"when you get there, there's no there there"

Some of you may recognize that quote. It's from Gertrude Stein, many years ago, on visiting Oakland during a tour of the United States.

Believe it or not, I'm not old enough to remember the world at the time when Miss Stein (that is how she preferred to be called) wrote that, and I can't claim to be an expert on Oakland; however, what IS there is one of our favorite restaurants: Oliveto's. We were there last night. And it just gets better.

How much does Annalena love this restaurant? Well, the first time I was there, I got food poisoning from eating a bad clam. I knew it, the minute it went down my throat. And I've been back twice a year ever since then. Serving a bad clam is not a major flaw with a restaurant. If the clams are closed and look right, you don't know what you're getting when they open up. I have opened up oysters that were closed tight, and smelled such a bad smell that I've had to dump them. Did the merchant no? No. Did I know when I checked them? Not at all. So I did not treat this as a flaw. And the high quality of the cooking and the ingredients bring us back, every year.

Olivetos was recommended to us by our friend Margorie. She used to work in Berkeley and Oakland, at various sushi restaurants and as a knife sharpender, and knew Paul Bertolli, who was once the head chef at Chez Panisse, and wrote their book entitled, simply "Cooking." Chef Bertolli truly is a believer in "back to basics." I won't say his recipes are unworkable, but... let's just say they require a deep commitment. For example, one of his recipes for sausage and peppers starts with "six ounces of casings, preferably organic." Yup, you're going to make your own sausage, stuff it, tie it, and then move on with the recipe. Many of them are the same way. Still, his recipe for blood orange cake is one of my standard recipes, and when I eat the food at Oliveto's, I'm inspired to go home and make the dishes as best as I can. Last year, we ate a pasta dish with sand dabs, and while sand dabs are not indigenous to the Atlantic coast, flounder are, and I did the best I could. I was close. One time, the menu celebrated the "odd fowls" like quail, squab, and guinea hen, and I had chestnut pasta with guinea hen meatballs. Chestnut pasta is well out of my league, even though Lidia Bastianich gave us all a recipe for it but I copied the guinea hen meatballs and they were good. And I'll do the same thing this time around. Chef Bertolli has moved on since those first visits, but the spirit of his cooking remains. At least, Annalena thinks so.

They remember us. They remember that there is a server, Molly, whom we've had before and we like. So they made sure we were taken care of by her. And take care, she did. Molly is not going to work as a server her whole life, but every server should be taking lessons from her on her patience, her verve, and the way she "reads" customers. There was nothing we could do but put ourselves in her hands for our first course. Out came raw halibut, with grapefruit, avocado, a light sauce, and olives. The dish, served on an elongated, pale green grass plate, was so beautiful it was hard to eat it. We got over it. The avocados were like butter, the counterpoint with pink grapefruit, the soft fish. OH MY GOD. I wanted to eat every other appetizer on the menu, but this was a good choice.

We went on to nettle taglierini with clams (this time, I did NOT get sick) The pasta was a beautiful riff on spinach pasta, which we've all had. But hey, nettles are in season, and everyone compares them to "wild spinach " (I don't agree), but the pasta was stunningly beautiful, and incredibly rich and tasty. Then, a plate of "gobetti," a cut of pasta I did not know, looking like huge commas, with the sweetest squid I have ever tasted, with a bit of tomato and hot pepper.

One of the qualities of the cooking here is no fear of seasoning. The gobetti were not for the timid. It said hot pepper? It MEANT hot pepper. And again, I wanted to try every pasta on the menu.

Molly recommended roasted black bass , stuffed with nettles, morels, breadcrumbs, in a light sauce of prosecco and wine. Now, this is where food comes out and I say "why didn't I think of that?" It was "simple," a whole fish, stuffed with a seasoned mix of cooked nettles and mushrooms, with just the faintest taste of the breadcrumbs the fish so fresh it was amazing, and a sauce light enough to not take away from everything else.

We also had a charcoal grilled pigeon, with onions that had been cooked in duck fat, walnuts and farro. This plate says a lot about why I like the restaurant. "Pigeon?" Yes, you have heard it called squab, but squab IS pigeon. Those nasty birds you see are actually wood doves, NOT pigeons. GET OVER WORDS. And, at the last minute, someone thought toasted walnuts would really be good, and they were. A simple, split bird, roasted to crispness, with the added elements just perfect.

We had a WHITE sicilian wine with this food, a revelation to me. And for dessert, crespelles - Italian crepes, fried to crispness in the shape of a horn, with creme fraiche ice cream and a few cherries in the style of a candied compote, and a bowl of pink grapefruit sorbet with a couple of cookies. Molly brought some dessert wine on the house. Perfect conclusions, until next time.

You will note, if you are a careful reader, certain ingredients repeating themselves: grapefruit, nettles, etc. Yes, that's right. A good cook knows how to work with a palette of a limited number of ingredients and how to use them in different ways. Also, the restaurant is not afraid to serve things that may challenge you. There was tripe on the menu. So was tongue of beef. So, too, mackerel, rabbit, "lardo," and skate.

These are not standard restaurant food, but you should try them. Make your palette grow.

If this sounds like a love letter, it is. In the midst of a Bay Area heat wave, and still getting over jet lag, Annalena was and is a happy person. I save Oliveto's menus. Now you know why.