Incanto

Next Iron Chef contestant Chris Cosentino’s Incanto disappointed. I mean, look at this dude:

… don’t you expect the food to be totally extreme?!@?!$!#!@! I did. We dined with another couple with hearty appetites and ordered every pasta dish on the menu, plus a few appetizers:

• tuna crudo — underseasoned
• house-cured meats, mustards, marinated vegetables: now, this is a dish worth going back for. It’s pretty clear that Cosentino’s true calling is as a salumieri, and his next venture as such sounds pretty interesting. Their website recently got much, much more professional..
• handkerchief pasta with ragu — I could’ve made it
• tagliatelle with braised pork — this was actually really good but I could’ve made this too. Actually, I have made this
• spaghettini with “Sardinian cured tuna heart” — overwhelming
• pappardelle with chanterelles and mint — I quite enjoyed this as the chanterelles were generous, but every other diner disliked the mint

I know for a fact that we ordered some entrees also but although it’s only been a week since Incanto, I have already forgotten what they were. It’s not that the food wasn’t good, it was fine — it was just that for a chef who outlasted Traci Des Jardins on the TV, well, I had expected something a bit more memorable.

There’s some crazy cured meats hanging in a glass display case between the entryway and the kitchen, one of which was marked “goose proscuitto 12/16″. Holy shit, goose prosciutto? That sounds fucking amazing! Is it on the menu? NO! WTF, Chris. (He was definitely in the kitchen that night, salting a bowl of chopped something while wandering around in slippers.) Add to this the fact that Noe Valley is about as wonderful a place to dine as Sunnyvale and you have one really major letdown.

Incanto, 1550 Church St, San Francisco, CA 94131. ($$$)