Mike Selvera is the chef and owner of two San Francisco Bay Area seafood restaurants — Bar Crudo, a 10-year old, 55-seat restaurant in San Francisco’s NoPa neighborhood, and Seaside Metal in Guerneville, Calif., in Sonoma County, a 40-seat restaurant that opened in spring of 2014.
Selvera now spends most of his time in his new restaurant while Melissa Perfit, whom he mentored, runs the San Francisco spot.
Selvera discussed his customers’ changing tastes, as well as their occasional hypocrisy, with Nation’s Restaurant News.
Tell me about your two restaurants.
They’re both based on oyster bars. Bar Crudo started as an oyster bar, and then we decided to add crudo [Italian-inspired raw fish dishes] to it, too, which makes sense [given its name]. So I have a whole list of oysters, a whole list of raw dishes, plus some hot dishes — small-plate style. It’s been going well. We’re going on our 10-year anniversary and it’s still moving.
Seaside Metal’s in Guerneville, about 20 minutes away from the ocean. It’s a bit smaller, and I’m focusing more on oysters and smoked and cured fish. We don’t do as much raw stuff here, and I have larger plates.
How have your customers’ tastes changed in the past 10 years?
Ten years ago crudo was a rough sell. I kept getting asked for soy sauce and wasabi.
They wanted sashimi, basically.
Yeah, and I would say no — you have to stick to your guns.
I couldn’t sell whole sardines; I couldn’t sell an octopus. Those were all very foreign. Now at Seaside Metal octopus is my biggest seller.
How did you train your customers that crudo and sashimi were not the same thing?
It just took a lot of explaining. It was kind of frustrating at the start. I had one woman who started making fun of me — she kept asking for wasabi. I had to keep explaining that this wasn’t a sushi restaurant; it was a crudo bar. And I had to train my wait staff. It took three or four years, and now I don’t have to worry about it anymore.
What are some of your most popular crudo dishes?
The most popular is arctic char with wasabi tobiko, horseradish crème fraîche and dill. That’s been around since day one. I brought that to Seaside Metal, too.
The lobster salad is huge. That’s another mainstay. During the summer it’s with heirloom tomatoes, burrata, wild arugula and Banyuls vinaigrette, and during the winter it will be with gold and chioggia beets, burrata, pistachios, Banyuls vinaigrette and mâche.
How much do you charge for it?
Ten years ago it was $12. Now it’s $26.
Wow. Have lobster prices gone up that much, or Banyuls vinegar?
The whole dish is expensive. I was probably losing my ass when I first opened — which I was, actually, but I wanted to keep my prices down for a little while.
And then you realized you should probably work on managing food costs?
Absolutely. That was all growing pains.
Then we have the San Sebastian. It’s from my travels in Spain. It’s a whole appetizer plate with tuna confit with Romano beans, roasted peppers, capers, pan con tomate, Manchego and boquerones [fresh anchovies].
What kind of tuna do you use?
Local albacore.
When it comes to sourcing seafood, how concerned are your guests about its provenance and sustainability?
Most of them are pretty into it. I get seafood that’s as local as possible, but then also I’m a chef. I’m curious; I want to use other things. So if there’s mackerel from the East Coast available and I can get it in fresh, then I’m going to use it.
My customers are into sustainability, but they can be hypocrites, too. They want sustainable, they want local, but if there’s some forbidden fruit out there, then they want that, too.
Like what?
When Chilean sea bass was on the [watch] list I heard customers going to restaurants that had it, just because they wanted it so much. They get a little pitchy about it, like, “Ooh, I know it’s endangered, but it’s so good.”
Or anything from the Tsukiji market [in Tokyo]. I’m hanging out with foodies from around here [in Sonoma] and they’re local, local, local. They want to brag about a restaurant where everything’s local, then they want to go to a Japanese restaurant and brag that everything’s from Tsukiji market. Which one’s right?
I don’t usually get anything endangered, because most of my purveyors are watching out for that, too.
[When it comes to local products] I have people who bring in uni [sea urchin]. I get uni all the time, and I get it straight from the ocean because it’s that much more fresh. I don’t get it from my [regular] purveyors, because it’s usually dead by the time I get it. Fishermen will bring in a whole tub of uni with the spines still moving, so my goal was to shuck the uni and build a salad in the shell and serve it to the customers while the spines were still moving. I had one woman cry one time because she didn’t realized the uni was still alive while I was shucking it.
San Francisco vs. Sonoma customers, more
Are your customers very different in San Francisco or Sonoma?
They’re very different. They’re way more into local and sustainable in Sonoma.
San Francisco’s such a melting pot. There are people from all over the place. They’re into it in San Francisco, but in Sonoma I notice it more. It’s more in your face. All the farms are here and the cheese makers, so it’s talked about more.
You serve large plates at Seaside Metal. What are some of the more popular ones?
The sous-vide octopus is the biggest seller now, and then the local albacore. I do a lobster broth noodle soup with rock shrimp with thick semolina noodles. It’s a delicious soup. I’ve been putting summer squash in it, and pea shoots, fresh butter beans, basil, chile, orange oil, and then these big, fat rock shrimp. And then I make my own semolina noodles for it.
The octopus is a Spanish octopus that I put in the circulator sous vide for five hours. [I serve it with] garbanzo beans, a little heirloom tomato salad and salsa verde.
Apart from sea urchin with the spines still moving, is there anything else your customers are hesitant to try these days?
There’s lot of raw oyster converts who come here every day, and a lot of people don’t realize that oysters are still alive when you’re eating them.
A lot of people still don’t eat raw oysters. Here [in the Bay Area] they like them cooked a little bit. I’d never served a baked oyster before, but here I do a few of them. I don’t do them at Bar Crudo at all, but here at Seaside Metal they sell a lot better.
How do you manage waste when it comes to such a perishable product as an oyster?
That used to drive me nuts. Sometimes you get an oyster that just breaks apart as you’re shucking it. Ten years ago I used to just throw them away, but now we save them for an oyster mayonnaise or a chowder, or I’ll poach them and use them in a salad, or I’ll smoke them.
When you first opened did you tend to overpurchase or underpurchase oysters? Did it take a while to figure out exactly how many you’d need?
Yeah, I’m still doing that in this area [Sonoma]. It’s crazy. It obviously helps if you’re really, really busy, but yeah, it’s a balancing act and it takes a little time. I’ve had whole batches I’ve had to throw out before, until I figured out what my customers like and don’t like.
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