Cala blazes a new trail for Mexican cuisine in America

When it comes to restaurants, the Bay Area rarely embraces chefs who come here to open projects and then become absentees. We take dining seriously, and interlopers can’t dial it in.

Mexico City’s Gabriela Camara is a different breed of chef. When she decided to open a restaurant near the Civic Center, she uprooted entirely and moved to San Francisco.

Months later, her new Cala is setting standards for Mexican food in the Bay Area — and beyond. Because of her talent and laser focus, there’s a refinement in every dish that is hard to find in Mexican food anywhere in the United States.

The success of Cala isn’t entirely unexpected, considering the reputation Camara built in Mexico at MeroToro and especially Contramar, which opened in 1998 and remains a must-visit for any chef traveling to that part of the world. Camara still owns those two Mexico City spots, and has earned legions of followers, including Chez Panisse’s Alice Waters and 92-year-old Mexican food legend Diana Kennedy, who visited San Francisco to work with her friend on the menu.

Camara took two years to meticulously conceive and put together the restaurant, and the opening of Cala in September was nothing short of a culinary event. Located in a former sound studio on Fell Street between Van Ness and Franklin, it has an airy patio-like environment featuring a wall of trellised kangaroo vines delineating the long entryway and a fiddle-leaf fig tree between the dining room and the bar. Behind the bar, bartenders not only make an amazing mezcal margarita ($14) but also such things as a refreshing Tonica Classica ($13) with St. George Botanivore gin, elderflower tonic, cucumber and lemon. Dozens of black clay globe light fixtures dangle from the whitewashed peaked roof, covering the 100-seat dining room like a constellation of stars.

It is a sophisticated design that doesn’t pander to the expected. Not only does the restaurant feel like an urban oasis, but a Meyer Sound system helps to modulate the noise. So while the space has a lively buzz it doesn’t have the hard-edged, piercing notes found in similarly designed restaurants.

While Cala is patterned loosely after Contramar — it has nearly identical heavy wood chairs — Camara has adapted her style to incorporate Bay Area products and sensibilities.

There’s not a single meat-based selection among the 20 or so dishes, and just about all of them are unlike what you’ll find at other Mexican restaurants.

Before any ordered food arrives, the staff brings green habanero salsa, pickled vegetables (carrots, cauliflower and potatoes) and a small ramekin of pickled onions. The waiter says the onions go particularly well with sopes con pescado adobado ($13), four thick patties of house-ground masa topped with fish in an adobo sauce and avocado. The complex sauce reveals itself more clearly with each bit.

The menu at this seafood-centric restaurant is liberally fueled with bold ingredients and an arsenal of chiles combined in subtle and unique ways.

Chipotle adds a hint of smokiness to four silver dollar-size tostadas ($16) topped with trout, avocado and crispy fried leeks. It has become a signature dish. Habanero heat builds with each bite of the sea urchin ($20), presented on a base of soft masa inside its spiky shell; the spice maximizes the effect of the cool, sweet and creamy seafood. Chile piquin creates a briny heat for butter clams ($19) minced with cucumbers and cooled by slices of avocado. In other hands, these chiles — which have about 20 times more heat than a jalapeño — could overpower. At Cala, they make everything more interesting.

Santa Cruz abalone ($18) is served in the shell on cool serrano cream, shaved amarosa purple potatoes and sorrel leaves. Lively and complex, it’s the best presentation of abalone I’ve encountered.

Vegetable dishes are as fresh as you can find, including delicata squash ($15) in guajillo vinaigrette where dried chile gives a smoky nuance to the goat cheese and palanqueta, a kind of peanut brittle.

Camara cooks a whole sweet potato ($19) until the skin is black and papery, and serves it with fresh made tortillas, which are continually replenished throughout the night, and a side of salsa negra, a thick mole sauce enriched with bone marrow, which is about the only land animal protein on the menu. The waiter tells diners that the idea is to split the potato and to spread it on the tortilla, along with the salsa. I don’t think I ever want sweet potato any other way.

Several specialties are bundled into neat packages. A corn husk — filled with cascabel chiles, eggplant and nopal ($17) — is charred to add a subtle flavor to the creamy blend. The kitchen forms masa around mussels, still in their shell, to create the wrapped tamal ($16). Black cod mixiote ($36) is snugly swaddled in collard greens. When unwrapped, the fish — moist from red chili adobo — looks like it’s nesting in the center of the greens, picking up the vegetal qualities of the wrapping.

The precision the chef has instilled in the kitchen crew shows on every dish, particularly the lingcod salpicon ($28), where the fish is precisely diced and evenly browned, matching acidic, crunchy cubes of tomatillos.

One star of the Contramar menu even makes its way north to San Francisco: The whole rock cod that generously serves two ($40) is grilled, butterflied and thickly smeared with a chile-infused salsa verde.

Desserts ($9) are simple but equally well-executed: a stack of crisp meringues, whipped cream and strawberries; peanut butter ice cream next to a square of ganache with broken wafers of chocolate cookies; and thick, smooth flan topped and surrounded by bright pomegranate seeds.

From start to finish Cala is fully realized.

The service is caring, if not always efficient. Camara has found an admirable way to confront the ever-growing staff shortages by hiring about 70 percent of the staff from Delancey Street, the San Francisco Adult Probation Department and other similar rehabilitation centers. Not everything is perfect in terms of service, but the training conducted by general manager and partner Emma Rosenbush is evident.

It’s clear Camara examined every element, particularly the food. And it shows. The menu at Cala blazes a new path for Mexican food — not only in the Bay Area, but in the United States.

★ ★ ★½

Cala

Food: ★ ★ ★½

Service: ★ ★½

Atmosphere: ★ ★ ★½

Prices: $$$

Noise: Four Bells

149 Fell St. (between Van Ness and Franklin), San Francisco

(415) 660-7701 or www.calarestaurant.com.

Open for dinner 5-11 p.m. Monday-Saturday. Brunch 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Sunday. Full bar. 20% service charge added to bill. Reservations and credit cards accepted. Difficult street parking.