It’sDiningTime!
San Francisco/Bay Area restaurant reviews by Chris NorrisArchive for Italian
Village Corner, Carmel
Village Corner, Carmel
Jan 2008
Way Good. The Village Corner is a little Italian restaurant in Carmel that has good food and terrific ambiance. The outside patio with open fire pit and heaters, a nice bottle of red wine, and a light dinner is truly an excellent end to a long day of walking and spending in beautiful Carmel by the Sea! And, just across the street is Thom Gregg Jewelry, a custom jewelry shop full of unusual pieces. Plus, Thom is the designer of most of the expensive stuff my wife wears. Well, and my bracelet. And my wedding ring. Oh, and my other bracelet…
Perbacco, San Francisco
Perbacco, San Francisco
Feb 2008
Woo-Hoo! Perbacco is a young restaurant located in the financial district right next door to century old Tadich Grill. With an upscale spin on Italian dishes, Perbacco is one of the current hot spots in the City and getting in can be a challenge. I caved and took an exceptionally early reservation to get in on a Friday evening and we were happy we did. For starters, we tried the Hamachi Crudo, with fennel and blood orange essence. It was soooo good! The fish was very fresh, with a perfect balance of flavors and textures, and a bit of sea salt crunch. I really did like that dish! We followed that with the salt cod crostini, which we also liked a lot. For main dishes, we enjoyed some of the best scallops we’ve ever experienced and a nicely done duck breast with polenta. The scallops in particular were cooked to perfection and established a standard for comparison! Although we were too full for dessert, a large and tempting selection of cheeses displayed on a wooden cutting block beckoned to us, forcing us to avert our eyes lest we blow our weight watchers points entirely!
Meritage Martini and Oyster Bar, Sonoma, CA
Meritage Martini and Oyster Bar, Sonoma, CA
January 2008
S’OK. My good buddy Dave and I took a pasta making class some months ago at Ramekins cooking school, located in Sonomo, CA. Our instructor that day, Carlo Cavallo is the owner and executive chef of Meritage and I finally had the opportunity to check out Carlo’s restaurant for myself. Unfortunately, we could only do lunch, but we did get a sense for the place. It’s open, casual and friendly. The service was fine. We ordered the sampler of 10 oysters on the half shell, followed by the lentil soup of the day, and then shared a prosciutto panini. Maybe we just go spoiled at Café La Haye, but the oysters at Café La Haye were an order of magnitude better that at Meritage. There was nothing wrong with the Oysters at Meritage, but they just didn’t grab you and say “I’m a damn good oyster!” in the same way as their fine fellow crustaceans at Café La Haye. And the shells were chipped, and we had to wipe off some grit, … The lentil soup was good. Real good. Unfortunately, the extra parmesan cheese and tablespoon of olive oil on top didn’t add much to the soup but sure added a lot of un-needed weight watchers points to the meal. Finally, the panini was OK, but had too much prosciutto, making it tough to chew, and then too much soft cheese which became overwhelming and left us with cheese dripping everywhere.
Are we just complainers? I don’t know. I wanted Meritage to be great because I like Carlo and I really liked his pasta class at Ramekins. I remember my first, uneducated attempt at making pasta. It took half the day, made a complete mess of the kitchen, and tasted crummy. Since the Chef’s class, plus a few more practice sessions, I can make fresh pasta as part of a one hour meal! Regardless, Meritage needs a little work on the details.
Martini House, St. Helena, CA
Martini House, St. Helena, CA
January 2008
S’Ok. The Martini House in California’s wine country has good reviews, and we expected to have a pretty impressive meal. The ambiance, service, open kitchen, friendly staff all point to a happy dining experience. The night we visited, the restaurant offered a mushroom tasting menu that included shitakes in mushroom tea with duck wontons, a salad of hedgehog mushrooms with hollandaise sauce, roasted hen of the woods mushrooms with potato puree, and candy cap bread pudding. The waiter emphasized that mushrooms were a specialty for the establishment, so we bought in on the mushroom tasting menu!
I have to hand it to the chef – the menu concepts were terrific and it’s clear that there is a lot of creativity in the menu. In addition, the flavor of the mushrooms was expertly coaxed out of the mushrooms, without overwhelming the dishes and the mushrooms themselves were almost heavenly. So what happened?! Well, every single dish with the exception of the (very good) bread pudding, was immersed in a reduction of some kind that tasted of soy sauce and was so salty and overwhelming that after a point, we couldn’t eat anymore of our dish! It’s a shame – Café La Haye perfectly executed much simpler dishes and was a world-class dining experience. Martini house presented dishes with incredible potential, but that we would never bother to order again as presented to us.
If I didn’t think our experience might be a fluke, I wouldn’t recommend Martini House at all. Let’s keep out fingers crossed.
La Pastaia, San Jose, CA
La Pastaia, San Jose, CA
December 2007
Way Good. This Italian restaurant is located in the De Anza Hotel in downtown San Jose. The annual Christmas party for Cypress, the company I worked at for many years, was held at the Fairmont Hotel in downtown San Jose, 4-5 blocks away. So, Laura and I would stumble from the Fairmont to the De Anza so that all of those people who were supposed to respect us come Monday at 8am wouldn’t see us in our post-party glory. Therefore, we have some experience with La Pastaia for brunch after a rough night. We always liked it. More recently, we took our oldest son and his friend to La Pastaia for dinner before the Van Halen concert at the HP Pavilion. By the way, that band so totally rocked…! The food was very good, and when the Pavilion has a Sharks game or other show, the place is hopping. All of the pastas are good, and we’ve enjoyed the chicken and veal as well.
Café La Haye, Sonoma, CA
Café La Haye, Sonoma, CA
January 2008
Woo-Hoo! It doesn’t happen very often that you walk into a restaurant and feel like you transitioned into another country. But that happened to us recently while traveling in the California wine country. It was a dark and stormy night (really) and Laura and I decided to see how a little place off the historic central square of Sonoma could really have earned a Zagat rating of 27 out of 30, and still have availability at a reasonable time on just a few days notice.
Think Paris. You walk through the non-descript doorway into the arms of the Maitre’d, who ushers you to one of about a dozen tables. The tiny kitchen, in full view of the dining room, is home to 3 or 4 chefs busily doing their thing. You aren’t wearing a sport coat. You aren’t wearing a tie. You didn’t have to secure your reservation with a credit card. The staff don’t act like its “so special” that they let YOU come to dinner that night. In fact, you’re damned comfortable and feel welcome. And, You are about to experience culinary magnificence!
We started with oysters on the half shell, which were super fresh, full of flavor and exceeded our experience with oysters at Bouchon. Laura followed the oysters with a Savoy cabbage soup with chicken and pancetta that was simply stupendous, while I had the softboiled egg over a celery root “hash brown” with spinach, also wonderful.
With such a great start to the evening, we wondered if the main courses could keep up. We decided to test the kitchen and ordered two dishes that are hard to execute perfectly: pan fried chicken breast, which is almost always too dry and boring, and spaghetti with shitake mushrooms, which is so simple that it often gets forgotten in a kitchen where stacking five ingredients and decorating the plate is foremost in the chef’s mind. That chicken was as close to perfection as you can get, and the smoked chicken hash accompaniment still causes my mouth to water. The fresh made spaghetti with shitake mushrooms in a light cream sauce was glorious! I so love Paris! Oh, I forgot, this is a casual little place in Sonoma!
And the answer to the original question? Yes, Café La Haye deserves that 27 out of 30 on Zagat…
- Chris
Buca di Beppo, San Jose, CA
Buca di Beppo, San Jose, CA
January 2008
S’Ok. Buca is a chain of Italian family-style eateries that are popping up near malls around the San Francisco Bay area and across the country. While the kids have been to Buca in the past and like it a lot, I had not until the recent winter storms knocked out the power to our house for the third day in a row. (I’ve edited out the angry rant I go into whenever I compare the stability of California power to the wilderness of Idaho, for example, where I don’t recall the power going out every day it rained! Uh Oh, here I go…make me stop!) Miraculously, only half of the mall was out of power that night and Buca was one of the few establishments that remained on grid and did not have an hour long wait. So in we went, and ordered family style servings of salmon, spaghetti and meatballs, chicken parmigiana and Caesar salad. All of it pretty good. Buca is not fine Italian dining. It’s like what you might make at home for the whole family. But YOU don’t have to make it, and that’s the difference!
Spaghetti Factory, San Jose
Spaghetti Factory, San Jose
December 2007
Hmmmm. I have mixed experiences with the Spaghetti Factory. Actually, they aren’t that mixed. The place is huge, doesn’t take reservations, and the wait for lunch or dinner can be upwards of an hour. For low-end pasta, that’s a pretty heft wait. We showed up at 2pm on a Sunday afternoon recently, and still had to wait 15 minutes to get a table. Is it worth the fuss factor? Well, the kids like it a lot. The spaghetti is quite good, while everything else I’ve tried has been a “don’t order that again” experience. The kids like it. That sums it up.
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The Pastaria, Los Gatos
The Pastaria, Los Gatos
December 2007
Way Good. This little restaurant is located on Main Street in Los Gatos directly across from the Ferrari/Aston Martin/Lamborghini/Bentley/Rolls Royce dealership (did I mention Aston Martin?!) Pastaria is a cozy, locals go there, kind of place that serves fabulous house made pasta with some terrific sauces and combinations that actually cause you to forget about the $25M or so worth of cars staring at you from just across the street. Expect to need reservations, its small and apparently you are the only one who doesn’t know about it!
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Myth, San Francisco
Myth, San Francisco
October 2007
Update – Woo-Hoo! Myth continues to reign supreme, with another great dinner experience on a recent Friday night. Located on Pacific Avenue, within easy walking distance of both the theater and financial districts, Myth presents formal food in a hip way. We started with Ossetra caviar (from sturgeon sustainably farmed in Uruguay), served with miniature Yukon gold potatoes filled with crème fraiche. Really good, especially with a crisp glass of prosecco! I could go on with the wonders of the menu – the trout, the wild mushroom rigatoni, risotto, crab salad – all of it truly wonderful. In addition to the usual selection of hundred-dollar-plus-or-minus wines, Myth has a selection of “under $29” wines. This is kind of surprising from a restaurant that is capable of generating major cash flow – reservations are hard to get, and there’s plenty of pricey wines on the normal wine list that have good margin for the restaurant. In the spirit of appreciating the effort to offer affordable bottles, we ordered a $25 red from Portugal. It was really good! And so, Myth remains one of our favorite restaurants anywhere!
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