Tomato people will tell you: The heart of July in California is a magnificent time of year. Bosco, a wood-fired California-Italian restaurant at 888 Brannan St. in SoMa, isn’t letting a moment of midsummer magic slip away with a tasting menu honoring the bright, juicy star of the season.
“We love tomatoes. Everybody loves tomatoes,” said Bosco chef Ryan McIlwraith. He and chef Kaili Hill have dreamt up an heirloom tomato tasting menu centering the delicious, locally grown fruit of the gods in every bite. This is also one of the more wallet- and vegetarian-friendly tasting menus in the city right now.
For $55 per person, diners will get you four courses — six dishes — of heirloom beauty. First, a sweet amuse-bouche of tomato and stone fruit gazpacho.
Next, for the antipasti: a yellowfin tuna carpaccio toast on Hill’s house-made sourdough with Early Girls, tonnato, and chives; and a classic “no twists, no moves” heirloom tomato caprese with buffalo mozzarella.
The pasta course is a scarpinocc with semi-dried tomatoes and goat cheese resting in a pool of brown butter, followed by your choice of bone-in pork shoulder chop milanese with sungold tomatoes, tomato jam, and honey mustard piled on top, or, thanks to Hill’s Southern roots, a fried green tomato and eggplant parmesan with all the fixings.
Dessert continues the celebration: heirloom tomato sorbet, which indeed uses the entire tomato. Folks can also pick from the full dessert menu if you’ve totally hit your tomato limit. If the limit doesn’t exist, there’s a Martini della Casa, made with tomato gin, Veso olive vermouth, and basil.
If commitment isn’t your strong suit, you can pick and choose standalone dishes off the heirloom tasting menu. Similarly, you can split the tasting menu with a friend and order more dishes off Bosco’s standard menu à la carte.
When Bosco first dropped the tasting menu mid-July, McIlwraith and Hill were handpicking each tomato at the Heart of the City farmers market on Wednesdays and the Ferry Building farmers market on Saturdays. Now, they can’t keep up with the volume and have turned to Watsonville-based Lonely Mountain Farm to deliver tomatoes directly to the restaurant.
On Tuesday when we spoke, they’d just received over 100 pounds of fresh tomatoes.
Bosco opened in September, taking over the sprawling space that held paella restaurant Bellota for a decade. It’s the latest concept by the Absinthe Group, which also operates Absinthe Brasserie & Bar, Arbor, and Arlequin Wine Merchant in Hayes Valley, and Comstock Saloon near North Beach.
For McIlwraith, Bosco is a homecoming of sorts: He opened Bellota in the same location ten years ago. “I just love this building, I love this restaurant, I love the kitchen. I’m just really happy to be back in here,” he said.
McIlwraith expects the heirloom tasting menu to run through August and September. If you’re still looking for signs of life in your own fog-rotting, windswept, fire escape tomato plants, Bosco’s got you covered.
