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The Progress is the family-style companion to State Bird Provisions, and shares the same foundation: deep relationships with California farmers, whole-ingredient discipline, and a belief that great cooking starts long before anything reaches the kitchen. Created by Chef Stuart Brioza and pastry chef and co-owner Nicole Krasinski, it occupies a warm, two-story space of wood, stone, and tile on Fillmore Street, with skylights and greenery throughout. Dishes are designed for sharing. The menu is designed around what Northern California is actually producing at its best.
The Sustainability Print:
Whole-Ingredient Philosophy:
The kitchen operates with a “whole animal, whole vegetable” discipline, using fermentation, curing, smoking, and preservation to ensure that every part of a seasonal ingredient finds its purpose. Peak-summer produce is preserved and fermented, allowing those flavors to carry through winter without reliance on long-haul imports.
Named Farm Partnerships:
Sourcing is grounded in specific, long-term relationships. Yerena Farms strawberries appear on the menu by name. Liberty Farms duck is a signature centerpiece dish. These are not generic local sourcing claims. They are traceable, named commitments to specific farms and ranchers.
Traditional Techniques as Sustainability:
The kitchen’s reliance on smoke, fire, fermentation, and curing extends the life of seasonal ingredients naturally, reducing the need for energy-intensive freezing or chemical preservation. Old techniques in service of a lower-footprint kitchen.
Sharing Format Reduces Waste:
The family-style, large-format platter approach means fewer individual preparations, less single-use dishware per person, and a dining culture built around communal abundance rather than individual consumption.
Low-Intervention Beverage Program:
The wine list supports small-batch, low-intervention West Coast producers. The cocktail program draws on regional ingredients and seasonal produce, consistent with the kitchen’s sourcing ethos.
The Progress holds a Michelin star and earns it through the quality of its sourcing as much as the skill of its cooking. Stuart Brioza and Nicole Krasinski built a restaurant where the California landscape is the menu — where Yerena Farms strawberries appear by name in a burrata dish, where a Liberty Farms duck becomes a show-stopping centerpiece, and where preservation and fermentation mean the season is never truly over. The sharing format, the named farms, the whole-ingredient kitchen discipline: for Tinġo, The Progress represents Michelin-level sustainability done with the same seriousness as Michelin-level cooking.
