Table & Travel

More and more lately, Cal foot­ball games seem to be start­ing at 4 p.m. Food wise, it’s an awk­ward time, far from lunch and too early for din­ner. What we’ve been doing is pick­ing up a sand­wich at Gen­ova Del­i­catessen on Tele­graph Avenue then eat­ing it when we get to Memo­r­ial Sta­dium an hour or so before the game starts.

Gen­ova is an Oak­land insti­tu­tion. It was opened at 50th and Tele­graph by Ital­ian immi­grants Lorenzo Balbi and Peter Tira in 1926. Orig­i­nally, it was a gro­cery store and ravi­oli fac­tory, which catered to this pre­dom­i­nantly Ital­ian area called Oakland’s Temescal dis­trict. In 1951 Dominic De Vicenzi came to work there and mar­ried the owner’s daugh­ter. In the mid-1960s a sec­ond store was opened in Wal­nut Creek, which is now run by De Vicenzi’s nephew. Due to “ fam­ily dif­fer­ences,” the two busi­nesses are sep­a­rate enti­ties with Dominic own­ing the Oak­land deli and another in Napa. In 1995, the deli moved from its orig­i­nal loca­tion to Vern’s Shop­ping Cen­ter, a strip mall on Tele­graph near 51st Street. It’s across the street from Piz­zaiolo, which cooks fab­u­lous pizza from local ingre­di­ents in their wood-fired oven.

Along with fan­tas­tic sand­wiches, the deli also sells imported Ital­ian foods, pasta, and wine. In the back is a bak­ery and salad/antipasti bar. The sig­na­ture sand­wich is the Ital­ian Combo—a freshly baked roll filled with mor­tadella, galentina, cotto salami, dry salami and pro­volone cheese and cov­ered with fresh veg­eta­bles. Molto bene!

When we were in the Bay Area this week­end, Vicki and I made plans to have Sun­day brunch with my son Matt, the recent Cal grad, who lives in Berke­ley, just off Tele­graph Ave. I thought we’d park by his house and walk up to a place on Tele­graph, Cafe Milanese, that I’d seen online. But Matt said it was just a stu­dent place and sug­gested we go to Le Note, a lit­tle French bistro on Shat­tuck Avenue.

It was an excel­lent choice, and we were soon sit­ting on a sun­lit patio behind the main restau­rant, perus­ing a menu filled with so many inter­est­ing choices it was hard to choose. Matt chose Les Oeufs, fried eggs with pota­toes and two spicy mer­guez sausage, which has roots in north Africa. Vicki’s Oeuf a la Coque, con­sisted of two per­fectly cooked soft boiled eggs and out­stand­ing chunks of sautéed new pota­toes. It came with thinly sliced whole-wheat toast for dip­ping into the bright orange yolks of the eggs.

I had the Omelette de Pommes de Terre, a won­der­ful omelet lay­ered with sliced new pota­toes, carmelized onions, toma­toes, and emmen­thal  cheese, and accom­pa­nied by sweet grilled Proven­cales tomatoes—excellent!

The menu also fea­tured pan­cakes, which we couldn’t pass up, so we shared a oat­meal pan­cake cov­ered with a rib­bon of rasp­berry coulis. The fla­vor was divine, the tex­ture light and airy.

Matt was right on the money with this rec­om­men­da­tion, I think it’s one of the best places in the East Bay to have break­fast. I can’t wait to return for din­ner after brows­ing a menu that fea­tures fish, pasta, grilled meat, along with some veg­e­tar­ian dishes.

La Note Restau­rant Proven­cal.
2377 Shat­tuck Avenue, Berke­ley, CA
510.843.1535  info@lanoterestaurant.com

The gar­den pro­duced another plen­ti­ful bounty of toma­toes today. Cos­to­luto Gen­ovese, Zuc­chero, and Martino’s Roma, the first two from seeds pur­chased in Italy. These will be used in tomorrow’s batch of tomato sauce, but a later foray into the gar­den pro­duced my lunch. I sliced a Brandy­wine tomato, still warm from the sun, and placed the slices on top of a crunchy slice of freshly baked bread, added fresh basil and a dol­lop of hum­mus, then driz­zled it all with olive oil. Perfect!

Note: This was orig­i­nally pub­lished on Sep­tem­ber 26, 2009. In the switch to the new Word­Press site, for some rea­son it wasn’t uploaded.

One of my great joys in the veg­etable gar­den this year has been dig­ging pota­toes. We planted five bar­rels of pota­toes, includ­ing Red Pon­tiac, La Ratte, Yukon Gold, and Red Nor­land. I also planted some organic pota­toes I got at Whole Foods that sprouted very quickly so I threw them in the ground.

Yes­ter­day, I decided to have a good break­fast, which included pota­toes. So out I went to the gar­den and dug a few beau­ties, which were quickly diced and into a fry­ing pan not ten min­utes after they left the ground. Served with organic apple-smoked bacon and poached brown eggs, the were deli­cious, crisp on the out­side and creamy within—brilliant, as chef Jamie Oliver would say.

On our recent trip to Italy, Vicki and I vis­ited a delight­ful lit­tle vil­lage called Vol­paia in the hills high above Radda in Chi­anti. The hills and val­leys along the nar­row wind­ing road were filled with vine­yards in autumn color. We parked near the out­door restau­rant La Bot­tega di Val­paia and asked for a table. We were told that the only table avail­able was a small one near the entrance so we took that even though there were many empty tables toward the back over­look­ing the val­ley. We asked about those tables and were told they were reserved. We were seated next to two very loud Ger­man men and knew this would not be a pleas­ant lunch so we got up and removed ourselves.

We walked up to the vil­lage and found a very pleas­ant place to eat, Oste­ria di Val­paia,with quiet ter­race seating—this was more like it! I had a dish of sautéed chicken breast with mush­rooms and olives in a lovely wine-based sauce.

Vicki had an excel­lent plate of ravi­oli and we also had a two con­torno, won­der­ful vegetables—zucchini, red onions, car­rots— that were lightly grilled to retain some of their crisp­ness, and I couldn’t resist a bowl of deli­cious sautéed potatoes.

After lunch we walked around the vil­lage, which has a win­ery right in the mid­dle of what looks like res­i­dences. There was a lovely view of the from the north­ern wall and a got a great pho­to­graph of a house sur­rounded by trees in a myr­iad of fall colors.

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Last Octo­ber, my son Matt and I ate at an awe­some Korean restau­rant in Oak­land after a Cal foot­ball game. Sura is located in Oakland’s Temescal Dis­trict (4869 Tele­graph Ave, Oak­land, CA 94609) an area where there are many eth­nic restau­rants. We entered an ele­gant din­ing room, which was very open, airy, and filled with Asians. As we walked by a table occu­pied by two din­ers, I couldn’t believe the num­ber of ban­chan side dishes that were in front of them. We sat down and were imme­di­ately brought a bowl of Korean egg whites, which was tasty, but not like what was to come.

The menu is sub­stan­tial and fea­tures many inter­est­ing tra­di­tional Korean dishes, most of which I’m not famil­iar with. Matt was born in Korea and has eaten at many good Korean restau­rants so he was able to explain a few things. We set­tled on the all-you-can-eat bar­beque, which fea­tured beef, chicken, and pork belly. Each table has a dome-shaped cooker that is heated by a gas flame under­neath it. The meat is cooked on this dome until it siz­zles and is done. 

The drill is to place the meat on the grill in the mid­dle of the table with tongs, then turn it and cut it into more man­age­able pieces with the scis­sors you are given. When the meat is done it is placed in a piece of let­tuce along with some gar­lic, jalapeno, and gochu­jang, rolled up and eaten—fantastic! All of the meat was great, but the pork belly was won­der­ful when just done—don’t let it cook too long! The thin pieces of beef and chicken were also superb; I ate until I was very full then watched Matt put away about twice the meat I had; poor, starv­ing, col­lege stu­dent! Together we did a pretty good job, though, there wasn’t much left. 

Ban­chan. Photo cour­tesy Shan­non I.

Sura is a won­der­ful restau­rant and I highly rec­om­mend it. A good indi­ca­tion of how good the food is was that it was filled with so many Asians—I imag­ine mostly Korean. Glanc­ing around the room after we sat down assured me that I was the only cau­casian in the restau­rant. All of the staff that helped us were very pleas­ant and we had a nice chat with our Korean host­ess who, it turns out, was born in the same Korean city as Matt, Jeonju City.

Sura is a very classy Korean restau­rant and a lit­tle pricier than most oth­ers I’ve been to, but the food is worth it and I’m look­ing for­ward to going back very soon.

Sura. 4869 Tele­graph Ave. Oak­land, CA 94620.
(510) 654‑9292

I received a very apolo­getic phone call yes­ter­day from the man­ager of the Raley’s food story on Key­stone. He said that more than a third of the Maine lob­sters the Reno stores had ordered died on their way here from the Bay Area. No rea­sons why, per­haps they didn’t like the alti­tude in the Sierra.

It’s great to get this kind of follow-up. Makes the con­sumer feel like he/she has a voice. I should add that they are send­ing me a $20 gift card for my trou­ble — I think I’ll start send­ing them a com­plaint once a week.