Growing up in the culinary backwater of suburban Detroit, neither Curt Clingman nor Mary Jo Thoresen ever dreamed they'd find their calling as chef-owners of a fine French restaurant in Oakland, California.

As a young man, Clingman's first passion was auto racing. He spent the first few years of his adult life in a pit crew on the Can-Am racing circuit. Thoresen grew up eating lots of Hamburger Helper; her first job was at the local Burger Chef. The couple attended the same high school, he one grade ahead of her, but they didn't meet until several years after they'd graduated.

Michigan held little promise for the future chefs, so they struck out West to create their own culinary pedigrees. The result is Jojo, a tiny jewel of a restaurant in Oakland's

Piedmont district.Clingman and Thoresen's road to success had no pit stops at any second-tier restaurants between the Midwest and here. Instead, the couple (who've been together now for 22 years) hustled their way out to Berkeley in the early '80s and learned the restaurant business at two of the East Bay's finest eateries.

Clingman worked his way up through the kitchen at Oliveto, where he cooked for seven years. And Thoresen took on an unpaid apprenticeship as a pastry cook at Chez Panisse. She would soon join the Chez staff, cooking under Lindsay Shere for the next 12 years.

In 1999, after various stints in San Francisco and Oakland, the couple took the leap from other people's kitchens to their own, opening Jojo in the former Ike's Rotisserie space on Piedmont Avenue. Since then, Jojo has built itself a quiet little niche in an arrondissement once dominated by the untouchable Bay Wolf next door.

Though Jojo's menu excels in the vernacular of rural France, the restaurant's virtues don't stray far from the chefs' Middle American roots. Clingman, who creates the starters and entrees, and Thoresen, who plies the pastries, created Jojo in their own image, tinkering with the design and layout until they'd crafted a familial, unadorned setting. In a space no bigger than most wine cellars, the restaurant's 13 tables curl around an open kitchen, where the two chefs and a line cook stand like storytellers over a campfire.

The tales they share through their cuisine are foreign in origin, but are retold in a distinctly American voice. During their time at Oliveto and Chez Panisse, Clingman and Thoresen were encouraged to expand their ideas about food through travel. The two alit for Europe several times, coming back with a penchant for simple, perfectly orchestrated dishes, and a passion for great French cooking.

"The thing we do that's pretty European," says Clingman of the typical Jojo creation, "is prepare dishes that people might do at home. But because we don't overbuild the plate, and because we pay such close attention to the details, we can execute it very well."

This sentiment is exemplified by a dish that's become a stalwart since the restaurant's inception. It's a Niman Ranch flatiron steak that is cooked rare and sliced in thin pieces, then capped with square slabs of anchovy-anchovybutter. The steak is good enough to make a Chicagoan weep, and the accompanying pommes frites are probably Jojo's most popular side. But the coup de grace comes from each dollop of butter. An extract of anchovy is barely noticeable, balanced by traces of lemon juice and mustard, and hard- ened into a delicate compound.

Most of Clingman and Thoresen's dishes allow ingredients to play their secret games, without letting one overpower the other. An exuberantly pink piece of wild salmon is seared briefly and then baked and crusted with a little horseradish. As textures go, the salmon is as delicate and moist as they come, but it's the slight horseradish shell that ele- vates the dish to the level of ethereal.

Regulars swear by the vegetarian entree, a wild mushroom bread pudding (which, unlike most of the menu items, rarely changes with the seasons). It's a center-of-the-plate production that's been known to tempt even the most adamant carnivores. The savory pudding is souffleed and crusted over, then paired with seasonal vegetables bought dally at Berkeley's Monterey Market.

Born and bred in the Burger Belt, Clingman and Thoresen can truly appreciate the East Bay's bounty of fresh food. "If I was plunked back down in the middle of the country and had to put together a dessert menu, I could do it," says Thoresen. "But it wouldn't be as easy."

Thoresen's dessert card at Jojo is often highlighted by picture-perfect fruit offer- ings. A rich, nutty buckwheat cake is split and rilled with Sevilla orange marmalade--a dish that makes the chefs heart race just talking about it. It's even harder for diners to pass up the apple-candied Meyer lemon tart with creme chantilly.

Clingman, for one, can't imagine someone eating at Jojo without trying one of his partner's desserts. "Mary Jo doesn't have a sweet tooth, but I do," he says. "Dessert is definitely part of a meal out for me."

As for Mary Jo? "I'd rather have Curt's mashed potatoes," she says. In cuisine, as in love, it's all about balance.

— Jon Steinberg, Diablo Magazine, April, 2003