.Best California Cuisine: Still boastworthy after all these years

It’s only appropriate to give this award to Bay Wolf in its thirtieth anniversary year. Turning thirty for a restaurant is like turning 210 for a border collie. In 1976, Michael Wild, Larry Goldman, and two other partners (since departed) started serving dinners in an old Victorian on Piedmont, and within a few years settled into a style heavily influenced by southern French and northern Italian cuisines. Almost ten thousand dinners later, they’re doing the same food just as solidly as they always have, and their style has become the entire Bay Area’s. You can still go to Bay Wolf and get dishes like duck with green garlic flan or fennel-crusted pork roast, and it still tastes as fresh, smart, and savory as when you first tried it. You’ll still walk out feeling the connection between the food you tasted and the farmer who grew it. And you’ll still have eaten more than you think you should have — but just as much as your meal deserved.