Puglia dinner at Oliveto
Did anyone go last year? Care to comment?
Thanks.
lintygmom
Oct 04, 2007 06:20PM
On GameSpot:
Breaking into the industry
2 replies so far
« Back to the San Francisco Bay Area Board
Went last night.
Great:
Charcoal Grilled Monterey Squid stuffed with Fresh Shelling Beans and Mint - the squid was fantastic. The stuffing surprised me - bread crumbs and some sort of cheese along with the beans - the stuffed squid was topped with a sweet-ish chili sauce that strongly resembled sriracha, and served on lightly dressed frisee. So... probably not so authentically Puglian. But authentically delicious.
Figs with ricotta ice cream, almonds, wild fennel pollen - the ice cream had just enough salt to amplify all the accompanying flavors - this was a great combination.
Good (both were a little too aggressively salted for my taste)
Tubettini with tuna, fresh tomato, olives, capers, chili - essentially a refined puttanesca. On one hand, I enjoyed being able to taste the individual components of the sauce, but as the pasta and sauce were already well seasoned, bites with whole olives, capers, and chunks of cured tuna ratcheted the salt level too high for me. I could have eaten bowls of just the pasta and tomato sauce alone, though.
Fish Soup of Gallipolina "in the manner of the Widow" - this strongly resembled the cioppino I'd had at the Oceanic Dinner. Not a soup at all, it was a small pile of seafood (spot prawns, a scallop, different kinds of fish) and croutons in a a very reduced tomato sauce.
Disappointing:
Crudo of albacore with bottarga - the crudo was good, well seasoned, and the bottarga was great quality, but putting the two of them together didn't work. I ended up separating them, and eating the albacore first, because the aftertaste of the bottarga overwhelmed the flavor of the albacore.
Spicy soppressata Pugliese with cow milk burrata and chanterelle mushroom conserva - the burrata was served very cold, and cut. Other burratas I've had seem to shade from solid on the outside to liquid on the inside... this was like a truffle, with a hard outside and creamy middle. The outside was very rubbery and not all that tasty. The soppressata was good (a looser, fresher sausage than I'd expected) as were the mushrooms, but it was hard to make up for the disappointment of the burrata.
Permalink | Reply
We went last night with friends so got to taste quite a bit. Some of the food was outstanding, like the conchiglia stuffed with ricotta and lemon zest in a fresh tomato sauce. I was a bit concerned ordering this, fearing it would be dessert-like but it wasn't. The flavors played very well off each other and came off savory but super light. The polpettini fritti, little fried lamb meatballs with rosemary and lemon were tasty but not overwhelming. The cod appetizer, served room temperature, was very tasty to me but the person who ordered it wasn't pleased so I had to give up a lot of my pumpkin and olive turnover with honey to keep her from sulking--that turnover was very tasty, served with a little side of mache, I believe, but not so big for sharing. It was actually so good that my husband, who likes neither pumpkin nor olive, loved it. The other appetizer we got was the mussels and they were very nice. Aside from the conchiglia above, our other pasta dishes were the tubetti with tuna--nice but not as good as I've had homemade at an Italian friend's house, whipped up on the spur of the moment, and the cavatelli with fagioli tondini and wild mushrooms, which was pretty tasteless and with cavatelli overdoing the al dente quite a bit. I agree with you many things were too salty. My husband also got the fish "soup" and was woefully disappointed. It was very salty and the waiter didn't warn him, a soup lover, that it wasn't going to be soup but seafood and fresh fried croutons in tomato sauce.
Still, we had a good time and they ordered a wine that was delicious at $18/glass. It came from Puglia but, unfortunately, I didn't get the name!
Permalink | Reply