because, really, i’m too tired after a night of climbing and am just recording this menu for memory’s sake.

beretta, mission district, san francisco, ca.

warm marinated cerignola olives with citrus
gnocchi with fresh porcini and guanciale
a bunch of pizzette:
+ margherita with burrata
+ prosciutto di parma, tomato, arugula & mozzarella
+ radicchio, escarole, robiola & pancetta tesa
+ baccala’, potato, panna, onions & capers
vanilla gelato affogato with barolo
nuestra paloma (tequila, elderflower, cointreau, grapefruit, bitters)

i glanced at the menu.

“this is my new favorite restaurant ever,” i declared.
“but you haven’t even tried it yet!”

i suppose this suggests something about the selection of food at beretta. it is definitely a place to go with a group of friends to indulge in a pizza each and a generous array of antipasti, because you will want to try everything. i surely plan to do so in the next… oh… month. fortnight. week.

i think there was some mention of a cocktail menu designed by someone from bourbon and branch, a wine list selected by someone from delfina, and pizzas devised by some other name-brand character, but who cares? my cocktail was impeccable, the olives were warm and buttery, the gnocchi was transcendental, and the pizzas left me adrift upon thin-crusted bliss, each of them flavorful and unique. the fact that they are open until 1 am (did you hear that, san francisco? NIGHT LIFE) made up for the service, or lack thereof.

i apologize for lackluster descriptions, but i think i’ve discovered happiness. find me at beretta if you want to discuss it.

(a hearty shout goes out to david giusti for suggesting this restaurant. you are also my new best friend.)

Riva Cucina, West Berkeley, Berkeley, CA.

CAPESANTE GRATINATE (Herb and breadcrumb crusted fresh sea scallops baked in shell, organic mixed greens, lemon condimento)
INSALATA DI FARRO (Organic Italian barley, mizuna lettuce, shaved fennel, and blood orange segments, shaved Parmigiano, lemon condimento)
GNOCCHI ALL’AGNELLO (Potato dumplings with slowly braised lamb shank, diced vegetables, herbs, tomato and cabernet, pecorino Toscano)
SCALOPPE AI FUNGHI (Niman Ranch pork loin scaloppini with porcini and crimini mushrooms, mashed potato)
Glass of 2005 Falesco Vitiano

While full, I’m disappointed, and unfortunately, it’s $88 disappointed. I’m always on the lookout for Italinate restaurants in the East Bay because there are so few of excellent quality without a ridiculous wait. Lured by seafood, pasta, and seemingly reasonable prices (especially after a $18! pasta at Venezia), I dragged a friend out to West Berkeley in the pouring rain, hoping for a hidden gem. What we got instead was an unexceptional meal in a huge warehouse conversion that had the appearance of trendy coffee shop crossbred with a perplexingly upscale high school cafeteria, decorated by someone nursing an incoherent addiction to the Crate and Barrel outlet. Giant renaissance-modern light fixture in the corner, while the rest of us have to make do with the ambient sodium-vapor from outside? Floor-length maroon velvet curtains bisecting the dining room? A wall of photographs: portrait, landscape, random bookcase, portrait, landscape? I don’t understand!

My companion’s Insalata di Farro was an exercise in disjointness: while the mizuna had a lovely flavor, encountering overly thick “shavings” of fennel and large segments of tart blood orange were startling. “And there’s not enough farro,” he complained. The sea scallops in the Capesante Gratinate were fantastic: creamy-fresh and just barely baked until tender with a light dusting of breadcrumbs that enhanced but didn’t overpower their delicate sweetness. The mixed greens were less impressive, a standard combination of lettuces dressed with condimento with the overbearing taste of olives rather than lemon, which would have better suited the scallops.

Unfortunately, our main courses didn’t redeem the unevenness of the starters. The gnocchi all’agnello were rather firm and grainy, much like the vacuum-sealed gnocchi you can buy at any high-end grocery store. The sugo-style sauce, while benefiting from the richness of lamb, was one-dimensional, its “diced vegetables and herbs” invisible among salt and meat; I couldn’t shake the feeling that I could prepare this dish for half as much myself. My friend’s pork loin scaloppini and mashed potato tasted like… meat and potatoes. The straightforward, if boring, breaded pork was adequate but again lacked any specialness that comes from having someone else cook for you. The mushrooms provided the only source of distinct flavor. Unsurprisingly, my glass of wine tasted like an inexpensive Italian red blend, unremarkable and marked up far too much given the price for a bottle at my local BevMo.

Riva isn’t a destination restaurant by any means, but I might return again if I have an impatient hankering for bolognese. After all, the place was only about 25% full. I’d certainly head here before trying Venezia again.

(Recent history, for reference: the best use of mushrooms, the crimini demi-glace atop the hangar steak at Sauce; the best salad incorporating grain, the seared scallop/bacon/couscous/frisee perfection at the unstoppable Wood Tavern.)

2007.11.05.

Dopo, Piedmont Ave., Oakland, CA

Cicerchie bean and kale soup
Tuna (crudo) with navel orange, meyer lemon, olives, and onion
Tagliatelle with porcini, pancetta, and gremolada
Glass of Cabernet/Sangiovese blend
Lemon ricotta zeppole
Macchiato
(and a sad lack of notebook. I didn’t do the usual and steal menus, either.)

I don’t NEED to order three courses and dessert, I thought to myself. But I seem to have developed this pattern. I perplexed the server when I listed my courses and then asked for a red wine suggestion. I probably should have gone with my usual Dolcetto but instead went for a poorly matched but tasty (and unfortunately unidentified) Cabernet/Sangiovese blend.

It was freezing (for the Bay Area, at least) when I stepped out and I was still shivering when I arrived, so I ordered soup. Simple, salty, heartily Italian, and fulfilling the greens quota, it suited its purpose. I stopped shivering enough to remove my coat and turn the pages of my novel without shaking. Wish I had received bread and butter, which never arrived.

Avid sashimi fan that I am, I’m still having difficulty in being convinced that Italian crudo is the best use of (tasty, tasty, rapidly depleting but oh-so-good) fanatically fresh seafood. I started on the tuna, frowned, and instead ate all the orange slices, which were overpowering everything. The velvety tuna, bittersweet meyer lemon rind, and salty olive nubs were a nice, clean but ultimately unimpressive dish. I’ve definitely had better crudo at Dopo (see the glorious salmon from a few months ago), and it’s disappointing that tuna was demoted to the level of intermediary palate cleanser that only lettuce deserves.

Then, almost as expected, I had a really long wait. Two chapters worth — even short, non-sequitur Murakami chapters — would be unacceptable anywhere else. It’s amazing how consistently slow the service is, nearly a year (?) after their expansion. But after long last, my tagliatelle arrived, and balance was restored in the world. THIS is why I come here. Fresh pasta, bashfully beginning to adhere to itself in spite of the nearly invisible cream sauce, interspersed with tender but toothsome porcini, dotted with pancetta, spiked with lemony gremolada. Simple, warm, and with a flavor profile that I can’t quite verbalize, but is distinctly Dopo.

“What are zeppole?” I asked.  She replied, “They’re like beignets, with lemon ricotta in the batter.” Who can go wrong with anything beignet-like? The batter was perfect and not quite sweet, the outside crispy and coated in powdered sugar. The macchiato was, well, a macchiato (courtesy of Ecco Caffe). This would be a perfect pair for breakfast if I were a glutton. Er, wait….

I got out of there for $65. They must have raised their prices a little, or perhaps I’m just becoming MORE gluttonous. O, Dopo, I’m glad you’re still delicious and slightly unkempt, imperfect but thankfully ever-present, like a frumpy ex-boyfriend whom you adore but still secretly smirk at for being single. Maybe I should go back tonight and get pizza.

With all due respect to Carla Bley, straight from the depths of my plainly-wrapped notebook comes the first installment of Dining Alone.

(from 2007.10.22)

A16, Marina District, San Francisco, CA

The menu, reconstructed as best I can from their website at http://a16sf.com/:

Tuna conserva with dried favas, braised dandelion greens and house-made croccantini
Ricotta gnocchi in brodo with chanterelles, guanciale, nepitella and black pepper
Monday meatballs
Glass of “Terenzi” (probably Cesanese, 2004?)
Cornflour cake with honey panna cotta and pears
Macchiato

There are multiple benefits to dining at the bar when at A16: first, watching the mysterious flickering of pizzas from within the wood fire oven; the catcalls of “chicory! chard! meatballs;” but most of all, being quite literally above the din of other diners and the occasional wailing child, although such may be a kind of oblivion induced by my fascination with the intricate choreography of the kitchen directly in front of me. At first, the heat of the cavernous oven is stifling, but after removing my coat I bask in its warmth, or perhaps that of the glass of Terenzi I am clutching. (To the server: “you had me at ‘white pepper.’” This did me in, as did watching the meatballs simmering in their glorious broth of tomato and basil, which convinced me not to make a dinner of one of their well-loved pizzas.)

I thought the tuna starter a little bland, noting that it could use a dose of salt, perhaps olive oil. Then I realized I had both at my disposal! With a drizzle and a sprinkle, the bitterness of the dandelion greens and the slight sweetness of the tuna sang against the creamy backdrop of dried favas. Simple mistake, easily rectified by me, but also easily rectified by a restaurant which received a nod (though not a star) from Michelin.

The gnocchi came accompanied with pleasantly firm and earthy chanterelles and one of many forms of Italian bacon, a happy family. While the potato pillows struck a great balance between dense and fluffy, they were not as smooth as the gnocchi perfection last embodied at Incanto. The (Monday special) meatballs were every bit as good as I’d heard, and I’m not even a huge fan of meatballs: soft and buttery as some lonely infant animal’s liver, but much better in taste and texture (sorry, not a liver fan), while delicately but fragrantly spiced as any proper adult pig should be.

As for dessert, which I can never resist, the pears were unremarkable and could have been Del Monte, for all I could tell. The corn cake was just a really good, moist (and Italian) rendition of sweet cornbread. But in the presence of the honey panna cotta, lightly sweet and barely and unbelievably holding solid, I quivered as if I were its mirror image, its flavor conjuring spontaneous hallucinations of clover fields and overly enthusiastic pollinating insects. The macchiato was strong, darker than I’m used to — some Blue Bottle espresso blend (of course, being in San Francisco) — and competently made, its sharpness tempered by the nut brittle they so kindly provided.

I’m utterly stuffed and $77 poorer, but happy and off to see Oliver Sacks, at a nice $100 figure for the evening.