Ernest

Ernest doesn't sit still long enough to be filed under one cuisine, and that's the point. The chef spent five years running the kitchen at Rich Table before opening this place, and it shows in the instinct to keep pushing a dish one step past expected — a lo mein built like carbonara, aged beef and bone marrow dumplings, a raw bar that runs from oysters and clams up to Kaluga caviar served with tater tots and crème fraîche. Asian technique runs through nearly everything without ever becoming a theme restaurant about it.

The menu moves with the market, so what lands on the table tonight won't be what lands on it next month. That's a harder way to run a kitchen, and it means the test isn't any single dish but the hit rate — and here the hit rate is close to total. Service keeps pace with a menu that changes shape constantly, and the room reads as confident rather than chaotic.

It isn't cheap, and the complaint is fair. It's also beside the point. A Michelin Selected listing confirms what the kitchen already proves course by course: this is one of the most purely enjoyable dinners in the Mission, built by someone who knows exactly what he's doing with a market list and no fixed formula.