Pork Night at Oliveto
Written: Mar 29 '06 (Updated Nov 05 '06)
|
Product Rating:
|
|
| Food and Presentation: |
 |
|
| Ambiance and Decor: |
 |
|
| Quality of Service: |
 |
|
|
Pros: Excellent fare
Cons: Often very loud, not cheap, excessive corkage
The Bottom Line: Definitely an east bay heavyweight in the fine dining world.
|
|
|
| lyagushka's Full Review: Oliveto |
I've intended to write a review of Oliveto for some years now. While living in Europe, Oliveto was one of the restaurants we would consistently try to fit in to our schedule whenever we made a trip back to the bay area. It's long been one of our special occasion dinner venues. The restaurant is situated prominently above Market Hall in north Oakland's fashionable Rockridge neighborhood. A very quick stroll from the BART station, it's convenient for those who don't want to drive to dinner.
Once listed among the five best Italian restaurants in the US by Wine Spectator magazine, Oliveto has a solid reputation for good food and an impressive wine selection. It also has its detractors, and part of me can understand why. In many ways, Oliveto compares well with Boulevard in San Francisco. But in other ways, it doesn't. Boulevard gets absolute top marks from me in every category a restaurant can be judged by. Oliveto falls just a hair shy of Boulevard in terms of the quality of food they serve. But in terms of decor and service, Oliveto gets four stars where Boulevard gets solid fives. Portions are Euro-sized, and a meal at Oliveto doesn't come cheap. So I can understand the criticisms leveled at this restaurant. All I can say is that every time I eat there, the food is superb. In particular, I've never had pasta as good as that served at Oliveto outside of Italy. Whenever I talk to someone who doesn't like Oliveto, I ask them if they tried the pasta. The answer is usually no.
A while ago I heard about the Whole Hog week that Oliveto celebrates yearly. I was surprised because I'd never heard of this event, and excited because I knew it would be a snap to interest my porkophilic husband in a meal at the event. As it turned out, even calling two weeks ahead of the pork nights, we were able to get only a late seating at the bar on a Tuesday. We didn't really mind, because in our experience the bar is actually one of the quietest parts of the restaurant, and a fun place to sit and watch the chefs do their thing.
Service was a little less formal at the bar than at a table but was still courteous and more than adequate. Our water glasses were always kept topped up, and all of our questions about the menu were answered in detail. There's a large open wood-fired oven just behind the bar, and we get to see the whirling meats (all pork of course) on the rotisserie above the flames. I felt that my husband's attention was somewhat inappropriately placed when I was seated between him and the rotisserie.
The menu choices for the Whole Hog fest were extensive, and all included some pork. Not a good time for vegetarians, nor observant Muslims, Jews, or Hindus. It took us a while to decide what to order, because just about everything sounded good. The antipasti choices were divided into three groups: potted & formed pork, dry-cured salumi, and offal & end cuts. These were priced from $8.50 to $32 for platters to serve four people. The soup and pasta section offered six choices, priced from $8 to $16.50. The main courses were all based on slabs of pork, ranging from a charcoal-grilled cipollata (sausage) with shoestring potatoes and bagnets, at $21, to a $50 pork bacon chop with fava bean puree and salsa rustica (sized to share). Five vegetable sides were priced from $4.50 to $8.50.
We chose the pennone pasta with Calabrese sausage for me ($14.50), the gnocchi del Cosentino with little pork meatballs for him ($16.50), the spit-roasted fresh ham with Marsala mushroom sauce ($26), and a side of garden lettuces to share ($8.50). Our neighbors to our right had ordered the manhole-cover sized pork chop (for sharing). Everything on the menu had sounded good to us, and that pork chop looked astounding. We ogled it shamelessly. It could easily have been shared by four people. In the meantime, we nibbled on the complimentary olives, bread and butter that were set out for us.
Another advantage of sitting at the bar is that you get to eavesdrop on the chef and other employees as they schmooze and greet the regulars as they come in. "I think we still have one of those [pork chops] for you, Bruce." Is that the Bruce I think it is? I asked. Sure enough, Bruce Aidell, founder of Aidell's sausage company and husband to Nancy Oakes, executive chef at Boulevard, had just waltzed into the restaurant. Detractors can say what they like about Oliveto, but if Nancy Oakes' husband wants to eat at a restaurant, then I want to eat there too.
Soon our food began to arrive. The spinach gnocchi with little meatballs that my husband ordered were mind-blowingly good, and the pennone with sausage that I ordered were pretty darn tasty too. The accompanying sausage in my dish turned out to be something like pork merguez. These spicy little links were perfectly tender and exuded a rich red oil that coated the long pasta tubes wonderfully. Oliveto always prepares pasta exceptionally well, in my experience. Far too few restaurants can manage to consistently turn out well cooked pasta that still has some bite left in it. Pasta at Oliveto is always cooked precisely to the level of doneness that I prefer. The cabernet sauvignon my husband ordered went down very well and paired nicely with the pork-centric menu. The green salad I ordered also had a particularly acidic vinaigrette, which helped balance the richness of our other dishes. This kind of attention to detail - an extra-tart vinaigrette to go with a meaty menu - is one of the hallmarks of excellence that I've come to expect from Oliveto. The fresh ham arrived thinly sliced, fork tender and dressed with just enough sauce to compliment the flavor of the meat without detracting attention from it.
We polished off every morsel of food placed before us. And we still felt we had enough room for dessert. We weren't interested in the bacon ice cream, but the fregolotta on the menu certainly caught our eye, reminding us of our visit to the Veneto. As it turned out, the recipe the pastry chef had used was from Emilia-Romagna, not the Veneto, so it was quite different from the fregolotta recipe I use. Paired with a lovely glass of Brachetto, the fregolotta was tasty. I think I prefer the oil and walnut version to the butter and cornmeal version from Emilia-Romagna, but it was still a nice finish to our evening. After dessert, we felt perfectly satisfied with our meal, but not as though we'd overeaten at all. Our total tab including a generous tip came to just under $110 for the two of us.
Prices at Oliveto are high, and the portions are usually modest. This runs directly counter to the American perception that you aren't getting value for your money unless you leave a restaurant feeling stuffed and clutching a burgeoning bag of leftovers (which will probably not appeal after being nuked the next day). Europeans, on the other hand, are quite willing to pay for the labor that goes into creating outstanding cuisine served in portions that don't contribute to morbid obesity and heart disease. Personally, I think $110 for a memorable meal for two is a reasonable indulgence from time to time.
One drawback to Oliveto is its high corkage fee of $18. I think this is steep enough to seem punitive, rather than just sufficient to cover labor costs and breakage risk. I respect a restaurant's need to make a profit, but I've always felt that excessive corkage fees are an unfriendly gesture towards paying customers. We've only once brought our own wine to Oliveto, and then it was definitely with the attitude that cost wasn't a factor for our special occasion meal.
So I would recommend Oliveto as a special occasion meal for those who enjoy fine dining and can afford to splurge for a moderately pricey meal. I highly recommend whatever pasta appears on the menu. If how much you get is more important to you than what it tastes like, I'd urge you to choose a different restaurant. I'd like to be able to rate this restaurant four and a half stars, or nine out of ten. My four-star rating reflects the overall package at Oliveto, but it would get a solid five stars from me for the quality of the food.
I can also recommend a meal at these restaurants:
East Bay
• A Coté - lively pan-Mediterranean tapas in a sleek but fun atmosphere
• Café Rouge - best choice for steak or high quality meats in the East Bay
• Cha-ya - vegetarian Japanese restaurant in the Gourmet Ghetto
• Chez Panisse Café - Alice Waters' sumptuous fare at about half the price
• Lalime's - superb New American fare in an intimate setting
• Manpuku - a cheap and simple ramen bar in the Elmwood
• Nan Yang - fantastic Burmese in north Rockridge
• Pho 84 - paradigm-shifting (really!) Vietnamese in downtown Oakland
• Rick & Ann's and La Note - both offer excellent choices for breakfast
• Shen Hua - great Chinese in Berkeley's Elmwood neighborhood
San Francisco
• Boulevard - hands down, the best restaurant in San Francisco
• Woodward's Garden, which is almost as good as Boulevard
• Betelnut - highly recommended for a fun night with a group
• Helmand - little known but excellent Afghan place and a great value
• Suppenkuche - unpretentious German bierhaus charm in Hayes Valley
On the other hand, I can't recommend Café Cacao, which is part of the Scharffen Berger chocolate empire, nor Pizzaiolo which features pretentious, outrageously priced pizza served by hipper-than-thou servers.
Recommended:
Yes
Kid Friendliness: No
Notes, Tips or Menu Recommendations Go for whatever pasta is being offered when you eat here, and consider the contorni also.
Best Suited For: Romantic Evening
|
|
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.