Flora, Uptown, Oakland, CA.

Chicken, mortadella, and pancetta tortellini in brodo
Salumi plate (shared)
Steelhead with bacon, green salsa, and pureed celery root
Flora Martini
Caramel pudding with sea salt, whipped cream, and a rosemary pine nut cookie (shared)

I’ve tried very hard to like Flora, with its impossibly high ceiling, shelves of liquor bathed in warm amber light, and nicely appointed art deco interior. I’ve tried so hard that I’ve eaten there three times before writing this. Each time my conclusion has remained unchanged: Flora is a beautiful space that fails to live up to its potential. To get a preview, you can peek at B’s musings, here. (I’m the “friend” quoted.) Granted, they haven’t been open very long, so perhaps all of our complaints should be taken as “opportunities for improvement” rather than condemnations.

What I do like about Flora: sauntering up to the nearly empty bar (on a weekday) and enjoying its expansiveness with a well-made Flora Martini, composed with Plymouth gin and a rinse of imported elderflower syrup. What I don’t like about Flora: the appalling inconsistency between bartenders (ask me which ones to order drinks from), the ambitious but mediocre food, the downright abysmal service.

Regardless, I sipped my martini. It was good, somewhere in between the first Flora Martini I’d ever had (fantastic) and the second (crap). And I waited. And waited. And waited… until, due to the server’s error, all of our courses arrived at the same time. Sigh. No, I know it is not too much to expect a bartender to know about proper timing for food; this is where Wood Tavern shines. He also didn’t know what was on the salumi plate — prosciutto (razor-thin salty porky goodness, but no better than anywhere else), soppressata (delicious and peppery, my favorite), and “other” — nor did he bother to ask the kitchen what “other” was! I suppose it didn’t matter; it was dried out and sliced too thickly, anyhow. I avoided the candied chiles and overly sour cornichons, although the accompanying drizzle of honey was a nice touch.

You know how Marco Polo stole noodles from the Chinese and brought pasta back to Italy? Imagine if he did that with your average Chinatown won ton soup: an Italianate version of savory meat stuffed into slightly tough outer skins in an adequate but unremarkable chicken broth. This was Flora’s tortellini in brodo. It was a pale spectre compared to the stuffed pasta in brodo at Incanto, which benefits from the ethereal lightness of their pasta and the unmatchable richness of duck brodo.

I’ve waxed poetic on steelhead, one of my favorite fishes, so it’s no surprise that I immediately ordered it as my entree. It was cooked a little more that I like (which is to say, barely), but acceptable. However, the “green salsa” was more akin to a garlicky cilantro-parsley pesto, overpowering the delicate steelhead flavor by leaps and bounds. A waste of fish — dump the “salsa” atop something straightforward like salmon, please, and leave steelhead to those who know how to handle it, like Sea Salt! Given all of that, do I even need to mention the strangely gummy celery root puree which flanked it like a lifeless lump?

I must say that dessert was my favorite course of all, though still a little perplexing. I didn’t really like the dueling creamy textures of whipped cream AND pudding, so I avoided the whipped cream altogether. The rosemary pine nut cookie was good and the pudding was silky smooth with a pleasing caramel flavor, but soon, I was getting bored.

“Wait, where’s the sea salt? They need to add more, or use larger granules. I don’t taste it at all.”

Then we realized — it was IN the whipped cream! Bizarre, though it convinced me not to leave the whipped cream untouched, which would have been utter tragedy.

I can’t remember how much I paid for two. I’ve probably forgotten on purpose because it far outpaced the quality of the food. Needless to say, I’ll probably stick to drinks if I return, keeping a careful eye on which bartenders are present.
–

P.S. – If you want the world’s most perfect, meticulously made, well-balanced martini (with commensurate pricing) and have a thick skin for pretentiousness, order one at Bourbon and Branch.

2007.11.02.

Wood Tavern, Rockridge, Oakland, CA

The menu, reconstructed as best I can from memory and http://woodtavern.net/:
(There may be variations in the accoutrements as the menu is not quite up to date)

Crispy Pork Belly (soft boiled egg, frisee, something I’m missing, vinaigrette)
Chopped Romaine Salad (spinach, cucumbers, olives, feta cheese, vinaigrette)
Pan Roasted Half Chicken (fingerling potatoes, grilled radicchio, bread crumbs, lemon-rosemary jus)
Glass of Dolcetto d’Alba (Paolo Scavino, 2005)
Honey Panna Cotta (orange, nut brittle)
Espresso

I felt terribly over-hip walking into Wood Tavern in my (yes, sue me) $200 jeans with Murakami tucked under my arm, but so be it. I LOVE this place from the outset: high, wood-beamed ceilings; minimal, if vaguely gothic decor; wall of wine bottles; indistinct jazz, unintelligible over the infernal racket — perfect, comfortable white noise into which a solo diner can disappear at the cozy bar. And, yes, it is QUITE loud. I should ease up on the Dolcetto if I am to be coherent enough to taste the food, but its light simplicity makes it go down far too easily.

I receive possibly the warmest reception a lonely eater could get: confiding with the maitre d’; sipping a promptly fetched glass of wine; coyly cajoling the server who approached me into revealing his favorites, with a slant toward my presently cholesterol-laden food preferences.

“This is decadent,” he declares as he sets forth what you’d think was a modest morsel of pork belly. Well, the featherweight crispiness against warm belly fat had my Peking-duck-eating-Asian-ass exalting in the praises of epidermis (or maybe, crust), with just enough tart-vinegar frisee as a foil to appease my former-vegetarian inclinations. The meltingly creamy pork fat and granularly creamy, barely soft-boiled egg compliment each other in creamy ways I’d never creamily imagined.

Though adequate, I wish my bread and butter had a dish of salt to accompany it. My (also solo, novel-reading, happily-pork-belly-eating) neighbor fiddles with his iPhone.

The salad is blindingly green, with little color contrast from lettuce and cucumbers, but lemony fresh and brightened with oregano, a well-suited palate cleanser between my slabs of meat. Two olives grace the simple ceramic bowl as consolation for $8 of rabbit food. Aptly timed, properly seasoned, creamy-feta-garnished rabbit food.

A break, then ON TO MORE MEAT. I watch the man who serves me (that has a certain ring to it) muddling mint into what is most likely a mojito and I feel nothing but pity.

Soon after, he presents a quite large portion of chicken, dusted with a gloriously even coating of crumbs that would please even an obsessive-compulsive like me. Affronted by my last chicken experience (a smoked half at T-Rex, after which I sent the ample leftovers home with someone else), I am comforted when my first forkful falls gracefully from the carcass as if it were perforated. Reluctantly, in a guise of healthfulness, I work my way under the golden skin, almost a gratuitous gesture given the uniform moistness of the flesh. The jus, too bitterly bracing by itself, is well paired with the chicken’s mildness. The hearty greens and rosemary-imbued potatoes are unadventurous but appropriately traditional. I dismember the ill-fated bird with a surprising and thorough fervor usually reserved for cows.

The panna cotta is remarkably similar in description and quiveriness to the last panna cotta I’d ordered, but actually waxes more toward almond. Fine with me, though no cartoon apiary dances in circles about my head this time. The only misstep of the evening occurs when my espresso arrives and the demitasse burns my lip! Too hot, a crime in my opinion, and sadly requiring a sugarcube to ease the pain. (While I stall, an ever-attentive server asks if my espresso has perhaps gotten too cool and I would like another. I decline.) The espresso, courtesy of Cole Coffee, has a charcoaly but somehow not unpleasant flavor after the (almost unheard-of) sugarcube. Given a friend’s raves about Cole Coffee, I will give them the benefit of the doubt that maybe they pulled a bad shot. Redemption is still possible; try, try again.

After my tab is quietly placed in front of me, I immediately beckon the server. Smiles dismissively: “Just sign it!” I stare in disbelief.

I left a 50% tip.

Let’s just say that after the tip I still paid less than I did at A16, yet had considerably more fun. Maybe I SHOULD eat alone more often, though I’m beginning to feel much more conspicuous with paperbacks than with a camera. This is my new East Bay price/performance favorite, toppling the still-arguably-more-economical Dopo, IF you can manage to squeeze yourself in. Next time, remind me that this is a TAVERN and I should get the Woodford Reserve Manhattan.