Not many restaurateurs readily quote Talmud, the Zohar and French philosopher Claude Lévi-Strauss in between descriptions of the daily specials.
Meet Yaron Milgrom.
He’s the 29-year-old son of a rabbi, a father and husband, and student of Kabbalah. If that’s not enough –– and for him, it isn’t –– Milgrom also runs Local Mission Eatery.
Open a little more than a month, Local Mission Eatery is not only one of San Francisco’s newest restaurants, it is also one of the freshest. Milgrom’s hook? All breads, meats and produce, down to the last sprig of parsley, are local.
Carrots from Watsonville. Asparagus from Stockton. Mushrooms from Moss Landing. Lamb from Sonoma. Several times a week, Milgrom and his partner, executive chef Jacob Des Voignes, stock up at farmers markets in and around San Francisco.
No ingredient travels more than 100 miles to get to Milgrom’s kitchen.
“To buy things from far away is crazy, especially if it’s grown locally in California, where so much is available so much of the year,” Milgrom says as a bustling crowd fills his restaurant. “It tastes better.”
Menu offerings change often, but might include a braised lamb shoulder and smoked beet greens sandwich, or another of asparagus with slow-poached eggs and a Meyer lemon mousseline.
Knead Patisserie, run by baker Shauna Des Voignes, operates full steam in the back. There’s also a cookbook lending library on the premises, and regular cooking classes offered on everything from bread making to properly carving a leg of lamb.
Located among the taquerias and panderias of 24th Street near Folsom Street, Local Mission Eatery represents Milgrom’s mantra of keeping things affordable, sustainable and local.
That applies not only to the food. The restaurant’s exterior was fashioned from salvaged Douglas fir. The table tiles were made in Sausalito. Much of the large kitchen equipment was rescued from a shuttered restaurant around the corner.
As for the “sustainable” part of the equation, it applies to treatment of the staff as well.
“I didn’t want to open a business that didn’t offer a living wage or didn’t offer health insurance to my employees,” Milgrom says. “I wanted a business I felt had real integrity, that wasn’t only about the bottom line. There’s real precedent in Jewish tradition for equitable labor.”
As a doctoral student in Jewish mysticism, he would know. Milgrom quotes Jewish philosopher Lévi-Strauss’ observation that only two things make human beings human: language and cooking.
“No other animal cooks,” he says, para-phrasing Lévi-Strauss. “We’re the only animal that takes something from the raw stage to the cooked. For me there is something magical to be able to take one ingredient and turn it 100 ways.”
Reared in the New York City suburb of White Plains, Milgrom attended Orthodox day schools and grew up in a kosher home filled with Jewish learning. His mother is a rabbi at a Reform congregation in White Plains, while his father worked in Jewish education.
At age 15, Milgrom discovered the great works of Kabbalah on his parents’ bookshelf. “I was smitten by the difficulty of the material and its incredibly strong impulse to push the challenge to its maximum,” he recalls.
After high school he studied at a Jerusalem yeshiva, and as a graduate student at New York University undertook a dissertation on Jewish mysticism. Milgrom still intends to get the Ph.D., but it’s not like he hasn’t been busy.
His wife, Miriam, is a resident in family medicine at San Francisco General Hospital. They are the proud parents of 2-year-old Cruv, a budding gourmand. “He’ll eat things a lot of adults won’t eat,” Milgrom says. “He loves sardines, Japanese fish stock, mushrooms. He eats it all.”
The family moved to the Mission District when Miriam began working at the hospital. Milgrom fell in love with the neighborhood and soon had the idea for a restaurant that served only locally grown foodstuffs, or, as he puts it, “a handsome place to have a good meal.”
Though he had no business experience, he says his academic training prepared him. “Any situation where the less I knew, the more likely I was to be taken advantage of, I studied,” he says.
The new restaurant progressed rapidly. Milgrom and Des Voignes signed the lease on the former butcher shop last September, construction began in December, and by March they were ready to open.
Locally grown fare doesn’t come cheap, and the $9 price tag for an asparagus sandwich may seem steep. Milgrom assures it is not, considering his restaurant’s quality ingredients and skillful cookery.
And he hasn’t forgotten those who could never afford to eat at a place like Local Mission Eatery. He cares about the issues of hunger and homelessness, and wants to make sure his establishment does its part to help.
Not only has Milgrom given free meals to local homeless people, he hopes to tie his restaurant to a more sustainable solution. Milgrom says he’s been talking to the organization Hazon: A Jewish Response to Hunger, to the mayor’s office and others about forming a neighborhood coalition to ease hunger and homelessness.
The Mission Minyan member also hopes to someday expand the Local Mission Eatery concept into other San Francisco neighborhoods.
Just don’t try and pin him down to a specific five-year plan.
“Five-year plan?” he laughs. “Right now we’re trying to get through our one-year plan.”
Local Mission Eatery is open for dinner on Thursdays and Saturdays; open afternoons daily, except Mondays. 3111 24th St., S.F. Information: (415) 655-3422 or www.localmissioneatery.com.