Food and Wine named Joshua Skenes from Saison one of its 10 best new chefs this year.
Saison started out a few years ago as a weekend restaurant in the back of the Stable, our neighborhood joint just south of 17th Street on Folsom. It has morphed into a full-week dinner spot with a wonderful dining room — still in the back of the Stable.
It opened in the midst of a recession, and while other places were going for the mid-range meal, Saison’s definitely an upper-range restaurant. Given the economy, I didn’t expect it to make it, but it’s thrived.
We went for my birthday at the end of November, and it was easy to see why Skenes and his kitchen have done so well using locally produced ingredients. The courses are small and plentiful, and each has a distinct taste and texture.
It’s fussy — the food is the center of attention — but in a way that’s OK for special meals that take forever to prepare.
I’ve been a Mission resident since 1998 and a professor emeritus at Berkeley’s J-school since 2019. I got my start in newspapers at the Albuquerque Tribune in the city where I was born and raised. Like many local news outlets, The Tribune no longer exists. I left daily newspapers after working at The New York Times for the business, foreign and city desks. Lucky for all of us, it is still here.
As an old friend once pointed out, local has long been in my bones. My Master’s Project at Columbia, later published in New York Magazine, was on New York City’s experiment in community boards.
As founder and an editor at ML, I've been trying to figure out how to make my interest in local news sustainable. If Mission Local is a model, the answer might be that you - the readers - reward steady and smart content. As a thank you for that support we work every day to make our content even better.
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