Oakland’s New Pied-à-Pastis

Oakland’s New Pied-à-Pastis

Serving moules and mousse de foie des volailles, Michel Bistro is a France-away-from-France on Lakeshore Avenue. It’s not faux French. It’s French.

How many times, in movies and real life, have you seen French people sitting in the sunshine, sipping pastis?

Beaucoups.

But have you ever done it yourself?

Jamais, you say? Because it’s such a French thing that most of us would feel foolish, foreign, and almost invasive clutching clunky glasses of the palest-jade, macerated-anise Marseillaise apéritif in our inexpressive, non-Gallic hands? Unless, that is, actual French people with French accents and hyphenated French names invited us to do so.

Alors! Fait accompli.

Michel Bistro, which opened on Oakland’s Lakeshore Avenue this spring, is the first restaurant for co-owner Jean-Michel Fabregon and the third for Germain Michel and Samie Didda, whose Amélie wine bars in San Francisco and New York City are critical darlings. Serving four brands of pastis and many French wines (VDP, AOC, and cru by the glass, bottle, 375-milliliter half-bottle, or 500-milliliter pitcher) alongside ever-so-subtly quirkified classics—not white rice amid the seasonal vegetables and crème frâiche but forbidden rice; not white almonds in the truite amandine but green almonds; not boeuf tartare but bison tartare, featuring the raw flesh of our big prairie pal—Michel Bistro is casual-chic, effortlessly intimate, and consummately French.

Are you fed up with faux Frenchness? A potage here, a mille-feuille there, appropriated just as a façade? Fear not. Triply French-owned Michel Bistro is French, not faux French. But it’s French qua East Bay, as families amble in, strollers in tow; a children’s “menu for minots” beckons with simple burgers, grilled-cheese sandwiches, and scrambles while syncopated chansons lilt through the speakers and adults venture into pungent andouillette, sweet-and-tangy blue-cheese-beet-salad, and buttery bone-marrow-with-wild-sorrel terrain. “San Francisco has changed so much in the last few years, in both its prices and its population,” laments mixologist/designer/contractor and now restaurateur Fabregon, who after stints with San Francisco’s Café Claude and Tunnel Top yearned to open his own place—and assumed initially that it, too, would be in the city.

“But people are less friendly over there than they used to be. And so many bars and restaurants are opening up there so fast that it’s killing the business,” says Fabregon, who upon being shown this Oakland space—which formerly housed YaYu Ethiopian Restaurant—instantly declared it “amazing,” he recalls.

An alumnus of the prestigious l’Institut Européenne des Compagnons du Tours de France, Fabregon reconfigured the space, using salvaged oak and glass from the Wooden Duck and Urban Ore to fulfill his vision of “an indoor patio.” Sunlight slants bold and bright like cartoon hands of God through lofty skylights onto a long languorous banquette, tables set far enough apart for privacy, a concrete floor evoking weathered terra-cotta tile, and a west wall bearing witty dialogue transcribed—in French, d’accord—from a Marcel Pagnol film. Fabregon’s dream of planting a large, living tree in the middle of the bistro hasn’t manifested—yet.

Sunshine reaches all the way back to the restaurant’s upper story and sleek full bar. And sunshine, as yolk-yellow in Oakland as it is in Orléans, bathes brunch-time pain perdu, which is the French name for French toast: e.g., formerly fresh bread that went stale, thus was “lost,” then redeemed by transmutation into this last-ditch dish that wooed the world. Served here with crème frâiche and plump sweet strawberries, it’s charred just enough on the outside to challenge your knife, yielding to a silk-pillow softness within.

And evening sunshine plays peekaboo with glossy, parsley-perfumed moules au pastis de Marseille, in which garlic, tomato, cream, mussels, and pastis make a sumptuous symphony of field and sea—with frites for crispy company.

For this we can thank 26-year-old Executive Chef Anthony Salguero, who isn’t French—he grew up mainly in San José—but became entrez nous with French fare while cooking at Saratoga’s Michelin-starred Plumed Horse and San Francisco’s Commonwealth and Saison before being asked, here, to put his own spin on Provençal favorites. It’s a pretty irrepressible spin.

“I like what’s fresh, vibrant, and very seasonal. I love for dishes to pop,” Salguero says. “I’m taking chances and twisting people’s ideas a little, based on what sounds good in my head. For instance, I love bison; it’s my thing, and when they said they wanted a tartare dish on the menu, I knew it should be bison.

“But I also think food shouldn’t be pretentious. I want everyone to feel welcome here.” For a seasonally shifting and ever-expanding menu, he buys ingredients at the nearby Grand Lake Farmers Market and from local farms themselves.

Certain must-haves—Cacao Noel chocolate, Brillat-Savarin Affiné, and Caves d’Oranche Bleu d’Auvergne cheeses—are imported from France. Salguero loves squash, so consider this the Summer that Ratatouille Ruled Oakland. A few full moons later, Lakeshore will become the Cassoulet Corridor.

All year ’round, it’s snail season: Salguero cooks his escargot with what he calls “tons of garlic” and oyster mushrooms gratinée to create plates of chewy fusion. It’s also always chuck steak and roasted-chicken season. The latter is served with leek vinaigrette and egg. And, lucky us: Hereabouts, it’s always Bison Tartare Time. Could any flesh be more tender? Could any mouthful send a stronger rush racing roughshod through heart and mind, signaling centuries-old haute cuisine and Wild West hoofbeats in the same breath? Plated like a Georges Braques painting with pickled spring onions and long-stemmed caper berries geometrically arranged, nearly melting between the teeth, pink as an ad for all things Paleo, it bursts with flavor, gamey but gourmet.

Spicing its richness is a strong mustard that Salguero makes in-house—just as he makes his own pickles, crème frâiche, rillettes, and vinaigrettes.

“Anything that can be made here is made here.”

Pastis can’t be, so Ricard, Pernod, Granier, and Henri Bardouin are imported from France and poured in classic style over ice, then diluted three to five times over with water. Pastis is never sipped straight, which makes sense since the French drink it for hours at a stretch, from morning onward.

Michel Bistro is being positioned as a pastis bar, so imagine starting your day with a glass of the green stuff and a chocolate croissant. (All breads served here come from Burlingame’s popular Petit Pains.)

Consider a pastis cocktail. Or pastis with ice, water, and a squirt of mint or orgéat syrup, which is one sweet-spicy, insiders-only secret you weren’t told in 10th-grade French class. But save some of your sweet tooth for dessert, which Salguero prefers to keep classic: “I’m honestly tired of all that sesame ice cream and shiso jelly. I’ve done that. … It’s fun, but I think some things should be kept as simple as possible. I’m going to make chocolate fondant and crème brûlée in the traditional ways, but I’m going to make the best chocolate fondant and crème brûlée that I can. Some things you just can’t mess with.

“And because chocolate fondant is my wife’s favorite dessert, I have to get it right.”

Earthy. Transcendently oozy. As warm as a kiss. It’s right, all right. Naturellement.


Michel Bistro | French

3343 Lakeshore Ave.,
Oakland, 510-836-8737
facebook.com/pages/Michel/568358129922319
Dinner Tue.-Sun., 5:30-9:30pm
Brunch Sat.-Sun., 10:30am-2:30pm
$–$$$
Full Bar
Accepts credit cards

Faces of the East Bay