Feelin’ Fancy?

It’s no secret that the Bay Area is blessed with many highly-rated, world-renown restaurants serving fantastic food without a lot of attitude.  To celebrate getting my cast off last month, I decided to treat myself to dinner at Rivoli, often rated as one of the best restaurants in the East Bay (aka Berkeley and Oakland).  It did not disappoint, rivaling my experience at Chez Panisse Cafe.  One bonus: relatively easy reservations.  One negative: walking in with friends M & K, we (median age = 35) were half the age of most of the diners in the restaurant.  Maybe it’s because we were there on a Sunday. Who knows? More importantly: who cares? This was one of the best all-around meals I’ve ever had.

View of the garden from the dining room at Rivoli. Quite charming!

To start: we ordered a bottle of rosé: Vin Gris of pinot noir by Robert Sinskey, Carneros 2008.  We went with this particular wine because M & K were fans of Sinskey wines.  It turned out to be a great choice — fruity, dry, and stood up well against most of the food.

"Artistic" photo of the cork on the cork dish. Cuz I'm artsy fartsy and stuff.

Took a photo of the wine, in case I forgot... typical after a few glasses!

For appetizers, we shared two dishes. First, we had the Bellwether Farm ricotta gnocchi with roast pear, fig marmalata, toasted walnuts and fried sage.

Ginormous gnocchi. Not as big as my head though.

The gnocchi were the biggest gnocchi I’ve ever seen, and had a smooth velvety texture.  They were really really good. However. Not to be gauche, but for $13.95 I better get some mind-blowingly awesome gnocchi.  Either that, or serve me more than 3 pieces. This was the only “disappointing” dish the whole meal, and it wasn’t even that disappointing.

Balancing out the minor disappointment was the highlight of the meal (also, one of Rivoli’s signature dishes): portabella mushroom fritters with aïoli, parmesan, arugula and caper vinaigrette. OH MY GOD. This was heavenly… so much so, that I kept raving about them for a full 72 hours afterward.  Perfection. That is all.

You cannot even perceive from this photo how divine the portabella fritters were. Amazing!

Next up: main course. The great thing about going to dinner with good friends and fellow foodies is that you can taste their food without shame.  M ordered the grilled wild Alaskan halibut with mashed potatoes, spring vegetable ragout and chervil butter.  Sometimes, grilled fish ends up too dry, but not this halibut. Tender and flaky, just the way I like it.

Grilled halibut on a bed of yummy.

K went for the garlic and parsley tagliarini with braised beef Bolognese, porcini mushrooms, red wine, prosciutto, tomato, toasted breadcrumbs and parmesan. You might ask (as we did), “What is tagliarini?” It’s just a fancy name for a long, ribbon like pasta — wider than linguini but not as wide as fettucini. The sauce had that braised, slow-cooked goodness that was rich and hearty.

Hearty and savory pasta. This photo doesn't do this dish justice.

My choice was saffron and fennel risotto with dungeness crab, Prince Edward Island mussels, shrimp butter and salsa verde. I was craving risotto for some reason, and this really hit the spot.  The seafood was so fresh and delicious, and the risotto broth was perfection.

Seafood risotto - perfect.

Mid-meal and loving every minute of it!

Even though we were stuffed, we knew we couldn’t leave without ordering dessert.  We ended up sharing the warm chocolate and hazelnut cake with vanilla ice cream, chocolate sauce and orange caramel. It wasn’t terribly unique, but warm chocolate cake with vanilla ice cream is my definition of the perfect dessert. (Or, one of them anyway!)

Mmm...cake.

Happy diners. Bon appetit!

Jury’s Still Out

This is the first repeat review ever on this blog. In December, I wrote about the delicious tamales from Casa Latina. Since then, I’ve been meaning to go back with a Mexican so that s/he could provide expert advice on the huge assortment of authentic Mexican baked goods.  Luckily for me, my very authentic Mexican friend MA picked up my broken-ankled mess last month to get dinner and sweets at Casa Latina.

Just a third of the baked goods at Casa Latina

Before I get to the sweets, let’s start with the savory. Last time I had the tamale plate with one chicken and one pork tamale, served with rice and beans. This time, to save room for dessert, I got one pork tamale and one chicken (soft) taco. Very important note: I (wo)manned up and got the hot sauce this time.  And it was GOOD. So much better than medium.  MA said that no real Mexican would get the medium salsa.  (She didn’t actually say that; I inferred it from the quizzical look she gave me when I said I got the medium sauce last time. Her look said, “Why the hell would any sane person ever get the medium salsa?”)  At $2 a piece for the taco and tamale, dinner was not only delicious, it was a bargain.

Yummy tamale!

Chicken taco. The garnish was onion-cilantro deliciousness.

MA went straight for the carnitas tacos. What can I say — she doesn’t mess around. She gave it two thumbs up (thumbs not shown).

Carnitas tacos with a bottle of tamarind soda.

After dinner, it was onto the baked goods! I bugged MA to tell me about every single pastry and bread in the case, and we put our selections on a big metal round tray.

Now here comes the hard part: selecting the pastries.

I don’t know why I think this, but I almost always assume that, in a pastry wrestling match, any non-American baked good will kick an American baked good’s ass.  I just assume foreign bakeries are superior.  That said, I am still undecided on the Mexican baked goods. I really, really, REALLY wanted to like what I got, but I have to be honest: I really disliked 2 of the 3 items.

From top left, clockwise: custard thing, pineapple empanada, chocolate molasses bread.

1. Custard thing. I love custard in many forms: flan, Chinese egg custard, custard pie.  But this thing, I did not love one bit. The filling caught me off guard, as it was not really pudding like, nor was it thick and egg-y.  It was more like cheese danish filling, except stringy. Gag. However, the crust was pretty good — a lemony, cookie crumbly thing, which I ate sans filling.

2. Pineapple empanada. This time, I didn’t have any issue with the filling, which tasted like your standard dessert fruit filling.  The crust, however, was dry and not a good texture.  It sort of reminded me of cardboard or construction paper. Sorry.

3. Chocolate molasses bread.  This one took me by surprise, because I was initially VERY scared. It weighed, like, 3 pounds, and was half the size of my head.  Basically, it was a dense, sweet bread made out of molasses and covered with chocolate.  MA said that it is usually much smaller and traditionally made into the shape of a pig, which I thought sounded really cute. (Casa Latina also bakes the pig-shaped ones, but they were already sold out that day.) Initially, I was overwhelmed by the density of the bread, but then it really grew on me.  I would definitely buy this one again.

Venus was its name

I don’t know if y’all know this, but I broke my ankle a few weeks ago, and had to get surgery too.  In the meantime, I’ve been hobbling around on crutches.  I’m well enough to come back to work, but you know what I miss (besides being ambulatory)?  Going out to lunch.

I have this rule that I will only eat one meal out per day, for the sake of my wallet and my health.  Usually, I like to go out for lunch because it allows me to take a break in the middle of the workday to go outside and enjoy some sunshine.  I’ve blogged about a lot of my usual lunch spots (pho, ramen, burritos, etc.), but sometimes I want to step up my game.  And when I want to do that, I go to Venus.

Venus is a fancy little restaurant that serves organic, seasonal food that is prepared well and presented nicely. (Translation: their menu is slightly pricey but not too bad.)  I like that, on weekdays, they serve breakfast until 2:30pm, which makes you feel like it’s the weekend instead of some boring old weekday lunch.

A few weeks ago, DL and I decided to treat ourselves to a lunch at Venus.  She ordered soup and salad.  The soup, of some creamy vegetable genre that I can’t recall, was unfortunately very bland.  I ordered the grilled chicken over risotto cake, served with asparagus, which was so good.  The risotto cake was a puck of risotto that had been fried crispy on the outside and was incredibly flavorful and rich.

Savoring the fragrance of the soup...

My grilled chicken over risotto cakes (hidden under the chicken).

To top it all off, DL offered to pick up the tab, which was really sweet.  Goes to show you that there is such a thing as a free (gourmet) lunch.