Sorry, pork inhaled too quickly for a pic.

Okay, let me admit up front that we set off—nephew Rob, his Spanish girlfriend Inma, husband Mark, and my father Manuel—to eat at Flour + Water. It’s a good crew to review with as everyone loves food and three of us cook.

But walking east on 20th Street at 8 p.m. we knew from the folks spilling out the front door onto Folsom that it was going to be a wait: two hours as it turned out. Too long. We headed northeast for the Universal Café.

Often it can be difficult to get into Universal, but we waited only a few minutes. While we stood at the bar, I asked for a red wine recommendation and was immediately reminded why this place has long been a neighborhood favorite. The waitress thought a minute and then starting raving about the Cinnabar, 2006 Mercury Rising. At $34 a bottle, it’s one of the least expensive on the menu. The waitress had it right—full and rich.

Soon, we sat at the table with the wine and two grilled flatbreads. Ah, time to sit back and relax. The flatbreads—thinner than any thin pizza in town—are a mainstay. This one had rock shrimp, pesto, potatoes, and goat cheese. How do you get perfectly cooked shrimp—meaning not overcooked—on a crispy thin bread? They do.

“That shrimp,” Rob said, summing up what we were all thinking.

Mark had slow-braised pork ribs with beans, and avocado and chicory slaw ($22). “They melt,” said Mark, a meat-and-potato man from Cleveland who has eaten enough meat to know melt when he tastes it.

Sorry, pork inhaled too quickly for a pic.
Sorry. Inhaled pork too quickly for a pic.

Inma felt the same way about her risotto with sweet peas, fava beans, chive blossoms and parmigiano reggiano ($16.50). “The rice is perfectly cooked,” she said.

Inma's risotto.
Inma’s risotto.

“I wish they would add a little color to this,” dad said as he started adding pepper to the pale but very good, he decided, celery soup ($8).

Dad's celery soup.
Dad’s celery soup.

For me, I wanted less feta in the farro salad. It arrived as a clump and the feta overpowered the farro and came close to being too salty.

Rob had complained of having to dine again after eating a late lunch, so we were surprised to see the waitress walk over to his side of the table with a charcoal-grilled Niman flatiron steak with shoestring potatoes and wild mushroom butter sauce ($25).

Farro Salad.
Farro salad.

“If there were a normal amount of french fries it wouldn’t look so large,” he protested when we all started laughing. Anyway, he said, he ordered it to try the mushroom butter sauce. “Very disappointing,” he concluded after a while. “It’s like a glob of margarine. It doesn’t taste like mushrooms.”

robsniman

The steak, however, he liked. And the shoestring potatoes we loved. But for a 21-year-old, Rob’s difficult to please and he noted that the design of the benches meant you could sometimes get hardware in your back. “Comfort over style,” he advised.

Or maybe it was just getting late. Dad’s bargain instinct kicked in when the waitress came to take dessert orders. “Let me tell you,” he warned her, pointing at me. “She’s reporting on your food.”

Dad!

He ignored me. “That’s okay. I’ll have the coffee on the house.”

Gratefully, the waitress ignored him. We topped the meal off with biscotti—”delish,” as Rob says.

My rating may be high given the farro salad and the mushroom sauce, but I’ve eaten at Universal at least three times in the last month—and I keep returning.

For me, it’s sort of like Chez Panisse in Berkeley—a place you can depend on to take out-of-town foodies.

Verdict: Four out of Five Aguas Frescas

fouraguafrescas1

Universal Cafe
2814 19th St.
415.821.4608
www.universalcafe.net

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Founder/Executive Editor. I’ve been a Mission resident since 1998 and a professor emeritus at Berkeley’s J-school since 2019 when I retired. 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 there.

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.

Right now I'm trying to figure out how you make that long-held interest in local news sustainable. The answer continues to elude me.

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5 Comments

  1. If nothing else works, pull out obfuscation.
    And, “Mark,” you obfuscate real good.

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  2. No, “he” hasn’t had a restaurant meal he didn’t like. And therefore his objectivity and critical analysis is not impaired as it would be if, like pseudo-food critics the world round, he confused the taste of his own opinions with the food in front of him.

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  3. If “Mark” wants to get personal, OK. Has “he” ever had a restaurant meal he didn’t like?

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  4. How can Tony Platt say it is “definitely not” Chez Panisse? Why is that? Because the Universal is not as pretentious and boring? Not located in trendy star studded North Berkeley? If anything, the reporter overstates the dependability of Chez Panisse, where I, and numerous “out-of-town foodies” are routinely disappointed (how is possible not to be given the hype?). Why is Platt so snarky? Has he ever eaten at the Universal? Finally, give the Universal its due: five agua frescas.

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  5. What a big surprise that Mark had the ribs… Chez Panisse it is definitely not, so why use this as a closer? You know which quote the restaurant will lift for its blurb …

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