Hot Meal: Frances Impresses with Rustic Flavors, Polished Technique

J. Birdsall

​Though it's on a street that skews residential, Frances feels strictly Manhattan: tight tables, even tighter bar seating, and a stripped-down design of darks and whites that nevertheless gestures toward American rustic. Melissa Perello's cooking reveals a similar tension. The place is literally an homage to her heartland roots (Frances is Perello's Texas grandma), while the food's execution -- at last night's official opening, anyway -- revealed seriously impressive technique.

J. Birdsall

Lamb and pork albondigas, one of the pre-meal bouchées.

​The menu's in three parts, including a roster of bouchées ($6.50 each), small share plates designed to precede the meal proper. When chomped, applewood smoked bacon beignets released a delicately smoky wheeze. Just as surprising were albondigas con salsa verde, tender meatballs of lamb and pork in a sort of kale pesto whose so-called Moorish spice blend made you think of some darkly herby Indian chutney.

An appetizer of semolina gnocchi ($12) was all about texture -- the pliant, pinky-tip pieces of the star ingredient, in a thin, deep-tasting duck broth not ashamed to be cloudy. There were bits of duck and spigarello, too. A nearly perfect square of slow-roasted beef ($23) had a beefiness you tasted in your chakras. It was a boneless rib cut, Niman, with a fiber-y texture like short ribs, under a load of deep-fried shallot rings. Coarsely smashed German butterballs and braised greens were perfect with.

The only dish we didn't love was the cube of ling cod swaddled in Boccalone lardo, poised on Brussels sprouts and a smear of squash and apple puree ($23). The lardo made the fish about as salty as seawater (though, in fairness to Boccalone, the kitchen definitely wasn't shy about salt elsewhere), and the sweetness of the orange stuff seemed a clumsy contrast. But even with a plate you couldn't warm to, it made you wish you lived in the Castro, where Frances could be your neighborhood go-to. As long as you wouldn't mind a whiff of Chelsea.

Frances 3870 17th St. (at Pond), 621-3870