There are an estimated 4,000 restaurants in San Francisco collectively serving up tens of thousands of dishes. For Gazetteer SF, food expert and man-about-town Omar Mamoon is recommending the best ones. This is Order Up.
I love a good, old school steakhouse. White tablecloths, an ice cold martini, and a grilled cut of meat (juicy ribeye for me) is a classic combination that can’t be beat. And because I’m a professional eater who dines out most nights of the week, I usually pass on the gratis bread and butter to save space for that extra bite of beef or creamed spinach.
But when the bread is made in-house, and better yet, stuffed with garlic confit and topped with a blend of melty cheese? Ok, yeah, I’m eating the hell outta that.
Behold the behemoth cheese bread ($14) at Osso Steakhouse, the 12-year-old meat mecca in Nob Hill.
Tucked away on the bottom floor of The Gramercy Towers at 1177 California St., adjacent to The Masonic, Osso feels like a secret. And even though the restaurant only opened in 2013, with its art deco interior and black-and-white zig zag floors, it feels like it’s been around forever.
Osso Steakhouse was originally opened by Jerry Dal Bozzo, one of the owners of The Stinking Rose and The Old Clam House, but new owners Jamie and Will Bartlett took it over just after the start of the pandemic. They installed a new beverage director, Greg Stone, and executive chef, Josh Saenz, both of whom were most recently at Public House (now known as 58 Social) at Oracle Park. k
Stone and Saenz have helped make everything at Osso just a little bit better. On the wine front, Stone built a respectable list that soon earned a Wine Spectator Award of Excellence, while Saenz started sourcing better beef and upgrading their stove to an industrial chop house broiler that gets up to 1,200 degrees.
But back to the bread. It comes delivered to the table on a scalding hot cast-iron sizzle platter with cheese that bubbles and boils over. This is the first thing you order. (After your martini, of course.)
“It’s a pretty simple recipe,” says Saenz, a seasoned chef who has also cooked at A16 and The Alembic. He makes the dough with malted flour, salt, honey, and olive oil and does a three-day ferment so it develops a bit of sourness. He’ll then ball up the dough the night before and bakes it on the day of service until it’s crackly on the crust.
Once out of the oven and cooled, it’s sliced in cross-hatches, piped with an herby compound butter fortified with garlic confit, then stuffed with a blend of parmesan, gruyere, white and yellow cheddar, and some American cheese for meltability. Once an order comes in, it’s baked in the oven until hot in the center with the cheese bubbling and oozing over; the dish is finished with a flourish of chopped chives.
When it comes to the table, tear off some bread and scoop up some of the crispy cheese spillage the sizzle platter. It’s buttery, rich, decadent, and delicious.
But of course, the cheese bread is just the gateway to Osso Steakhouse’s other offerings. You’re also here for the meats.
As I mentioned,I’m a rib-eye guy, and Saenz sources dry-aged Akaushi beef from Texas ($115). “The flavor is a little different, almost like popcorn,” says Saenz. “The intramuscular marbling is absurd.”
It also helps that he sears the meat in beef tallow and paints it with herb butter.
For something a little less-spendy, but equally meaty, you could do the steak sandwich ($28) which comes with slices of ribeye, a melty mix of provolone and American cheeses, and grilled onions and red peppers stuffed into an imported Amoroso roll. It’s served with crispy French fries at the bar, but they’ll let you have it tableside too if you ask.
Just be careful not to fill up on cheese bread.
