What it does have in common with Postrio is a highly developed sense of style, from the constantly changing menu to the elegant but not overdone design. The cafe and bar, a room of almost Japanese like simplicity with hardwood floors, features picture windows and a repeating tree-branch motif in wrought iron. In the rear is the more opulent main dining area, dominated by the requisite exhibition kitchen and a huge spray of flowers set on twin golden marble tables in the center of the room. The restaurant is Chez Panisse, and the Gingrasses have taken Waters' almost obsessive dedication to procuring the finest and freshest ingredients. The blending of these culinary and architectural styles produces astonishingly good results.
Salads are light and refreshing and celebrate the summer's bounty of vegetables and produce.
But if Hawthorne Lane shines at lunch, at dinner it sparkles with diamond like-brilliance. I mean that literally. Lobster gets a more complex but no less delightful treatment. Foie gras, the land based equivalent to lobster, is prepared just as elegantly. It is paired with a caramelized chopped onions and thumb-sized onions stuffed with more foie gras, herbs and bread crumbs.