Think soul food, and certain things come to mind: smothered pork chops, fried chicken, and shrimp and grits, served in big portions at small prices. Burdell isn’t that, nor is it trying to be, says owner Geoff Davis, who in the fall debuted his fine-dining take on Black soul food in Oakland’s Temescal district. Instead, Davis takes his culinary cues from an older generation—specifically, his grandparents, who would cook seasonal, scratch-made meals for him growing up in Modesto.

“I have so many memories of having Sunday dinner with both sets [of grandparents] and at holidays,” he says. “My maternal grandmother’s brother had a farm in New Jersey, and she was really passionate about produce. My other grandfather was from Georgia, and his memories are of hunting with his father and going fishing at the local watering hole. They ate off the land. I think most people don’t think about Black food in that context.”

Fried chicken, Davis points out, used to be eaten a few times a year for special occasions, not as a dietary staple. He remembers his grandmother’s meals as being mostly vegetable- and legume-based with smaller amounts of meat for flavor. It’s this ethos that informs his menu, where chicory salad shares equal billing with shrimp, mushroom dirty rice with pork neck.

“I try to cook from memory as much as possible,” he says. “What’s in season right now, how can we highlight it, and how my grandmother would cook it.”

This feeling of nostalgia extends into the dining room. Located in the former Aunt Mary’s Cafe space on Telegraph Avenue, Burdell is a beauty, dripping with evocative sepia tones, soul tunes, and decor—patterned Corelle plates, black-and-white family portraits, an old vintage stove—that makes it seem lifted from an old photograph from Davis’s childhood.

Another warning for those expecting typical down-home soul fare: The menu at the eatery reflects equally as much the chef’s pedigree as a Culinary Institute of America graduate and his experience at high-end Michelin-starred restaurants such as Aqua, Cyrus, and True Laurel.

Davis deconstructs fried chicken and waffles, for example, making his own chicken liver mousse, topping it with crispy chicken skin, shallots, and maple vinaigrette, and placing it just so next to half a cornmeal waffle.

For the New Orleans–inspired barbecue shrimp, meanwhile, he peels and brines the shrimp and cooks them in butter, preserving the shells to make a sauce that incorporates Vietnamese dried shrimp, fish sauce, and white pepper, plus green pepper, leeks, celery, tomato paste, homemade fermented hot sauce, lemon, and Worcestershire sauce. He describes his approach as “doubling down” on a classic dish, and we adored it, devouring the exquisite shrimp and greedily mopping up the intensely succulent sauce with accompanying strips of griddled pain de mie bread.

As the previous dishes suggest, the restaurant’s fare can be cerebral, even conceptual, but it can also be simple in the Chez Panisse mold. An ample cut of perfectly roasted Klingeman Family Farms pork neck was rich, fatty, and satisfying in a way that reminded me of prime rib. It’s served austerely with cubed squash, a few wisps of citrusy mustard greens, a light mustard seed jus, and a dollop of apple butter—perhaps a nod to the comfort food combo of pork chops and applesauce. It’s a beautiful cut of meat—I finished every bite—but it did leave me craving a robust starch or green.

For that, you have to go to the sides section of the menu. We ordered two, and unfortunately the first, the cheesy grits, arrived swimming in so much (homemade) butter as to leave them almost inedible.

Fortunately, the collard greens saved the day. Slow cooked with smoked ham hock, they presented an ideal vinegary, meaty balance without being overcooked or greasy, as can be the case.

As perhaps may be inevitable when interpreting comfort food into finer dining, things can get lost in translation. Our chicken entrée was nicely prepared and presented, draped with sautéed spinach and dotted with chanterelles, but a restrained au jus and tiny gnocchi-size spinach “dumplings” did little to boost the pasture-raised bird’s inherently lean flavor. The prices might also cause sticker shock for some, with most entrées in the $30 range and occasionally topping $40.

The key, as with the majority of restaurant experiences, is to manage expectations. If you’re looking for a higher-end meal with an interesting—often beautiful—Black historical lens, then you’ll enjoy it. If you’re looking for a rib-busting soul food fix, then not so much.

For his part, Davis is aiming to bridge that gap with plans to launch a take-out program, Church’s Plate, with more affordable and straightforward items like oxtail and fried black cod served with a choice of sides. The inspiration, of course, stems from his grandparents.

“I wanted it to be the same kind of energy as what we would get after going to church with my grandmother,” Davis says. “They’d be selling these plates of food—meat and threes—where you’d have to take your tie off so it wouldn’t get stained. It was a chance to eat some really hearty food after sitting in church for three hours.” burdell​oakland.com.