The artisanal-food revolution is the fetishization of the human hand. Deindustrializing certain components of food production has been key to reinvigorating our love of real food in what’s otherwise an inglorious and hollow McWorld. It’s a renaissance that could be captured in image of 10 flour-covered fingers in a mixing bowl.
So we have A Mano, the latest restaurant by Adriano Paganini’s Back of the House group, which owns Delarosa, Uno Dos Tacos, Lolinda, and other concept restaurants. Italian for “by hand,” it’s a pizza-and-pasta-heavy spot in Hayes Valley run by Executive Chef Freedom Rains, and it’s very much at home in 2017 San Francisco, from the seasonality to the industrial interior. But I think we can expect more from this hand.
