The staff at Il Cane Rosso inside San Francisco’s Ferry Building like to joke that they don’t have a real kitchen or dining room.

But what they’re able to create inside this tiny space that was once a takeout rotisserie is fairly miraculous. Cane Rosso’s open-face, warm egg salad sandwich with anchovy garlic butter is legendary. And its regular $25 three-course dinners have earned loyal fans.

Chef Lauren Kiino, who named the place after her three-legged rescue dog, Cody, opened the restaurant in 2009 in partnership with Chef Daniel Patterson of Coi in San Francisco. When that business relationship fizzled this year, Kiino took complete control of Cane Rosso.

She’s also been scouting locations in the Bay Area and Los Angeles to open another restaurant. Meantime, Cane Rosso has started doing a series of pop-up restaurants, in which the cooks borrow another establishment for a night to do a special prix fixe dinner. May 19 and May 20, they’ll be hosting one seating each night at 7 p.m. in honor of Mariquita Farm in Watsonville, which supplies a lot of Cane Rosso’s produce. Farm owner Andy Griffin will be on hand each night to talk about his farm as Kiino cooks up such dishes as crispy pork belly with Mariquita Farm roasted nettle and fregola salad. Crates of freshly picked strawberries will be available for purchase, too. The dinner, to be held at Coffee Bar in San Francisco, will feature four courses for $40, plus an additional $15 for wine pairings. To reserve a seat, email: info@canerossosf.com.

June 5 , Kiino will take over the Slow Club in San Francisco, for seatings at 6 p.m. and 8:15 p.m. The $55 three-course prix fixe (which includes cocktail pairings) will feature slow-cooked spring lamb with chicories and black olives. For reservations, email: info@canerossosf.com.

A couple of weeks ago, I had the pleasure of being invited as a guest of Cane Rosso to its first wine dinner. The dinner spotlighted Romililly Wines of the Russian River Valley, which was started in 2006 by brothers, Aaron and Jesse Inman. The duo leases land from their uncle, Joe Briggs, who started August Briggs winery in Calistoga, which makes a fabulous Pinot Meunier, which I fell in love with a few years ago.

The name, Romililly, is an amalgamation of the three siblings’ middle names, Jesse (Ro)bert, Aaron (Mi)chael and sister Susan Lilly, who’s still too young to drink legally. The dinner was a chance to taste the creations of newbie winemakers, including an earthy, leathery, rich 2009 Romililly Piinot Noir made from 40-year-old vines.

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Chef-Proprietor Josiah Slone carries many fine wines on his wine list at Sent Sovi in Saratoga.

But his unabashed favorites are definitely the ones by Varner, a boutique winery in Portola Valley. The winery, run by twin brothers, Bob and Jim Varner, specialize in Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. They are wines that marry well with Slone’s cooking, and the ones that he and his wife most like to kick back with in their down time.

I was lucky enough to sample the wines with Slone’s food when I was recently invited as a guest of the restaurant to a Varner wine dinner.

The first course was a refreshing cured artic char with the zing of preserved Meyer lemons from the chef’s backyard tree, which paired with the 2007 Varner “Home Block” Chardonnay. Slone made use of every bit of the rich fish, including frying the skin to make “chips” and scraping the flesh of the head to form a chopped fish salad of sorts.

That was followed by what was one of the juiciest white meat chicken dishes I’d had in a long time. Cooked “sous vide’’ to keep the bird moist, the chicken was accompanied by caramelized fennel and a dice of sweet, spicy pears, which picked up the lush, complex quality of the 2007 Neeley “Holly’s Cuvee” Chardonnay that’s also made by Varner.

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