This cozy next-door neighbor of Bay Wolf, in Oakland, can't be much wider than a railroad car. You note the sunny mustard walls, the framed old "Jo Jo" apple-crate labels. As you pass the compact open kitchen in the center of the dining room, Mary Jo Thoresen and Curt Clingman look up and say hello. If you've gotten around at all in the last 20 years, it's a sure bet one or the other has cooked for you at Chez Panisse, Zuni, Oliveto, or even at San Francisco's last bastion of the ancien régime, The Old Poodle Dog. What in the world are they doing here?

Cooking — how and what they please, and in their own place. The stage is small (35 seats), but Thoresen and Clingman aren't in it for the celebrity. They're in it for the love of cooking as a craft. And craft, you discover, is what lifts Jojo above many a neighborhood restaurant.

Try the juicy, subtly spiced duck confit and the fine, fresh, pistachio-studded pâté de campagne, and you'll cheer the country French drift of the menu. The beauty of a rich crab and goat cheese tart is in its buttery, flaky pastry. One wintry night, mussels in their prime make a stunning starter steamed in rosé.

The steak frites nearly steals the show. The Niman Ranch flatiron cut with a nugget of anchovy butter has a nice chew and a rich, beefy flavor, and the Kennebec fries are so good everyone keeps snitching them from the steak eater's plate. A lobster-sauced wild steelhead is the loveliest fish I have come across in a week in San Francisco, and an aïoli-thickened stew of scallops, mussels, and shrimps is Provence on a plate. And Jojo's savory bread pudding with a ragout of carrots, turnips, and parsnips is no mean bone tossed to the vegetarian; whenever the kitchen tries to take it off the menu, its loyal fans complain.

Thoresen, a pastry chef at Chez Panisse for 12 years, is so gifted I hope she writes a dessert book someday. Everything she turns her hand to is exceptional, whether a warm chocolate soufflé cake with a Chartreuse crème anglaise or an apple and Meyer lemon tart. Her elegant marjolaine is a finely wrought cake of almond and hazelnut meringue and crème fraîche that you'd expect to find — but never would — in the town's toniest places. It's astounding what can come out of a two-foot-wide pastry station.

— From an article by Caroline Bates, Gourmet, March 2002