SAN FRANCISCO

• Waterside surprise. When the Embarcadero redesign is finished in the year 2000, a super new restaurant will be part of the package. Possible players include Reed Hearon of Rose Pistola, David Gingrass of Hawthorne Lane, Jeffrey Pollack of Julius Castle, Luis Sanchez of Andale Taqueria, Larry Mindel of Il Fornaio, Peter Nicholas of Los Angeles's Fish Market Restaurants, and Larry Shane of Gibson Steak House in Chicago.

• The Mindels, meanwhile, are getting ready to open Canaletto next spring in the new Venetian hotel and casino in Las Vegas. The 9,000-square-foot restaurant will serve fresh seafood and Venetian specialties under Il Fornaio executive chef Maurizio Mazzon, a Venetian.

• Changes are afoot on Cyril Magnin Street.

• At press time, the talented and iconoclastic Elka Gilmore, formerly of Liberté, Elka (both in San Francisco) and (briefly) Kokachin in New York City, was scheduled to open her new restaurant, Oodles, in mid-October. The restaurant is on Bush Street.

• Peter Eng has transformed his Nanbantei from a yakitori restaurant into Hana Zen, a full-scope Japanese eatery offering 246 menu items and 20 imported sakes.

• In Oakland, Bay Wolf chef/owner Michael Wild capped off his restaurant's fifth annual Pinot Noir dinner by planting three Pinot vines on his busy stretch of Piedmont Avenue. Assisting him was winemaker Jim Clendenen of Au Bon Climat, one of the country's premier Pinot producers.

• Real Beer Inc. has named Stan Hieronymus editor of Real Beer, its Web-based beer publication. Hieronymus, who with his wife, Daria Labinsky, wrote The Beer Travelers Guide and The Brewpub Cookbook, will serve a readership of 200,000.