Quince - Wine & Spirits Magazine

Restaurant Review

Quince

by Wolfgang M. Weber • March 1, 2010

When Michael and Lindsay Tusk announced their plans in early 2009 to move the intimate Pacific Heights restaurant Quince to a bigger, flashier downtown space in Jackson Square, a collective shudder was felt in San Francisco. Would the new place be the same? It turns out, in some ways, yes: Michael Tusk’s Northern Italian-inspired pastas, such as agnolotti dal plin and pappardelle with suckling pig, still rule the menu. The biggest change is that those dishes are now presented in an expansive space that feels like an elite club rather than a small dining room. The Tusks also brought David Lynch, former wine director for NYC’s Babbo, out west. Lynch expanded the old list to feature plenty of regional Italian wines, including rarities like Ar.Pe.Pe.‘s Sassella Vigna Regina, a silky nebbiolo from Valtellina that just begs for a plate of the agnolotti.

470 Pacific Ave., San Francisco, California

French

415-775-8500

quincerestaurant.com

Wolfgang M. Weber

Based in San Francisco, Wolfgang Weber was the Italian wine critic at W&S. He now works with the Revel Wine and Selection Massale, and continues to write freelance. Nebbiolo is his spirit grape but if he were to live anywhere in Italy, he’d choose Liguria.

This story appears in the print issue of February 2010.
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TAGS California French Restaurant San Francisco

David Paradela
Associate Editor

David joined Wine & Spirits in 2021 after immersing himself in the world of wine at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Originally from Boston, he graduated from Boston University with a degree in English and completed a master’s degree in Publishing and Writing from Emerson College in 2021. Prior to working at the magazine, he served as an editor and staff writer for the music blog Sound of Boston and worked in scientific publishing. Aside from wine, he loves basketball, arguing about Taylor Swift’s best album, and everything Greta Gerwig touches.

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Tastings Editor

Corey Warren moved to New York in 2015—fifteen years too late to join The Strokes—after earning a degree at Cornell in Comparative Literature. He started polishing glasses at Betony and threw himself into the restaurant world. Later, while a captain at Aquavit, he began working part time in the Wine & Spirits tasting department. Now, in addition to running tastings, he serves as critic for the wines of the Loire, Southern France, Argentina and South Africa. Corey likes almost anything bubbly, from Miller High Life, the Champagne of beers, to Champagne, the Champagne of Champagne, but he’ll drink anything once, and loves finding unique wines.

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Patricio Tapia
Senior Correspondent

After graduating with a degree in journalism from the Universidad de Chile in Santiago, Patricio Tapia attended Bordeaux University in France, where he studied for a diploma in wine tasting and winemaking. Since then, he has visited wine regions around the world and authored several books, including his annual Descorchados, a Chilean wine guide; The Wines of Colchagua Valley; TodoVino and Wines for Great Occasions. Tapia is also the South American correspondent for The Oxford Companion to Wine, The World Atlas of Wine and Oz Clarke’s Pocket Wine Book. For the past three years, he’s been a host on the El Gourmet channel in South America. At Wine & Spirits, Tapia is the critic for the wines of Argentina, Chile and Spain, and regularly contributes articles on these regions.