The front door is on the right and large terra cotta pots with flowers and plants are arranged along the sides. The railings and door handles are iron hawthorne branches. The front room features a large, elliptical bar and live jazz music in the evening. The back room is adjacent to the front room and offers a quieter atmosphere. In the center of the room, two large elliptical sideboards with yellow marble tops provide a

work station for the waiters and the large open kitchen is located at the far end of the room.

The many stoves, ovens and grills in the open kitchen at Hawthorne Lane are manned by eight savory cooks and two pastry cooks. Each cook is assigned to prepare several items from the menu.

David Gingrass is one of select group of restaurateurs, like Alice Waters at Chez Panisse, whose proficiency in every aspect of their restaurant creates a unified and sublime dining experience. After opening Hawthorne Lane, he indulged his life-long passion for entertaining and turned his attention to Hawthorne Lane’s dining room. There he oversees and fine tunes the kind of highly professional and knowledgeable, yet relaxed and thoroughly hospitable service that he most enjoys. Patricia Unterman, of the San Francisco Examiner, recently described the experience of her husband, a Hawthorne Lane "regular: "He says no other restaurant treats him with such dignity, such intelligence... Hawthorne Lane is a generous restaurant. Its owners... create an elevated experience for their patrons - not kid entertainment not attitude - that makes my husband feel like an adult at a very good party."

Growing up in Milwaukee, David Gingrass loved to help in the kitchen, where his mother, an adventurous cook and a stickler for quality ingredients, introduced her five children to wonderful home cooking as well as the delights of fresh summer fruits and vegetables from her backyard garden. David also loved conviviality and from a precocious age took advantage of any parental absence to open the door and the larder to his friends to enjoy. After high school, David pursued his interest in cooking and entertaining at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York.

In 1983, after completing his studies and working in classic French kitchens in the mid-west, David accepted a job at Mudd’s in San Ramon, California. Mudd’s had a renowned herb and vegetable garden that brought him back to his childhood summers and cooking there was a "baptism by fire" introduction to the local

seasonal cooking of the Bay Area and a direct contrast to his mid-western restaurant experiences.

David became acquainted with the Bay Area’s restaurants, chefs and growers and was soon imbued with the culinary attitude associated with Northern California’s finest food. David next moved to Los Angeles where he worked briefly at the Hotel Bel Air and then at Spago where his first job included driving the fish truck to Chinatown as a $7.00 per hour go-fer. He soon worked his way up to kitchen manager and takes pride in having developed the bread recipes for Spago that raised the restaurant’s bread to a quality commensurate with what he had experienced in the Bay Area.

In 1989, David Gingrass and his then-wife Anne were tapped by Wolfgang Puck to be opening co-chefs at Postrio in San Francisco. The new restaurant quickly doubled projected sales and David took over all kitchen management duties.

In 1995, having spent a great deal of time exploring the Bay Area food scene and convinced that San Francisco was where it was possible to produce the best food in the country, the Gingrasses opened Hawthorne Lane. In October 2000, long-time sous chef Bridget Batson took over the kitchen as Anne Gingrass left Hawthorne Lane in order to pursue other interests. David works closely with Bridget and oversees all aspects of the restaurant, motivating his excellent staff and insuring that the Hawthorne Lane experience is enjoyable and satisfying for every guest who walks through the door.

Since it opened six years ago, David and Anne Gingrass' warehouse sized restaurant has helped set a high standard for California style food with an Asian flair. The interior is an innovative mix of rustic and refined elements. While the earthquake support beams look like industrial sculpture, the elegant table settings let you know that this is a fine dining establishment. Late last year the couple separated, and Anne has moved on to other things, but the food is still top notch under former the sous chef, Bridget Batson. If you don't want to spend as much cash, there's a cheaper appetizer menu at the bar.

…"When we opened Hawthorne Lane in 1995," Gingrass said, "this was still the forgotten tip of downtown, filled with abandoned warehouses and some artists' lofts. Customers would call and ask if it was really safe to come down."

How did the central city's last frontier turn into its glossiest vanguard in just a few short years? A succession of SoMa openings in the mid-nineties - including the expansion of Moscone Center and the inauguration of the Museum of Modern Art - fueled the renaissance. But in a city that has always followed the best food, urban renewal starts with the stomach, and pioneering restaurants like Hawthorne Lane helped coax the cautious across Market Street.

With a vengeance. Already crowded at six o'clock, Hawthorne Lane's dining room, which Gingrass and founding partner, Anne Gingrass fashioned out of the historic Crown Point Press building, looked like inducement enough to head south. Yet the cherrywood bar and elliptical booths weren't the only draw. "When Anne and I first came to the Bay Area." The Wisconsin-born Gingrass told me, "we were so excited by the food here that we would eat dinner in two shifts, at five-thirty and ten o'clock, and we went through phases: our dim sum phase, our sushi phase, our Italian phase."

After playing with global accents at Wolfgang Puck's Postrio, their first San Francisco kitchen, the partners were ready for a more mature kind of culinary layering when they made a fresh start in a

fresh neighborhood. The resulting menu at Hawthorne Lane (executed by Executive Chef Bridget Batson since Anne's departure) stirs the city's classic Mediterranean, California and Asian flavors into a one-stop taste of San Francisco.

My dinner was proof. Silky yellowfin tuna came stuffed with a layer of rice noodles and sprayed with spiced peanuts. Slices of roast duck - fanned around a soft green onion bun - wore a crackling brown skin. Pistachio-ginger crème brulee was so creamy you could write your name in it…

Young Sonoma Greens with Goat's Milk Feta          Winter Minestrone Soup

Crispy Fried Duck Springrolls with Spicy Apricot Mustard Sauce         Roast Beef Sandwich with French Onion Soup

Grilled Breast of Chicken with Spicy Herb Crust          Pan Fried Local Petrale Sole with Mint Spaetzle

Grilled Atlantic Salmon with Potato Puree          Pizza of the Week from the Wood Fired Oven

Chinese Style Roasted Duck with Steamed Green Onion Buns

Appetizers

Myagi Oysters and Littleneck Clams          Sautéed Hudson Valley Foie Gras with Tangerine Chutney

Cheese Soufflé with Crunchy Fuyu Persimmons          Miso Glazed Black Cod with Sesame Spinach Rolls

Young Organic Greens with Goat's Milk Feta Cheese          Roasted Beet Carpaccio with Micro-Greens

Pastas

Wild and Exotic Mushroom Risotto with Parmesan Cheese

Steamed Littleneck Clams with Fresh Linguine          Chicken Cannelloni with Spinach

Desserts

Cheesecake with Ginger Granita and Port Poached Pears          Warm Chocolate Truffle Cake

Passion Fruit, Lemon-Mint and Blood Orange Sorbets

Tahitian Vanilla Bean Brulee          Caramelized Banana Sundae with Hot Fudge

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