2012 Grass-Fed Beef Season Begins

Cuts featured this week:
Flat Iron – Chef Jonah’s Pick
The Chef believes this to be the best cut of the animal. Not only is it exceptionally tender with great marbling, because it is against the shoulder and close to the bone it also has great flavor.
It will appear on the menu starting…

This Just In: Intergalatic Nectarines

If you’ve been hitting the Farmers’ Markets recently, you know that stone fruit, particularly peaches and nectarines are going OFF right now.
As always, our friends at Blossom Bluff Orchards have some incredible offerings in this department, and if you’ve been to the Blossom Bluff stand you know that they have an uncanny ability to pick [...]

Sunday Farmhouse (beach house?) Supper: Liguria

Chef Rhodehamel is being a bit tight-lipped about the details of this Sunday’s dinner, but here’s what we know:

The region of focus will be Liguria, the tiny coastal area of north-western Italy, beloved for its beaches and marvelous food. The main attraction will definitely be…

Chef Marco Update

Chef Marco Forneris and family arrive tomorrow, and the intensive planning for this Friday’s and Saturday’s Piedmontese dinners begin for real. Oliveto’s Chef Jonah has brought in exceptional ingredients to enhance the menu: stunning morels, black trumpet mushrooms, suckling pig, ramps, …

The Morning After

Every restaurant has a rhythm.  Any restaurant that manages to keep its doors open, doesn’t have a lot of down time, but there’s varying types of intensity—planning, innovation, tedium, stress, exhaustion…celebration.   For us…

Chef Jonah At One Year

This Friday, December 16th will mark the 25th anniversary of Oliveto Cafe and Restaurant. More personally, we are celebrating Chef Jonah’s first year as Oliveto Executive Chef. We thought we’d give you our impression on this past year…

Local Mushroom Boom Continues

from left to right: chanterelle, porcini, black hedgehog, hedgehog
Those unusual black hedgehogs will be in an appetizer that screams late autumn:
Pan-roasted pigeon with Acorn squash purée and black hedgehog mushrooms

Tastes Like California Wheat

When we first got involved with locally grown grains over four years ago, one of our long term goals was the pursuit of identity preserved wheat. By this we mean a particular variety grown by a farmer we know and trust, and milled into flour without being blended with other varieties or wheats from other [...]

Spit-Roasted Goat – This Friday, October 14th

Fourteen family farms and 70 restaurants, including Oliveto, have committed to participation in No Goat Left Behind, a new program developed by Heritage Foods USA (HFUSA), a meat distribution company dedicated to preserving endangered breeds. Chef Jonah will be spit-roasting two young goats, a traditional preparation commonly seen throughout Italy around this time of year. They will be…

Bean Season

Some real beauties arrived from Martin this week. Fresh picked Borlotti, Cannellini, and some of the biggest Gigante we’ve ever seen.
Chef Jonah’s been doing a lovely salad that will be on the menu throughout the week:
Marinated pole and bush beans with Lipstick peppers, watercress, and sherry vinaigrette