, but, as a bigwig judge once said, “I know them when I see them.” They’re the kind of places that can sell you an expensive cut of meat without giving the impression that they’ve sold their souls.

Consider, for example, a most un-Epic restaurant, the beautifully bootstrapping Bar Jules. Set in a small space in Hayes Valley, Bar Jules is the sort of neighborhood place that any neighborhood would be proud to claim. Chef Jessica Boncutter plucks farm-fresh raw materials, then prints her finished products on a pared-down chalkboard menu: fig leaf–wrapped halibut with snap peas and carrots; roasted squab with celery root–and-potato mash. Her sharply rendered dishes change every day.

If that sounds familiar, it’s not surprising. Boncutter used to work at Zuni, and Bar Jules is sweetly reminiscent of other places (“Honey, I shrunk the Chez Panisse Café!”). The concept isn’t new, and the food isn’t groundbreaking or, for that matter, especially gentle on your credit card. But it all feels deeply personal, a restaurant pulled off with perfect pitch. “That’s not cooking, it’s shopping,” an unimpressed chef supposedly once said of California’s simple farm-to-table cuisine. I left Bar Jules wishing that someone would shop like that for me.

One thing my personal shopper would have no trouble tracking down is cured meat. It’s available everywhere. In neighborhood nooks around the city (Beretta in the Mission, Uva Enoteca in the Lower Haight, and Laïola in the Marina, to name just a few), salume has become so commonplace that you can hardly swing a breadstick without hitting some sopressata. Just a few weeks ago, Chris Cosentino of Incanto started hawking his own line of it at Boccalone in the Ferry Building. Not since I came west in a covered wagon have I consumed so much that’s salted and preserved.

I find this trend refreshing. At least, I did at first. Ask any chef (or pretty much anyone who eats

out often), and they’ll tell you that straightforward fare is far more tempting than a lobster cappuccino or a torchon of foie gras. Yet menu cloning presents its own perils, as evidenced by San Francisco’s abundance of wine-and–small plates spots, which, if not identical, still leave you with a sense of déjà vu. Was it Bar Bambino where I savored pink ribbons of prosciutto with billows of tomino? Or one of its doppelgangers? Charcuterie, in short, is no longer the new black. It risks becoming the new tapas, or the new tuna tartare.

In the restaurants, as in The Lion King, all things run in circles—so in rocky economic times, restaurants rely on the simple and the safe. After 9/11, San Franciscans embraced comfort food, kicking off a mac ’n’ cheese–and-meatloaf craze that lasted longer than our country’s enjoyment of global goodwill. Now, once again, we’re back to basics. But the new humility feels a bit different, maybe because it’s not humility at all.

It seems instead like a self-assured insistence on the easygoing, a cultural shift away from what’s regarded as the old-world stodginess of haute cuisine. Casualties of the past 12 months include the style-conscious Frisson and the starchy Scott Howard, whose closure is part of an accelerating game of musical chairs. Just last month, Sean O’Brien announced his plans to fill the vacant Howard space with a new restaurant he plans to call Zinnia, which will feature food akin to what O’Brien served at Myth. You remember Myth—it also closed this year. Its abandoned shell is slated to become the new home of Quince. Amid all these changes, the venerable Fifth Floor, taking the temperature of the times, has tossed its outmoded zebra-pattern carpets and added a contemporary café menu. Formality is out (and good riddance to it), as are many icons of bygone San Francisco: Washington Square Bar and Grill and Moose’s, both holdovers from the Herb Caen era, served their last three-martini lunches this year.

Casual, of course, doesn’t mean uncreative. To my mind, one of this year’s sleeper hits was South Food + Wine Bar, tucked amid the condo sprawl around the ballpark, a generic backdrop for a restaurant with such a clear identity. In one respect, South was never really an upstart; celebrity chef Luke Mangan, a superstar from Sydney, is a co-owner. But its modest size and unassuming atmosphere

make it feel stealthy. The food, too, comes up from under, with inventive pairings like pan-roasted barramundi with North African rozelle spices, and licorice parfait with lime syrup—my favorite dessert in the city this year.

In trying to pinpoint what I like about South, I run into a tricky but obvious truth: Winning restaurants depend on intangibles. They often defy quick descriptions or ham-fisted categorization, the kind I’m get­ting ready to draw here. Six years after I started writing reviews, my own leanings remain largely unchanged, and they don’t make me unusual: I root for restaurants scraping by on a shoestring. Dining in a hotel tends to make me cringe. On the broad spectrum of service, I prefer the slack to the solicitous, and I dislike unrequested recommendations. Overly serious settings make me want to crack off-color jokes. Yet these are personal inclinations, not divine edicts. They’re meant to be ignored, and they frequently are.

Take the case of Ubuntu in Napa. As little fondness as I harbor for big steakhouses, vegetarian restaurants stoke even less warmth in me. Fairly or not, they conjure images of sullen-looking patrons downing sand-dry quinoa salad in a joyless dining room tended by servers on a hygiene strike. When I learned that Ubuntu doubles as a yoga studio and was funded by do-gooders with deep pockets, my inner Grinch awakened. Here was a restaurant I couldn’t wait to hate.

Of the many points I found in Ubuntu’s favor—an engaging atmosphere, an alluring wine list—what I enjoyed most was its refrain from piety, the dreary earnestness that makes so many meatless restaurants such a drag. At Ubuntu, you can revel in the pure pleasure of eating, albeit without playing a part in livestock slaughter. They don’t forcefeed you the fact that the restaurant operates biodynamic gardens, which supply its kitchen with a healthy source of produce. It’s not a corporate restaurant, but it doesn’t scorn indulgence. To have it otherwise, at a restaurant aimed at the upper crust, would be hypocritical. Just as there are no free lunches, there are no conscience-free restaurant outings. Which reminds me: Ubuntu might consider buying carbon credits to offset all the pilgrimages it has inspired.

Other restaurants bucked my expectations, slipping out of the simple labels I tried to slap on them. BarBersQ in Napa,

which recast a Southern genre for wine country, forced me to confront my reverse snobbery. It seems that authentic barbecue (try the pulled-pork sandwich) isn’t served only on paper plates in shacks. Pacific Heights’ Cafe Majestic, a hotel restaurant (strike one) with a formal dining room (strike two), was a lively hit, with some of the best service in the city and sharp, decisive food. A similar surprise awaited at Fifth Floor. The Kimpton Hotel Group bankrolls the restaurant, but the Gascony-inspired cuisine seems intensely personal, which I suppose it should—chef Laurent Manrique was raised in that region of France, and the menu bears his impassioned imprimatur.

While Fifth Floor has worked hard to update itself, a small handful of restaurants exude timeless ease. This year brought me back happily to Canteen and Rubicon. The latter, a gray-haired member of the old guard, retains its youthfulness not with its look, but with executive chef Stuart Brioza’s vibrant dishes. Braised veal with ramps and Rainier cherries is an apt example. Putting just enough of a twist on the ordinary, the menu lets you taste adventure without feeling like the chef is trying too hard.

At Canteen, meanwhile, chef-owner Dennis Leary remains the main man behind the counter of a tiny restaurant. Leary looks intense, with a dingolike focus on the task at hand. But he’s keenly aware of diners’ reactions. You get the sense that he lives for flashes of delight on his patrons’ faces, and quick, intimate exchanges after a meal. (The chef just doubled up on his duties with the recent opening of The Sentinel, his new soup-and-sandwich spot just below Market.) I humbly submit that anyone who doesn’t appreciate Canteen doesn’t understand what restaurants are about.

Then again, maybe I don’t either. I’m not sure yet what to make of Orson, Elizabeth Falkner’s walk on the wild side. The experimental restaurant felt like a work in progress on my first visit. It may turn out to be a stroke of genius or a Frankenrestaurant, attracting angry mobs instead of hungry crowds.

That I waffle on the issue is not uncommon. I wrestle frequently with my own opinions, particularly when someone calls them into doubt. Shortly after I reviewed his restaurant, I received a reprimand from Ola Fendert of Local Kitchen & Wine Merchant. Fendert told me that I’d failed to understand Local’s

concept. His goal, he said, was to serve decent food at reasonable prices, something that’s not easy to do these days. My initial response was to feel chastened and remorseful, having put forth a lukewarm take on a restaurant with such innocent and noble intent. I wish that I could pledge, like a physician, to do no harm. However, that’s not the nature of this position. Besides, on further reflection, I think I did grasp Local’s concept, which isn’t the same as loving the way it was carried out.

My mind turned toward comparisons with Flora, another neighborhood restaurant with modest ambitions. Whereas Local seems faintly institutional, Flora comes across as naturally rooted in its native soil. That soil is Oakland’s Uptown, a long-downtrodden district and just the kind of underdog I tend to pull for—more so, anyway, than Local’s locale, the slam-dunk neighborhood of Rincon Hill.

While Flora is hardly a megarestaurant, neither is it a mom-and-pop. As the third East Bay offering from Dona Savitsky and Thomas Schnetz, who also own Oakland’s Doña Tomás and Tacubaya on Berkeley’s Fourth Street, it’s a midsize addition to that in-between category: the mini-restaurant empire with local roots. Others of its ilk include Anchor & Hope, which opened this year in San Francisco, rounding out a trio for the team that owns Salt House and Town Hall; and SPQR, in the Upper Fillmore, a small star in a growing constellation that began with A16 and is projected to swell further when Urbino launches in Dogpatch early next year.

Like its predecessors, Urbino will deal in unadorned Italian dishes (in this case, the cuisine of the Le Marche region near the Adriatic coast), and if past is prologue, I’d wager on a runaway success. SPQR confirms an unwritten rule: A business can expand without getting too big for its britches. Diners put less stake in size than in authenticity. They respond to restaurants that run on fervor and devotion, not restaurants that seem sprung from a focus group.

That’s how I see it, anyway, and I carry biases everywhere I go. Epic Roasthouse is no exception. With its big-money backing, conservative concept, and controversial placement on the prized waterfront, Epic struck me from the start as the kind of restaurant tourists love to love, and locals love to feel conflicted about.

Those conflicts ate at me, even

as I ate my steak. In its prices and portions, here is a restaurant of unabashed excess, conspicuous consumption disguised as cuisine. I nodded in agreement with my companion, a food-wonk friend who’d been railing against Epic as a restaurant out of step with the city. But I’m not certain she was right.

One could also argue that Epic is an outgrowth of our present clime. Its menu notes that a 4 percent charge appears on every bill to cover the cost of the city’s new healthcare plan, a hot-potato topic due to recent legislation passed in San Francisco. Plenty of diners are outraged by the charge and take their anger out on the tip. My Epic server told me that one night, a patron left her five bucks on a $400 check, along with these words: “Enjoy your healthcare.” (Based on her description, I don’t believe the man was our vice president.)

On second thought, I’ll modify my campaign mantra: It’s Dick Cheney’s country, but it hasn’t yet become his San Francisco. Recent shifts in the Bay Area may augur a future filled with expense-account restaurants serving nothing but thick steaks, while delivering unto Satan our city’s soul. In the meantime, though, hope springs eternal. So do a lot of swell spots to eat.

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Josh Sens is San Francisco’s restaurant critic.

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