You’ll want to come back to Oakland’s Commis again and again and again for chef James Syhabout’s not-so-secret faux breakfast, a dreamy amuse-bouche that is almost always on his $68 five-course prix fixe menu. Behold a blissfully custardy Commis slow-poached egg, a deep-yellow yolk cradled in a “white” of cream and onion and sprinkled with tiny pebbles of granola — you’ve soft-landed on Planet Sublime. The dish is just one reasons the Oakland native Syhabout — a veteran of Spain’s El Bulli, the U.K.’s Fat Duck, and the Bay Area’s Coi — and his crew earned O-town’s first Michelin star. The other reasons lie in the subtle magic he wrings out of seasonal, locally grown or foraged ingredients like garlic scapes, wild fennel pollen, sea lettuce, English peas, oxalis, thyme, and nasturtium.
3859 Piedmont, Oakl. (510) 653-3902, www.commisrestaurant.com.