Author: jean komatsu
Last saved by: ENU

Giovanni (aka Cafe Giovanni)
2420 Shattuck Ave. @Durant Ave., Berkeley, CA
http://originalgiovanni.com/menu/sp-menu
Review date: March 2013

I ran across mention of this old-time Italian restaurant on Chowhound – not so much for food as for a comfortable, relaxed and quiet dining experience. Intrigued, I checked out the menu and Yelp reviews, which varied enormously. We decided we would take the chance for our weekly dinner out with Inez, since she enjoys Italian food.

This being Easter break, I was willing to drive into Berkeley's downtown and figured parking would be plentiful. And it was, just as the Christmas/New Year's break got us easy parking for dinner at Five down the street. There were multiple spaces available, and even when we finished dinner at Giovanni and left, there were still a number of empty parking slots. 

What a difference it makes when 15,000 students aren't looking for Happy Hour drinks, LOL.

The moment you step into Giovanni, you know it's old. Restaurants are simply not this large and spacious any longer. It's even bigger than Revival, also down the street, and Revival is one of the biggest restaurants in downtown Berkeley. This is not an extra-wide building, but it's enough to hold a full galley kitchen and a horseshoe bar (with lots of tables and seats) opposite one another, as well as a wide center aisle that doesn't make one feel squeezed in even if someone's passing you in the other direction. 

The space is very long, with enough room for an enormous gas firepit in the center of the main dining room. These are located past the kitchen/bar area, with plush banquette seating on both long walls, comfortable aisles between the many tables, and a semi-private second dining room in the back.

All this, and the red-and-black wrought iron décor, make it clear you're in old-time Cal-Italian land. The only question is, are you in the tired old Il Pescatore/Oakland arena, or the solidly reliable De La Torres/Pleasanton camp?

A tiny, fragile old man greeted us and took us to a table. After that, the service was brisk and efficient from two young Latina waitresses. There are no busboys, but they handled the floor very well. Whoever trains Giovanni's staff does a good job.

We ordered a fair amount of food, figuring we would take home leftovers. We started with both the fried mozzarella and fried oysters. Surprisingly, the oysters are cheaper than the fried calamari. Since we got seven oysters for $8, there must be a whole lot of calamari in their $11 order. The oysters are coated in a breadcrumb crust and deep-fried, somewhat overbrowned and not super-fresh. But they were a decent size, and the pesto served with them was one of the better fresh pestos we've had.

The mozzarella has the same crust but was golden brown instead of dark brown. It was served with a plain marinara. Carlos loved it – he loves just about any and every fried mozzarella stick in existence. I thought it was indifferent quality, cut too big, and boring. I love fried cheese as much as anyone – we are not only carnivores but we go through a fair amount of cheese every week – but this just didn't impress me. It tasted like the cheapest quality block mozzarella from Lucky's or Pak 'N' Save.

The Yelp reviewers had warned that the salads are big here. Only a couple are offered in half sizes, so I opted for the Caesar, which is one of them. You can get anchovies added, and if you like those salty little fish as much as we do, Giovanni's is a bargain even though you have to cut the filets up. It's $2.50 for the addition, but you get four long filets of very good quality. These are anchovies packed in oil, meaty and soft with rich flavor, unlike cheaper anchovy filets that are stiff and short, tasting only of salt.

The romaine was not baby but not mature either – is there such a thing as adolescent lettuce? – chopped up with a tasteless creamy dressing and average quality Parmesan shreds that tasted commercial instead of artisanal. But the anchovies made this yummy; it's a real shame that the rest of the ingredients didn't come up to their level.

Inez ordered the veal scallopini, which comes with a side of plain linguine and some steamed carrots and broccoli. She ate most of it, but brought about a third of it home. She said it was good, nothing impressive.

I ordered the evening special, which was gnocchi in a Bolognese sauce. Carlos and I were split in our opinions: He liked the gnocchi but not the sauce, whereas I liked the sauce – except for an overdose of salt in it – but not so much the gnocchi. The gnocchi were definitely housemade, since no factory in the world would be producing them in such irregular sizes and shapes. But there was too much flour in them, making for a heavier, stickier gnocchi instead of the ethereal resilient pillows I prefer. Carlos thought they were fine, however.

The Bolognese is a marinara sauce with the additions of meat and milk. The milk tenderizes the ground beef, reducing the need for hours of simmering. There was also chopped Italian sausage filling in it, with its unmistakable fennel seed flavor. If there hadn't been that excess of salt, it would have been one of the better renditions of Bolognese sauce I've encountered. It was just over the edge, as if someone had shaken the salt shaker five times instead of only four, while stirring the cooking pot.

So far everything had been adequate but flawed. The reason Giovanni gets that extra half-star is for the non-Italian but amazing Jambalaya Linguini. A modest bowl is filled with a mixture of seafood: shrimp, mussels, calamari. An excellent spicy andouille sausage is sliced up, along with impressive-looking but mild fresh green chile slices. The pasta is cooked but not mushy, nor is it the unpleasant hard-in-the-middle al dente style that has become so popular in bistros that should know better. The sauce is a marinara richly flavored by the seafood and sausage, spiced up by a good level of heat, with the salt kept strictly within bounds: just enough but not too much. 

Carlos proclaimed this better than any jambalaya he'd gotten at a restaurant, and I agreed with him. The asopao at Cãna Cuban/Oakland is really good, but much as he likes rice, pasta is his true favorite starch. 

This dish is so not Italian, but if you enjoy a spicy seafood and sausage pasta we have to say it is honestly worth the trip just to eat this one dish. It is definitely a 'chef's special' entree, the kind of thing that is there because somebody in the back loves to eat it. 

We have no idea who that might be. The owners are still the Italian family that founded the restaurant, and the chefs (who continually walk back and forth past the firepit tables to get supplies out of the back storage room) looked to be an Italian, a Chinese, and a Latino. 

The dessert menu listed the ingredients for their tiramisu, and it had all the right ones: ladyfingers, espresso, mascarpone, Amaretto, and chocolate. Intrigued, I tried it and found it was close – not quite enough mascarpone, weak on the liqueur, but the flavors were pretty good. The biggest minus was the chocolate. It's the least important ingredient in the tiramisu, but this was abysmal quality unsweetened chocolate, grated generously over the top. It had no flavor whatsoever. A small chunk had fallen on the plate and I chewed on it. It tasted like....nothing. Not even a hint of chocolate or earthiness. It was like crunching on solidified air.

Carlos ordered the cannoli, which comes two short tubes to a plate, one end of each dipped in chocolate and filled with a mixture of mascarpone and whipped cream. They were good, not great, due to an indifferent quality puff pastry.

Giovanni doesn't have espresso, but the coffee was freshly-brewed and decent. Once it sits around, it's just as bad as any Grade C beans, but they do make it to an adequate strength.

There is sadly nothing remarkable about Giovanni's food, save for that surprising jambalaya pasta. Like Il Pescatore, this place is tired and suffering from both cost-cutting and the loss of a knowledgeable clientele that has mostly died off. Giovanni is left with bargain hunting Gen Y's looking for that one "nice night out" but who don't know an Alfredo from a Carbonara, and an assortment of Boomers either searching for someplace quiet or looking for a menu that three generations will accept.

It's a shame Giovanni can't figure out how to update without losing their traditions. You'd think with the return of comfort food menus, that places like this and Il Pescatore could work it to their advantage. That pesto dip shows they know their way around the food processor, just as the jambalaya shows they know how to handle their pasta and their seafood when given the chance. But despite the brisk cheerfulness of their waitstaff, this place has all the energy of The Dead Zone. It's tired and staggering towards the inevitable finish line, unable to pick up its third or fourth wind. 

There's no pride or passion in these dishes, except for that one unusual pasta. The kitchen is just going through the motions, one day's work much like the next, and the next after that. Giovanni Restaurant isn't excited about itself any longer, so the customers aren't going to feel any differently.

Three people, dinner: two starters, one half-salad, three entrees, two desserts, three beverages, with tip was $134.