After San Francisco’s Lord Stanley restaurant closed this summer after 10 years and a Michelin star, husband-and-wife owners Chef Rupert Blease and Carrie Blease could have taken a nice, long break, especially after the tumultuous pandemic led to its reinvention as Turntable by Lord Stanley, a residency for visiting chefs.

Instead, the couple went all in on an ambitious new project. They have teamed with Tommy Halvorsen, chef of the now-shuttered Serpentine to transform that same space into their new Wolfsbane, which opened last week in Dogpatch, just steps from Halvorsen’s Foxtail Catering.

Carrie and Rupert met in the United Kingdom when he was working at Raymond Blanc’s Michelin two-starred Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons and she was an intern. They later moved to New York, where he worked at Michelin three-starred Per Se and she to Michelin-starred Blue Hill, before heading to the Bay Area.

Wolfsbane is named for a wild plant in ancient folklore that was believed to help prevent werewolves from shape-shifting. To lean into the theme, which at the restaurant is more about offering comfort, there’s a wolf’s head art piece on the wall.

The dining room has a cool industrial vibe with soaring ceilings with exposed pipes, plus towering pillars of unfinished cement.

The restaurant serves a 9-course tasting menu that’s $248 or $383 with wine pairings. Plans also call for an a la carte menu to be available at the bar.

“Rupert always wanted to do a tasting menu,” Carrie told me last Tuesday night, when I was invited in as a guest to experience the new restaurant. “But Lord Stanley was more of a neighborhood location.”

Even so, you’ll find homages to Lord Stanley in several of the dishes.

That includes the opening salvo, a tableau of canapes that features a riff on Lord Stanley’s signature onion petals with a cippolini onion separated into delicate, translucent layers, then blanched and topped with black garlic and purple onion blossoms. Chilled, sweet, and slightly crisp, it makes a star out of one of the most humble of ingredients.

Cod skin, as crisp and airy as a prawn chip, is the perfect vehicle to dredge through whipped brandade with trout roe. Enoki gets fried tempura-style and seasoned with warm curry spices. A paper-thin slice of potato gets fried, then stuffed with fresh leaves and herbs, to dunk into house-made yogurt. The taste is like of your favorite chips and dip, albeit with a dash of fennel.

The artichoke sunflower wins the prize for most photogenic. Tucked in among real flowers, this artichoke heart is adorned with edible petals and a creamy center of toasted seed butter covered in poppy seeds.

The next course handily makes use of an ice making company that’s a neighbor in the same building by presenting an oyster on a custom brick of ice that gets topped with apple, fennel, hazelnut, and the heat of mustard. The dish is usually also served with chilled razor clam and mussel. Owing to my allergy to the latter two, I received instead a sliver of baby fennel dressed with fennel oil, and an avocado slice finished with fennel pollen.

Lord Stanley’s buttermilk cabbage dish with sea urchin “bottarga” reappears here, showcasing crisp-tender leaves that have been luxuriously butter-poached. The shaved, dried,, preserved urchin adds a briny touch. To give even greater presence to this dish, you’re asked to choose your own chopstick holder beforehand, which may not be a necessary touch, but it’s a fun one.

The last of the season tomatoes is spotlighted in a compressed slice done up with pickled rose petals, and served with burrata finished with smoky peppers. After you’re done, enjoy the small glass of peppery tomato water that has been garnished with olive oil in a clever way to mimic the starburst center of a fresh tomato.

Striped bass, with crispy skin and moist flesh, gets an unexpected accent of vanilla. It’s not cloying or overpowering, but plays up the creamy nature of celery root puree.

Lobster follows, served two ways: The claw is fried and drizzled with an espelette sauce. Fold it up into a red lettuce leaf with shiso, and enjoy it Asian-style. The lobster tail, on the other hand, is full-on Spanish, served napped in a creamy, concentrated lobster bisque seasoned with more espelette. A roasted red pepper hides a tender slice of potato inside.

Another hidden treat arrives in the next dish — a fig grilled in its own leaf, rendering it smoky, jammy, and juicy that garnishes a succulent Liberty Farms duck breast that was aged for 2 weeks.

It’s accompanied by pain au jus, inspired by the staff’s late-night treat of bread that’s dipped into all the pan juices at the end of service. I’m so glad they thought to share it with their diners, too, because it’s irresistible. A baton of sourdough gets slathered with cultured butter, then grilled until crispy all over, before getting soaked in the cocoa-juniper sauce for the duck, as well as the duck juices. It’s rich, fatty, and meaty tasting — a guilty treat at its finest.

The palate cleanser is a sno-ball or a shave ice treat fashioned into a small sphere. Icy and granular, it’s both floral and astringent from oolong tea. Tiny bits of pluot lend sweetness and brightness.

Dessert is the equivalent of an adult fruit salad, made a little boozy with Muscadet gel. Dig around underneath the lacy caramel sesame tuille to find blackberries, strawberry gelee, and teeny mochi pieces for a light, refreshing repast.

Lastly, there are mignardises that include burnished caneles, malted chocolate truffles, beautifully layered pomegranate-chamomile jellies, and fantastic caramels with passion fruit centers.

The flavors at Wolfsbane aren’t ones that hit you boldly over the head,. Instead, following Turntable by Lord Stanley, the couple has shown a preference for the quieter and more subdued.