Top New York Chef to Visit Oliveto – Menu Update for Tuesday, August 20th Dinner

Menu Update

Top NY Chef to Visit Oliveto

for a one-night-only dinner

Tuesday, August 20th

See mega-bonus below

In a pre-visit conversation between New York’s Chef Justin Smillie (Upland Restaurant) and Oliveto’s Chef Brian Griffith, a brief preliminary menu was laid out to give prospective diners a general idea of the prix fixe dinner to be served August 20th. Brian gave Justin a picture of which produce stands out in this, the peak of our summer season, from some of the best of our local farmers. Justin chose general items that excited him, and the two chefs sketched out the menu that follows:

Local chicories, anchovy, crispy bread, and hard cheese

Caramelized sweet rice (possibly with seafood)

Roasted heirloom tomatoes and herbs

And…Justin’s famous duck, wood-fired, probably breast and sausage, with nectarines

Favas, sprouted lentils, charred red onions, summer squash

Dessert tbd

$70 prix fixe

This menu will be offered alongside our regular à la carte menu, but we’ll ask that those ordering Justin’s prix fixe meal make it an order for the whole table. We will provide substitutions for vegetarians.

Mega Bonus—Randall Grahm

In the spirit of properly presenting California, we asked Randall Grahm, Bonny Doon Winery, for something really special for the dinner on the 20th. For several years he’s been pursuing a true California wine, not imitative of European wines. This is immensely complicated, but that’s Randall. His extraordinary effort is well described in this New Yorker article from last year. So for our dinner, we’ll serve his 2017 Grenache Blanc/Gris from Popelouchum, which Randall thinks “is pretty exemplary,” and is in very limited supply. As a 13-year-old first-time visitor from Boston yelled out my sun roof as we drove across the Golden Gate Bridge, “This is historical!” Randall is also finding us his most dramatic Cigare Volant, his exceptional Rhône, to complement the dinner.

This is one night only, reservations still available after 8 PM

Reserve now on line or call: 510 547-5356

Oliveto.com

Announcing Whole Hog Dinners, March 14-17

Photo by Newman Farm.

If you know us well, you know we’re big on pig, and every year we get positively geeky about it with a series of whole animal, nose-to-tail dinners. Because of Chef Jonah’s enduring interest in top-notch heritage animals, this tradition of coming together to dine on impeccably raised pork never gets old – there’s always something new to share.

For this year’s series we’ll be offering whole roast pig. Each night we’ll be featuring a different breed from a different farm. It will be roasted in our China Box (La Caja China) – a wooden container lined with marine-grade aluminum that renders a whole pig mouthwateringly tender on the inside and crispy on the outside. Some of this will be offered in a Cuban-inspired dish. Swoons should ensue.

A selection of house-cured porky delights will also be in the offing: salami piccante and finocchiona, as well as coppa, mortadella, and coppa which are made from whole muscles. These will be made with a Berkshire pig from Newman Farm.

All in all, this will be a smaller, more focused dinner that will make it easier to try everything. The full menu is in the works, and we’ll have more details for you soon. In the meantime, reserving now guarantees a good seating time for a glorious dinner.

Whole Hog Dinners
March 14-17, 2017

Reserve