December 20th, 2011 by Catherine Meng
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Vocal Rush, from the Oakland School for the Arts stopped by the Oliveto kitchen last night. They are raising money to get to the International High School A Cappella Championship competition in Portland, later in January. Find them at facebook.com/osa-vocal-rush
Add to that the fact that we are roasting chestnuts & serving…
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December 13th, 2011 by Maggie Blyth Klein
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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…
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December 13th, 2011 by Bob Klein
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Just five months after Chef Jonah began creating his kitchen and a menu that reflected his vision at Oliveto, Michael Bauer wrote a review in the San Francisco Chronicle entitled “Oliveto: Oakland Restaurant Bounces Back.” It was the first of a number of laudatory articles. Jonah’s most recent review, a feature article by Stephen Buel in the latest…
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December 10th, 2011 by Bob Klein
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The panini tartufati of Procacci, Florence’s beautiful old food shop, are little brioche sandwiches filled with truffle butter. This became the starting point from which Chef Jonah began to devise a menu. To the panini he added risotto alla Milanese, and, of course, if you’re going to serve risotto alla milanese, then you’ve got to serve osso buco….
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November 30th, 2011 by Catherine Meng
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Chef Jonah wasted no time concocting a menu item that exemplifies everything that is fleeting (as in, we sold out with a quickness last night) & wonderful about crab season:…
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November 25th, 2011 by Bob Klein
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starting this week, we’ve got some delicious sheep on the menu from Mac Magruder. Mac got his stock from “as old guy across the valley. He didn’t do anything for them, they’re organic by neglect.” He lucked out though, because they turn out to be of a hardy Suffolk cross-breed.
This is the same sheep Patricia Unterman described as “particularly succulent…
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November 14th, 2011 by Bob Klein
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We arrived at Giorgio’s on Saturday and got our first look at what he’s recently been digging up: some beautiful specimens with nice fragrance and good weight. No ginormous ones like last year, but many in the 25 gram to 60 gram range. As always with Giorgio it’s a family affair and his niece, Caterina, was on hand to help with truffle scrubbing. Tomorrow we head to…
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November 8th, 2011 by Maggie Blyth Klein
Saturday, November 12, 2011
World-famous cookbook author and expert on French cooking Patricia Wells will be dining at Oliveto at 6:30 on Saturday, November 12, 2011, as she celebrates her latest book, Simply Truffles. A precursor to our own white truffle dinners, which will commence on November 16th and continue through the 19th, the dinner [...]
October 25th, 2011 by Catherine Meng
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Oliveto co-owner Bob Klein and General Manager Shane Walker depart in less than a week for Italy in pursuit of truffles for our upcoming dinners. We’ve already heard some preliminary reports about the start of the season from a few of our contacts. Bad news first: Our friend Aldo Vacca in the Piedmont says…
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October 24th, 2011 by Catherine Meng
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It’s hard to imagine mushrooms after this past weekend’s hot spell, but apparently the rainfall from a few weeks ago started things growing. Over the weekend we received some stellar Chanterelles from the Humboldt and just this morning some exceptional Porcini from Mendocino….
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