If I had to describe Arquet, the new restaurant from chef Alex Hong and manager Joel Wilkerson of the Michelin-starred Sorrel, in one word it’d be beige. The interior is vast, sleek and enveloped in varying shades of it — sand, khaki, cream — resulting in an aesthetic that verges on luxury spa. This is largely true of the food, too, a menu built on California-style cuisine and live-fire cooking with a penchant for overly smooth edges, like the restaurant’s namesake little arches.
Arquet is an agreeable restaurant. But it’s the flagship of the Ferry Building, the city’s most heralded gastronomic stage, and it occupies the space previously held by the Slanted Door, which was revered by a generation of San Franciscans for the late Charles Phan’s pioneering vision of upscale Vietnamese cuisine and its stunning interior design.
The Ferry Building is where locals and visitors alike have experienced the bounty of the region’s edible splendor for nearly 25 years. The landmark captures “aspects of the cultural city as well as what people want to eat or drink,” says John King, former urban design critic for the Chronicle and author of “Portal,” a book about the Ferry Building, who was my companion for one of my meals at Arquet. The building also, he posits, holds a mirror up to San Francisco and reflects how it perceives itself.
The Ferry Building has never been a paragon of affordability (the Slanted Door and Arquet are comparably priced), but in its early years, it was broadly representative of the artisan food culture of the Bay Area, featuring a roster of tenants that included shops like Cowgirl Creamery and Far West Funghi, and restaurants like the deli Lulu Petite and burger joint Gott’s Roadside (then known as Taylor’s Refresher). Even as it began prioritizing buzzier, more exclusive purveyors — by 2018, former Chronicle food editor Paolo Lucchesi was asking “Does the Ferry Building still reflect the Bay Area’s food culture?” noting the shrinking number of truly local or independent brands — there remained a segment of accessible spots. A soccer dad could take his kids for burgers and milkshakes while a young couple celebrated at the Slanted Door…