Chef Mike Lanham’s restaurant embodies its name. In January of the year, he opened a tasting menu spot in San Francisco at a time when a la carte is king. He’s fond of modernist techniques while more naturalistic cooking pervades. And he launched an ambitious fine dining restaurant without deep-pocketed investors bankrolling him. Anomaly SF may be an anomaly when it comes to new restaurants, but Lanham’s thoughtful tasting menu delivers a delightful, intimate experience all the same.
Although Anomaly has only been around for about six months, Lanham was popping up throughout the Bay Area for the past five years, most recently at The Mansion on Sutter. To finally land a permanent home, Lanham didn’t hit up Silicon Valley types looking to dabble in dining or established restaurant groups he could open an outpost for. Anomaly SF was funded by a Kickstarter campaign. The drive raised $40,521, mostly from pop-up regulars, and friends and family of the 37-year-old chef.
It was also a community effort—not a corporate one—to construct the 1,900-square-foot space, which is filled with many DIY finishes and design elements. For example, the restaurant has a set of glass shelves that were actually store-bought units retrofitted to look like a custom set of built-ins. Lanham’s dad was instrumental in making that work. The chef and his team also refinished the baseboards and installed other shelving units themselves, while the wooden walls separating the private dining room from the rest of the space were commissioned from Chung-Ah Kim, a friend of Lanham’s from the pop-up days.
“Many people came together to help us build this restaurant, including members of our opening team,” Lanham said. “My family was also so supportive. I spent Christmas putting up shelves with my girlfriend, as well as my parents, who flew in from Georgia. It was definitely a challenging process—and an unexpected way to spend a holiday—but I appreciate them stepping in to help create this permanent home for Anomaly SF.”
The restaurant seats 34 and offers an 11-course tasting menu that showcases fun textures and flavors with highly technical, “post-modern” preparations. Celtuce, for example, is sliced thin and compressed with green basil vinaigrette, set atop a bed of snap peas, peanuts and a serrano chili aioli, then topped with a pink rhubarb-lime leaf granita, and fresh onion flowers. Duck is presented two ways, legs deboned and braised and breasts dry-aged and crisped, and paired with a black garlic sauce, mushroom jus and scallion oil. There are optional caviar and fish supplements.
“We use any and every technique available to us to make things as delicious and interesting and joyful as possible,” Lanham said. “We’re doing things with ingredients people have seen before in ways they’ve never seen them.”
Before opening Anomaly SF, Lanham spent time in the kitchens of San Francisco’s Michelin one-starred Spruce and Oakland’s two-starred Commis, among others. A few years ago, he broke his back during a climbing accident and decided while recovering that he would build his own restaurant, rebel against the norms and focus on treating his staff with respect, which he saw as an anomaly in the industry.
“Cooking is hard, but [positive] culture is the real secret sauce of a restaurant,” he said. “Having a solid workforce is more important than anything else because if you don’t have reliable staff, you can’t provide reliable service. You can’t make creative, interesting food, and you can’t do the things that you want to do. So, if I want to have a stellar restaurant, I better hire stellar people and treat them in a stellar way.”
Even with accolades in hand, Lanham said there is no pretension. He and his chefs run the food to the tables and explain the dishes to diners, because, as he said, they make the food and are the best ambassadors to talk about it. He encourages his small staff—depending on the day, nine or 10, including the dishwasher—to interact with the diners as much as possible.
“Our kitchen is very open. There’s no wall. You’re looking at everything that’s going on,” he said. “Being calm and composed is such a necessity here. That’s one of the reasons why I set it up like that, to hold us to a higher standard. You can’t get away with other shenanigans because the whole world’s going to see. There’s nowhere to hide and we have nothing to hide.”
Back in June, the restaurant learned it would be added to the California Michelin Guide. However, when stars were announced this month, it didn’t receive one this time around. But for a bootstrapping restaurant like Anomaly SF, being mentioned still helps them survive.
“We’re a new restaurant and we’re doing everything we can to be in included in the conversation,” he said. “It’s not just Michelin, but the more accolades you can win, the more eyes you get in front of. And I feel strongly that as soon as we get a chance to get people into this space, they’ll realize that we’re doing something special.”
Click here to see more photos of Anomaly SF.
