Jeremy Fox not just at Plum

June 30

I just got off the phone with former Ubuntu chef Jeremy Fox, who was recom-mending new and soon-to-open restaurants in San Francisco for me (including Benu, the much-anticipated restaurant of former French Laundry chef Corey Lee, which is slated to open later this summer).

The world learned last month that Jeremy was going to be the chef at Plum, an Oakland, Calif., restaurant Daniel Patterson (of Coi in San Francisco) had planned to open in July.

Jeremy tells me Plum is now slated to open in the first week of September, serving plant-based cuisine, much of it from a garden on which he and Patterson will be breaking ground this summer (the picture above is from Jeremy’s days at Ubuntu, where he also had a garden).

Plant-based doesn’t mean vegetarian. Jeremy said he will be making his own charcuterie for Plum, and that the restaurant’s dishes will have more animal ears and skin than loins and other muscle meat — for flavoring rather than to be featured in the center of the plate.

But things will be hopping at that garden, which not only will be supplying produce for Plum, but also for Bracina, Patterson’s long-delayed restaurant in Oakland’s Jack London Square, which Jeremy says is now slated for a January opening.

Jeremy told me he’s going to be involved in that restaurant as well as in Plum, and also in future Patterson ventures.

I asked if he was Patterson’s corporate chef, then.

I kind of heard him shrug, and he said: “For lack of a better word.”

And there you have it.