Friday, January 7, 2000
Oaktown Cafe Putting Down Its Roots Chef Lou Salerno brings new gusto to Old Oakland
Kim Severson
(Excerpts...)
A fine culinary change is blowing through the streets of Old Oakland, and at its center is the Oaktown Cafe. The blocks of old buildings around the restaurant at Ninth and Washington are undergoing a Jerry Brown-fueled restoration...
It's
the sort of rebirth Lou Salerno was hoping for a year
ago, when he opened the Oaktown Cafe...
Based on both the renaissance in the area and the strength of Salerno's lovely, rustic food, I predict it won't be long before the Oaktown Cafe and its environs are busy almost every night of the week. The space is surprisingly inviting, with a wide, curving open kitchen dominating the back of the room. Double-tall windows and a lovely two-story glass door show off the best of the building's 115-year-old design. Half a dozen tall stools surround the bar that rims the kitchen, perfect for solo diners. A couple of dozen dark wooden tables are covered with white tablecloths and festive-colored napkins. The effect is urban and quaint all at the same time.
Salerno, a native of Rutherford, N.J., who got his start baking at Square One in San Francisco and went on to Bucci's in Emeryville, among other places, has a surprisingly sophisticated, brasserie-style menu featuring simple, fresh ingredients. 'I want to make things that people are not amazed by but hopefully interested in eating,' he said.
Let's start with soups ($4.50). Generous, wide-brimmed bowls have been a hit on a couple of different visits. In late fall, he used the last of the season's green and red tomatoes as a light, slightly acidic base accented with basil and Roquefort cheese. In the winter, he stirred up a balanced, hearty tomato, roasted fennel and white bean soup.
Salad greens in various incarnations are always fresh and lightly dressed. And we didn't really mind the almost kitsch plate of iceberg lettuce covered in blue cheese dressing, breadcrumbs and a crumble of bleu d'Auvergne ($6.50), even though we kept longing for a walnut or two for texture.
Salerno has a lot of experience cooking in a wood-fired oven, and much of his menu is composed of dishes that get their flavor and crackle from the oven that dominates the kitchen. Always, there's a dish of roasted fish. On one night, a perfect slice of sea bass was nestled against a scattering of small, oven-roasted artichokes, caramelized onions and potatoes mashed with buttermilk and garlic ($13).
The pizzas that come from that same oven were a big hit. Salerno uses top-drawer ingredients on a chewy, puffy base. The combinations are inventive but not over the top. For example, a trio of red, green and yellow onions melted into creamy raclette cheese, with poached garlic cloves giving a subtle punch. Bacon, thyme and butternut squash came together nicely on a base of Fontina cheese. All pizzas are just under $10.
Risottos and pastas fill out the rest of the menu, and they're well thought out and priced right. The memory of a simple plate of farfalle swimming in a sauce of duck stock, butter and shallots, topped with big chunks of roasted duck and chanterelles ($10.50) still lingers.
Many desserts also come from the oven, including a winning, rich pecan tartlet ($4.75). Other desserts, such as a flabby fig galette ($4.75) needed a more refined touch and little more time in the oven.
The lunch menu has a handful of sandwiches, including a big burger on a home-baked bun served with crisp little shoestring fries and a pile of lightly dressed greens. We had ours with fresh asiago cheese.
Friday, August 15 , 2000
Slice of pizza, glass of wine and thou at OakTown
Joan Zoloth
(Excerpts...)
It is great seeing a resurgence in downtown Oakland, with many new restaurants. I especially applaud those staying open and serving dinner. One is OakTown Cafe, in the old restaurant Chenville space. It is a beautiful corner location, with floor-to-ceiling windows, an open kitchen and bar area and a stellar mosaic tile entry. Wide and open, the space has a comfortable feel, making it a nice place to dine day or night.
The dinner menu offers a wide selection of pizzas prepared in a wood-burning oven. Pizza can make a fine appetizer for the table to share. The crust was puffy around the edges, with just the right amount of wood-burning flavor to it. A delightful choice was the housmade tuscano sausage ($9.75), especially when paired with the creamy pesto that came entwined with mozzarella. Even the simple roasted Roma tomatoes, corn and green onions ($9.75) got an uplift from the soft, salty feta cheese. An earthy tangle of mushrooms, including mealy shiitake, cremini and delicate oysters, paired well with a sprinkle of thyme and goat cheese on the mushroom variety ($9.50).
For entrees, a simple marinated chicken ($11.50) was beautifully moist on the inside, with skin that crackled with each forkful. The accompanying roasted fingerling potatoes were sweet and soft. We also enjoyed a big, thick house-cured pork chop ($16). Cooked just right, it retained its juiciness. OakTown certainly is a lovely place to dine.
As far as catching up with friends over pizza, salad and a glass of wine, OakTown is the perfect place.
Friday, July 5 - 11, 2000
Style Over Substance
Matthew Stafford
(Excerpts...)
I went to OakTown the other night with three women versed in the intricacies of haute couture, and their first impressions were positive indeed. The voguishly austere nature of the decor -- futurism with a soupcon of industrial eclectic -- was commended without reservation. The layout of the place drew kudos for its airy yet cozy nature, an effect achieved via a warmingly vicinal kitchen and other subtextual elements. Our waitress haircut especially remarked upon, as were her jeweled accouterments and stylish Capri pants. Even the menu -- spare, simple listing of New Americn bistro fare in e.e. cummings-esque lowercase -- was applauded for its hip, post-ironic brevity. The fashionable final verdict: "Stylin'," "Happening," and "Totally Melrose!"
OakTown is restaurant as fashion trend, a cool, suave emporium of postmodern sustenance where pizzas are strewn with shitake, the oven burns with wood, and T-shirts are available in burgundy, forest, and maize. Ceiling-high plate-glass windows look out on a particularly fervid stretch of downtown Oakland, allowing you to become an observant aspect of the passing parade without leaving the comfort of your arugula with pecorino. And despite the modishness of the surroundings, the overall ambient effect is a warm and welcoming one, complete with attentive and insightful service and a disarming absence of the robotic.
But couture is by its very nature less than skin deep, and like the man said, you can't judge a restaruant by its haircut. The most enduring fashions are founded in simplicity, and so it goes at OakTown.
The pizzas are enjoyably imaginative, with thick, fresh, fragrant crusts supporting (or, in the case of the calzones, enfolding seven varieties of topping, including corn-pesto-scallion ($9.75), three-onion-raclette-bacon ($10.50), and eggplant-spinach-caper ($9.75). One of the best is the linguica ($9.50), in which the garlicky Portuguese sausage perfectly checks and balances such complementary flavors as sweetly pungent roasted onions and bland , milky mozzarella. The Trhee-mushroom ($9.50) is equally impressive, with the distinct textures of shitake, cremini and oyster interacting pleasantly with sweet-tart goat cheese and fresh thyme.
As one might perhaps expect, the desserts are the best part of the dining experience; the confectionery nature and seductive appearance of a meal's final chapter fit especially snugly within OakTown's mise en scene.
The wine list is impressively eclectic and reasonably priced, with vintages available by the 5-ounce glass (27 from $3 to $7), the half bottle (29 from$9 to $20.50), and the bottle (32 from $17 to $37.50), many of them from the trendy vineyards of Oregon.