One night in the East Bay

Headed up to the East Bay to see ebeth for my birthday. Want to do a lovely dinner on short notice (July 7th) and something we don’t get in LA - well that’s pretty hard. From what I gather its Kronnerburger, Henry’s, Flora, Bellotti, or Rivoli. @robert, whose opinion I greatly respect, seemd to favor Bellotti. Any other ideas?

permanently closed

That narrows the field a bit. Thanks for letting me know!

Oliveto is lovely, and one of the original seasonal-menu restaurants in the East Bay.

Lovely as in nice atmosphere and service a la Rivoli or Flora?

And great food. Thanks!

A Cote (patio)
Chez Panisse
Chez Panisse Cafe
Commis
Flora
Lalime’s
Oliveto (upstairs)
Rivoli
The Wolf

I’m not sure any of those are radically different from their counterparts in LA. Commis maybe has no direct counterpart.

7/17/18: edited to add Lalime’s for future reference

Thanks Robert!

We ended up at Bellotti. Fantastic! Great service and food.
Started with medium antipasto plate and spinach tortino…


Progressed to butter lettuce and watermelon salads…

BTW the olive oil served with the bread was the best any of us have ever tasted!
On to the pastas…
The original order was for the wife and daughter to split the casoncelli, while I got the agnolotti, and the boyfriend tackled the tagliatelli. One taste of my agnolotti and ebeth and I swapped out. The beef reduction sauce is divine (yes I gave up a better dish but I am ebethsdad). Everything was great!

Missed a picture of the agnolotti.
Dessert was coconut sorbetto, and vanilla panna cotta. The wife let it slip it was my birthday and they comped the desserts.

We did corkage with a couple of wines from V. Sattui as I am woefully ignorant of Italian wines. Our excellent waiter was very excited about this as he had recently been to V. Sattui and purchased the same zinfandel we were drinking. We gave him a taste.
All in all a wonderful experience. Thanks to all and especially @robert for the guidance!

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You rock as a dad! I’m not sure I could give up Michele’s agnolotti to anybody, LOL…

I’ve found Oliveto erratic - when it’s good it’s amazing, but after two “special dinner” flops at very high prices, we swore off them. Belotti is cheaper and very consistent.

Glad you got the tortino, also one of our favs. For a while it was off the menu. It’s a very finicky souffle (he had to redo it once for us because they took it out of the oven and it collapsed!). But I think he bowed to pressure and brought it back, thankfully.

The entrees are very good, but it’s the pastas that have our love. We usually just load up on those because we can never skip the agnolotti and the tagliatelle.

For fans who have not been since Belotti reopened after his usual summer vacation, some changes per the website:

" First, we will now be open on Tuesdays for lunch and dinner service, but we will be closed on Sundays. We will no longer be serving brunch menu on Saturdays. Saturday daytime menu becomes our normal lunch/dinner menu with 100% of our menu available throughout the day. (pasta all day, anytime!) "

That’s so Italian, respond to success by cutting back days or hours.