Oliveto

[Ore]

does anyone here know if Oliveto or chef paul read any of these posts - maybe they should get a 'secret' email!

maybe that would help them?!

I have always heard great things, but have always read (here) bad things! strange!

[Rebel Rose]

In yesterday's Sf Chronicle Paul Bertolli has left Oliveto, to be replaced with chef Paul Canales.

Instead, he will put all his energy into his salumi business, something that he and Oliveto partners Bob and Maggie Klein recognized was consuming his attention.

Chef de cuisine Paul Canales, who has been the mastermind in the Oliveto kitchen, taking care of menu planning, hiring, firing and ordering, now is the official chef.

For Klein, this all came to a head after one of Oliveto's recent special dinners, the Whole Hog. "A few weeks after, a nice review of the dinner mentioned Bertolli, but never mentioned Canales," when Canales had created the menu, Klein says.

[highflyingbird]

went to oliveto last night for truffle dinner. atrocious service. poor timing...pasta was cold by the time the truffles arrived. the timing was off on every course.

they tried to get us to keep a bottle of wine that was so off it tasted like copper pennies in your mouth. absolutlely undrinkable. they are so unfriendly and stiff in there. what is going on? it's not the first time i've been there and had bad service. but it will be the last.

over rated. bad service. the food was very mediocre. i wish quince would do a truffle dinner this year!!!

[melkor]

Head up to Rutherford and do the truffle dinner at La Toque. They are under rated while I think you're right that Oliveto is wildly over rated.

[BurningRome]

I was at Oliveto for the Truffle festival last night (Friday) and I had a pretty much opposite experience from the previous poster. We each had one course each from the 3 stages (antipasta, soup/pasta, and grills (secondi?)) and they were uniformly good and some were great. Specifically, the wild mushroom tortino with leeks and the wild nettle penette with Bay scallops and wild mushrooms were phenomenal, especially the penette. My wife loved the tajarin al burro, with white truffles shaved on top. For the mains, we had the cotechino, a large rustic sausage stewed over cabbage, and a rabbit braised in Arneis wine with zolfini beans; both great but not as stellar as the pasta dishes. We had shaved white truffles over the all but the cotechino. Really nice, and the service was spot on. Had the quarto (small carafe) of Arneis from Piedmont to start with and switched to a decent Barbera D'alba (quarto again) to finish. Finished with a nice 96 Sauternes (Grillon I believe) with a great chocolate torta with a orange sauce.

Spoke to the truffle procurer who said the white truffles served this year were from a couple truffle markets in Umbria, near the Citta di Castello.......

[rhiannonstone]

I just got back from my first dinner at Oliveto. The food was delicious (my porchette--pork belly and pork loin in a light spicy sauce--was especially wonderful), but I found the service lacking. The server was laconic and drink refills were incredibly slow in coming, and the biggest offense was that the server plopped down both our salumi tasting and our cheese plate on the table and left without telling us what anything was. I was able to figure out the cheeses since there were only three, but I had no clue what was what on the salumi plate. As I'd been looking forward to the salumi tasting for awhile and it was a totally new concept to the others at my table, this was pretty disappointing. We enjoyed it, but had to spend the rest of the meal talking about "the round fennel-y one from the middle" and "the big fatty one on the end."

Also, as good as the food was, I didn't feel the high prices were quite justified. I don't mind paying well for good food, but at those prices, I expect a slightly higher caliber of food plus better service.

[marlena spieler]

a year or two ago i went to a special balsamic vinegar dinner at oliveto, and one of the courses served was one of the most exquisite things i've ever eaten: a fresh rich egg, cloaked in a fine layer of crumbs and deep fried. The egg was poached, the crumbs practically grease free. the egg came on a bed of some kind of wild bitter greens, and just a few of them so it wasn't a salad, with shakes of the deepest most flavourful balsamico.

i've tried to replicate this many times with no success. it was so simple, and superb!

Marlena