June 19th, 2013 by Sarah Bruhns
Sunday Farmhouse Supper
June 23, 2013
Antipasto
Bruschetta - Roast red peppers, cherry tomatoes, balsamic vinegar and basil on grilled crostino
Primo
Passatelli - Parmesan and breadcrumb dumplings in a rich brodo
Secondo
Lasagna alla bolognese
Dolce
To be determined after Pastry Chef Kam Golightly’s trip to Farmers’ Market
Prix fixe $40.
Served family-style. For groups of one to twelve*. Whole table must order prix fixe menu. A modest and appropriate regional wine will be available as perfect accompaniment to the meal.
call 510-547-5356 or reserve online
*Larger parties: please let us know at the time of your reservation that your table will be ordering the Sunday Supper menu so we can plan accordingly. Thanks!
June 18th, 2013 by Sarah Bruhns
Dinners with Farmers
with farmer Judith Redmond,
Full Belly Farm
Monday, June 24, 2013, at 6:30 pm
in Oliveto’s quiet private dining room,
for fourteen* guests
Full Belly Farm Owners: Andrew Brait, Judith Redmond, Paul Miller, and Dru Rivers
Call (510) 547-5356 for reservations or email jessica@oliveto.com
It all begins with the local farmer, who gives us the ability to cook a succulent and salubrious meal and who can restore the health of our soils and environment. In the past few decades, the reemergence of farmers’ markets has made the farm-to-city connection palpable and real and life-changing for many.
We’d like to invite you to extend the short exchanges at farmers’ markets to longer, more relaxed conversations over dinner, to broaden and deepen relationships with our local farmers.
We all have hundreds of questions for the farmer: How and why did you decide to become a farmer? When does your day begin, and end? How do you decide what crops to plant? What effects do politics and legislation have on your business? Describe your farm -the soils, the microclimate, rainfall, water sources? Can you put into words the philosophy by which you live? And on and on.
We’ve invited a different farmer for each of four evenings, beginning with one of the most important and beloved in the family farm community of northern California: Judith Redmond of Full Belly Farm in Guinda, Yolo County.
MENU
Salad of new potatoes with summer vegetables
Bigoli pasta with barley, Cranberry beans, tomatoes, and peppers
Roast hen with purée of charred eggplant, corn, and cherry tomatoes
Dessert of seasonal figs or peaches
to be determined
Price: $60 per person
plus tax and gratuity
Check out Full Belly’s beautiful, up-to-date, and informative website: fullbellyfarm.com
Our Pastry Chef, Kam Golightly, visited with Judith Redmond at Full Belly Farms in Guinda last weekend to become familiar with the farm and its workers. Judith was particularly exuberant about her eggplants, which are just reaching their maturity. The corn, haricots verts, and fingerling potatoes are at their peak.
We’ll plan other dinners with growers whose beautiful crops we use at Oliveto as summer progresses. The limited participation of fourteen will keep the evening intimate and let everyone join the conversation.
Call (510) 547-5356 for reservations or email jessica@oliveto.com
Dinner is June 24, 2013
Please note there will be one seating at 6:30 pm
*Subject to cancellation should response not warrant the long drive for each farmer.
June 12th, 2013 by Sarah Bruhns
This Just In:
The Season is ON -
Cranberry Beans
and other Farmers’ Market Finds
Cranberry Beans, Full Belly Farms
Though it may seem like the weather is bouncing around like a yo-yo, for our farms, we’re in full swing! At Tuesday’s Farmers’ Market on Adeline, Jonah got his hands on some colorful cranberry beans from Full Belly Farms (above), not to mention fresh Romano beans, haricots verts, Brentwood corn, cherry tomatoes, and more early summer finds.
The cranberry beans appear in a dish of roast hen rolata. The haricots verts and Brentwood corn will be served with pan-roasted local king salmon, while the cherry tomatoes are going with pan-roasted Alaskan halibut and new fingerling potatoes. On the menu now through the weekend.
For reservations,
call (510) 547-5356 or click here
Cranberry Beans, Full Belly Farms
Though it may seem like the weather is bouncing around like a yo-yo, for our farms, we’re in full swing! At Tuesday’s Farmers’ Market on Adeline, Jonah got his hands on some colorful cranberry beans from Full Belly Farms (above), not to mention fresh Romano beans, haricots verts, Brentwood corn, cherry tomatoes, and more early summer finds.
The cranberry beans appear in a dish of roast hen rolata. The haricots verts and Brentwood corn will be served with pan-roasted local king salmon, while the cherry tomatoes are going with pan-roasted Alaskan halibut and new fingerling potatoes. On the menu now through the weekend.
For reservations, call (510) 547-5356 or click here
June 12th, 2013 by Sarah Bruhns
June 16, 2013
Antipasto
Red beet salad with cherry tomatoes, mint, and chêvre
Primo
Fettuccine with ragù of Magruder beef
Secondo
Brasato of pork with caramelized onions and braised fennel
Dolce
Tart of Black Mission figs and brown butter frangipane with mascarpone mousse
Make your reservations online or call 510-547-5356.
June 5th, 2013 by Sarah Bruhns
Potato-wrapped, wild mushroom-stuffed pigeon with barley risotto, sweet fava beans, and sugo
Thanks to the Bay Area’s myriad microclimates, Martin Bournhonesque, from a farm on the coast, has supplied us with sweet, springlike fava beans at point in the season where the window is closing and most favas go starchy.
This week they are getting paired with Full Belly Farms barley, cooked like risotto, and great pigeons from our friend Phillip Paine of Paine Farm, which Chef Jonah will stuff with wild mushrooms and wrap with long strands of potato.
Make your reservations online or call 510-547-5356.
June 5th, 2013 by Sarah Bruhns
Antipasto
Arancini al Telefono – Fried risotto balls stuffed with mozzarella and Parmesan cheeses; tomato sauce
Primo
Rigatoni alla carbonara with lamb pancetta
Secondo
Arrosto di maiale – Roman-style roasted pork stuffed with herbs and garlic, served with braised spinach and roasted potatoes
Dolce
Tortino di polenta with balsamic cherries, sweet corn, vanilla bean ice cream
Make your reservations online or call 510-547-5356.
June 3rd, 2013 by Sarah Bruhns
Menu
Crudo of local King Salmon
with new Yellow Finn potatoes, fines herbes, and crème fraîche
Riesling to Live
Tajarin with ragù of porcini mushrooms
’12 Vin Gris de Cigare
’11 Le Cigare Blanc
’10 Le Cigare Blanc Réserve
’04 Le Cigare Blanc
Tortelloni of Parmesan & house-made ricotta with squash blossoms
’01 Le Cigare Volant
’03 Le Cigare Volant
’05 Le Cigare Volant
’08 Le Cigare Volant (normale)
’08 Le Cigare Volant Reserve
Brasato of Magruder Ranch beef
with Community Grains Red Flint Polenta
’06 Nebbiolo
’07 Nebbiolo
’09 Nebbiolo
Castelmagno
with candied walnuts, crostini, and fruit
’11 Le Vol des Anges
Peach torta with Le Vol des Anges zabaglione and peach sorbetto
Randall, first planting at his new garden vineyard, San Juan Bautista
June 10, 2013 at 6:30 pm
Call (510) 547-5356 for reservations
We thought it extraordinary that a small, independent – very independent – winemaker would make so many wines, and that they could all be very good. And there may be no one we’d rather send time with than Bonny Doon’s
Randall Grahm. So while presenting a wine dinner with 14 different wines would be challenging, we thought could make it fun, fresh, unpretentious, worthwhile, and delicious.
Menu
Crudo of local king salmon
with new Yellow Finn potatoes, fines herbes, and crème fraîche
Tajarin with ragù of porcini mushrooms
’04 Le Cigare Blanc
Tortelloni of Parmesan & house-made ricotta with squash blossoms
’01 Le Cigare Volant
’05 Le Cigare Volant
Brasato of Magruder Ranch beef
with Community Grains Red Flint Polenta
’06 Nebbiolo
’07 Nebbiolo
Castelmagno
with candied walnuts, crostini, and fruit
Peach torta with peach sorbetto & Le Vol des Anges zabaglione
Price: $125
plus tax and gratuity
Call (510) 547-5356 for reservations
Dinner is June 10, 2013
Please note there will be one seating at 6:30 pm
May 31st, 2013 by Sarah Bruhns
Antipasto
Insalata di rinforzo
Grilled cauliflower with pickled vegetables
Primo
Farfalle with zucchini and saffron
Secondo
Magruder beef brasato with new potatoes
Dolce
Peach-leaf crema di latticello with stone fruit “salad”
May 28th, 2013 by Sarah Bruhns
Dinner With Randall Grahm
and 14 of His Wines
- A Rare Evening -
Or,
What’s Doon is Doon:
A Comprehensive Consideration of the Celestial and Terrestrial Oeuvre of Randall Grahm
(Along with a Pretty Spectacular Meal)
Randall Grahm’s Greatest Adventure
[from a 2009 visit]
Monday, June 10, 2013 at 6:30 pm
Call 510-547-5356 for reservations
When Oliveto sommelier Esteban Brunello went to a
Bonny Doon Vineyard wine tasting a couple months back, he tasted all of
Randall Grahm’s currently available wines and returned astounded. He thought all of them–some twenty different wines–uniquely good. Â It’s unusual enough for a small independent producer to offer that many wines, but that they were all, every one of them, estimable, doesn’t happen.
We’ve known Randall for quite some time: the Rhone Ranger of old, deeply devoted to terroir as the source of a wine’s character, leader and practitioner of a movement for transparency in wine labels, advocate of the screwcap closure, lover of obscure Italian grape varieties, biodynamic farmer with dry-farming leanings, the man who would plant grape vines from seed and plant a vineyard that looked more like a garden (“promiscuous culture,” in the vernacular). Â He is an original thinker, a charming, witty, and gentle person.
Randall, for all his renown and knowledge of wine’s most important topics, has said he’d really just like to be known as someone who makes really good wine. So, after Esteban’s pronouncement, we decided that, while presenting a wine dinner with 14 different wines would be challenging, we could make it fresh, fun, unpretentious, and, most important, about delicious wine.
So, here’s the evening we imagine:
One seating at 6:30 pm, in casual, family-style tables of twelve.
Randall will chat about:
Biodynamics, the painful beauty of vins de terroir, his very ambitious plans to plant a truly sustainable, genetically heterodox, dry-farmed vineyard. He will talk about the esoteric mysteries of the Tantric élevage of wines (with a special geeky sidebar on wine electrochemistry), and will say something or three about the wines he is presenting.
6 courses from Chef Jonah, matching (as best we can) a very large array of wines:
(Sparkling Riesling as apéritif)
’04 Le Cigare Blanc
’01 Le Cigare Volant
’05 Le Cigare Volant
’06 Nebbiolo
’07 Nebbiolo
Price: $125
plus tax and gratuity
Menu to follow
Call (510) 547-5356 for reservations
Dinner is June 10, 2013
Please note there will be one seating at 6:30 pm
May 24th, 2013 by Sarah Bruhns
May 26, 2013
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Antipasto
Panzanella
Tuscan-style bread salad with tomatoes, olives, capers, and chili flakes
Primo
Trompetti with Sausage and Broccoli di Ciccio
Secondo
Roasted leg of pork with Cavolo Nero in Agrodolce
Dolce
Strawberry Rhubarb “Cheesecake”: Cream Cheese Ice Cream, Â
Graham Cracker Cookie, Poached Rhubarb, and Fresh Strawberries
