À la française

San Francisco, November 9, 2013—

FOUND A NEW bistro, thanks to our friend Eliane, who led us down an alley transformed, Sunday evening, into something reminding me of vicoli in Rome, or a backs street in the vielle cité in Nice.

And there I saw, scrawled on the slate hanging next to the doorway, Lamb Shanks. Just what I wanted.

We sat on the terrasse, in fact chairs and tables set up out on the street pavement, and finished our Martinis, and were served this quite nice and very French Brandade de morue, and a basket of Acme baguettes, and a good house lettuce salad, and then I had my shanks. In my opinion they were very much in the spirit of Richard Olney's fine recipe, which simply involves lamb shanks, garlic, salt, thyme as I recall, white wine, a heavy lidded pot, and a fair amount of slow cooking. It was served, as you see, in the heavy black iron pan in which it had presumably been finished, on a bed of greens, and it was good; ditto the tarte aux pommes I finished up with.

Marsanne, Domaine Habrard, Crozes Hermitage, 2011; Charbono, Nebuchadnezzar (Napa Valley), 2009

• Café Claude, 7 Claude Lane, San Francisco; (415) 392-3515