Wondering where you can try a bite of the Bay Area food vibe? Look no further than the newest San Francisco restaurant, Trace, located at the W San Francisco, which is being unveiled this summer. The restaurant gets its name from the “traceable ingredients” it will be serving, in order to dish-up high-quality, conscious cuisine and reflect a “localist” lifestyle experience. It is the first of a number of restyling changes being enacted by the hotel in order to create a more “localist” lifestyle experience. Trace will be the first step in the hotel makeover. At the helm of Trace, will be Executive Chef Paul Piscopo, a man with a great sense of taste, not to mention humor. When asked how he got into cooking, Piscopo joked, “I had to work really hard to pay for my motorcycle parts.” He then added, on a more serious note, he was hooked on working in a kitchen; “I love to work with my hands and with food,” Piscopo said, “It’s a lot of fun.”
Piscopo brought his love of the kitchen from New York to California – and it isn’t hard to imagine why. “New York was great,” said Piscopo, but he was drawn to California because of the “amazing restaurants, great kitchens, access to the coast, the mountains” and his love of the outdoors. It is only fitting then that Piscopo would cook outdoors-friendly cuisine; he is a life-long advocate of “conscious cuisine.”
When asked what “conscious cuisine” means to him, Piscopo raised the issue of wild salmon. There have been reports that the salmon population is waning, and yet people keep fishing.“Just because the season is open, doesn’t mean we should use it,” says Piscopo.
Cooking with a conscience takes creativity. When a product is unavailable, Piscopo and his team either avoid it, or do a spin on it. Right now, they are working on a spin on soft shell crab. Currently, the question of whether or not soft shell crab is sustainable is up in the air, and with 3000 shipping miles worth of a carbon footprint, Piscopo isn’t just shrugging it off. Instead, they are working on a local crab dish that will be similar to soft shell crab – it might even become Piscopo’s favorite dish. And try eating the whole cow; the team is trying to find ways to make eating meat more sustainable by finding creating ways to utilize the rest of the product, rather than only the primary cuts. “There’s lots of product to deal with in different ways,” says Piscopo.
Through the restaurant’s dedication to conscious cuisine, Piscopo will be working with local foragers and celebrity organic food expert, Helge Hellberg. There will also be staff training, some of which will be run by Hellberg. They are getting the staff “fired up about the organic food movement” says Piscopo, “there will be motivational and informational bi-weekly training for the staff to get them to understand the importance of what we’re doing here.” On top of that, they are organizing farm trips. Piscopo says that he regularly visits local farms, and now the staff will experience the farm and seeing where the food comes from as well. This is in line with the philosophy of Trace, a concept that emphasizes being able to trace where ingredients came from and re-connecting with food and with the land that the food comes from.
Trace focuses on working with well-established, trustworthy purveyors, such as Monterey Fish, a company that can trace exactly where their fish comes from. “Better purveyors know everything about their products,” says Piscopo. He and his team will form partnerships with local and regional famers, fisherman, artisanal producers and distributers of sustainable and organic food and beverage products to source the highest-quality, local products.
Piscopo and his team are serving up this localist lifestyle in the W San Francisco, a hotel that welcomes people from all over the world. “We have a diverse clientele” says Piscopo, “people come from all over the country and the world, and they come with certain expectations.” When asked how he faces the challenge of serving global patrons will local cuisine, Piscopo said, “I work with great chefs, respect the product and try not to overdo anything. It’s a fun challenge.”
And how does this focus on the farm translate to your plate? According to Piscopo, the menu is market driven and influenced by what is available locally. “We’re lucky here in San Francisco,” says Piscopo, “you have super-fresh products.” Trace’s partnerships allow them to choose what farm and get very farm specific products. Piscopo attends farmers markets and even has a relationship with a local cattle farm; “you can get specialty items directly from the farm,” says Piscopo, “such as apple juice, dairy, meat and an assortment of different eggs.” The dishes are also seasonally driven, “we [Piscopo and his team] know which seasons are coming up” and can prepare for the normal seasonal dishes from regularly available seasonal items. But the same creativity pervades these dishes; “sometimes we will take a dish we are currently doing and someone will come up with an idea, or we will hear about something interesting and incorporate it into the dish,” says Piscopo, “it changes all the time.”
When talking about local, fresh, sustainable cuisine, Piscopo says it best, “these foods just taste better,” he says, “they taste better from the start and if the dish tastes bad, you’ve done something wrong.” He uses minimal cooking, and keeps the dishes simple, while maintaining all of the necessary components of making a balanced dish that can stand on its own.
Piscopo says he couldn’t be happier about the hotel’s decision to restyle itself to reflect a “localist” lifestyle experience, with Trace leading the way. The restaurant will be opening this summer and I know at least one local that can’t wait to try Trace’s delicious, fresh, local, sustainable conscious cuisine.
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