Title: Zut
Author: jean komatsu
Last saved by: Owner

Zut! In Berkeley, CA  - update, lunch
http://www.zutonfourth.com/lunch.html
Review date: Dec 24, 2014
(previous reviews appended below)

Carlos and I took our visitors, my brother James and wife Yuka, to lunch at Zut! on Fourth St. It's not the best restaurant – an adequate second tier, at best – but the service is good, the dining room pleasant (actually better at night than in the daytime). Yuka doesn't come up to visit as often as James has, due to her work schedule, so we thought they could spend some time walking around the Fourth St. stores to amuse themselves after lunch.

I began with the cauliflower soup, a nice purée with a dollop of crème fraiche, topped with crispy whole wheat croutons and a swirl of truffle oil. The kitchen hadn't stirred the crème fraiche in, which allowed me to give Carlos a taste. He dislikes crème fraiche, so after he tried a spoonful, I stirred it up to blend everything together. Nothing Zut makes is going to rock your world, but like everything here, it's pleasant enough and satisfying.

James had the chicken brodo, a clear soup with tiny ancini pasta. He said it was a basic  chicken-with-vegetables-and-pasta soup, not exciting but adequate.

Carlos began with the lamb meatballs, which come in a loose tomato sauce flavored with onions, mint, and finely grated Pecorino. They are small, but very good, aggressively flavored with thyme and oregano. He said they would have been great over pasta, and we probably should have asked for some bread to soak up the sauce.

James ordered the chopped salad, a nicely sized but not humongous plate of endive and radicchio, tossed with salame, blue cheese, beets, and pistachios. He thought it was quite good, if somewhat more modest in size than expected. He said the beets added a nice touch of sweetness to what was an Italian-style salad.

Carlos, Yuka and I all chose the burger, which comes on a brioche-style bun of medium quality. The patty doesn't quite reach the edges of the bun, but overall (again) is decent if not exciting. I loved the thinly sliced, very tart fresh cucumber pickle, which was a nice touch. I'm never in love with big wedges of dill pickles, although Carlos loves them.

The four of us ordered two pumpkin bread puddings, described as coming with bourbon caramel sauce and whipped cream. We were all surprised to find a really hefty slug of bourbon was in the sauce, most definitely not burned off. Carlos and I loved it, even though the bread pudding, with its diced pumpkin bread, wasn't as creamy as we like to see. 

The coffee is adequate, but the espresso blend sucks. My cappuccino was awful, an excess of grounds and a blend that tasted too much like Tully's to please me. We loathe Tully's coffee and try to avoid it whenever possible.

Overall, Zut is consistent. It's not a great restaurant, and has even slipped down a little from when it first opened. It's pleasant, but not exciting – one of those places you choose either because you're in the area to begin with, or because you can't get into your first choice. We do think dinner is better than lunch, however. Their whole petrale sole is an excellent dish, but not available at lunch.

James picked up the tab, so we have no prices this time.

Zut! in Berkeley, CA – update, dinner
Review date: December 2012
(previous reviews appended below)

We last ate at Zut! on June 2011, where the food at our lunch was slightly below the level of a previous dinner. It was still good enough to reach the A- level, however, thanks to an outstanding fruit cobbler. This remains one of the handsomest dining rooms in the East Bay, and the holiday lights on Fourth Street, paid for by the many merchants along this upscale shopping district, are a lovely sight.

We met our friends Vivien and Pete for an after-Christmas dinner. I'll report only on what Carlos and I ordered. He started with the grilled octopus salad, which came with butter beans, oranges, kalamata olives, and butter lettuce. Although a little overdone on the grill, the octopus had good smoky flavor and was tender. He liked this, although we both agreed it's not the best version we've ever had.

For his entree Carlos picked the whole petrale sole, one of Zut!'s specialties. When they first opened it was deboned tableside, but it is now done in the kitchen before being brought out. It's still an impressive sight, an oval platter with the entire sole laid out (sans head). The potatoes and escarole come on a side dish, as the fish fills up the entire platter. It has a nice lemon butter sauce on it, and Carlos gave us all a taste before squeezing even more fresh lemon on top.

I chose the lamb chops, three cute miniature porterhouses of U.S. lamb. The first one had a little too much salt sprinkled over it, but the other two were fine and properly medium rare. I heartily approved of the accompaniment of wild rice, toasted walnuts, and what was listed as spinach, but wasn't. The latter looked and tasted more like either Malabar or New Zealand spinach. Zut! did a good job on both the meat and its accompaniments. I love wild rice, but neither Carlos nor Inez are fond of it so restaurants are usually the only place I get to eat it. I liked this dish very much.

We both opted to try dessert. Carlos picked the Arkansas Black apple crisp a la mode, which was not as good as the fruit cobbler we'd had last time, but still better than average. My Muscovado pot du crème, a fancy version of butterscotch pudding, was about the same level – better than average although not the best (that honor goes to Shuna Lydon, pastry chef at the long-gone MoNo/Oakland, who has returned to NYC). Muscovado is a lightly refined sugar with a fairly high percentage of molasses, giving the pot du crème that slight metallic undertone that regular brown sugar lacks (a discussion of the different sugars is at: http://bakingbites.com/2008/01/what-are-demerara-turbinado-and-muscovado-sugars/). It came with two ginger shortbread cookies, but I was too full to eat them. The pot du crème wasn't super-rich, but even so it was filling.

Coffee was well below average this time. The regular was acidic and harsh; the decaf slightly better. Service was good – professional and reasonably well paced, although they were a little slow to refill the water glasses.

We don't consider Zut! the equal of Five (which we need to return to, since it's been a while), but it makes a good contrast to Cafe Rouge and Ochame, both of which are virtually next door to Zut!. If you're looking for a pleasant restaurant to have lunch with friends and don't want to fight the traffic in downtown Berkeley, coming down to Fourth Street has always been one of our favorite alternatives. Just watch out for those meter maids, who are diligent around the area in the daytime!

Four people, dinner: two starters, one glass of wine, four entrees, three desserts, four beverages, with tip was $212, a reasonable tab considering the amount and quality of food.

Zut! in Berkeley, update lunch
Review date: June 2011
(previous review appended below)

We enjoyed our dinner here in February 2011, so returned for lunch with a couple of friends, one of whom is vegetarian (she does eat fish, however). I checked the menus on the web and selected Zut! as having the widest range of flexitarian choices. It was a lovely day with the unseasonal heat spell having finally broken. This is still one of the prettiest urban dining rooms in the East Bay.

Carlos selected the beet salad and the lentil soup as his starters. I ordered the roasted asparagus with feta and dill (same dish we had when we came for dinner) and a fried brussel sprout dish with garlic, bacon, pecorino and lemon, which we could all share.

Yet again we ran into the odd issue of a waiter trying to bring all the starters at once, which left Carlos juggling both salad and soup at the same time. We can only assume that the waitstaffs are now so focused on the idea of everybody sharing starters as small plates, that the idea of soup being an entirely separate course is a concept no one can envision any longer.

At any rate, the asparagus was lovely, and the fried brussel sprouts even won over Carlos. They were extra small tender babies, halved and pan-fried a golden brown, with crispy bacon and finely grated Pecorino. A lemon half wrapped in cheesecloth was on the side to squeeze over, which I did. If you go and they have this on the menu, it is a must-have.

Carlos was disappointed in the soup, he said it was relatively tasteless, with an uninteresting broth.

Both Justin and Micheline, our guests, opted for the halibut with green Puy lentils, which they said was excellent. Carlos got the orecchiette pasta, which came in a cream sauce with bacon and peas. He found it a little flat, as it had some spiciness but not enough salt, so he asked for more hot sauce and drowned it in Tabasco.

I opted for the cheeseburger, which would have been better had they salted the meat. This is common nowadays, but it isn't optimal. The bun was good, a bit too large for the patty, and the dry Jack they used for topping was relatively flavorless. There is the option of ordering bleu cheese, which would be a better choice for this burger. The fries are lightly batter-coated; they start out crisp but end up softening by the time you're two-thirds through.

We ended by sharing the apricot-raspberry cobbler with whipped cream. This was excellent, one of the better cobblers I've had in recent memory. The kitchen didn't drown the fruit in sugar, leaving it tart and fresh-tasting, and the cobbler topping was a tender cake dough, just the way I like it. Micheline and Justin had never had a cobbler in this style before, and loved it.

This lunch was not as good as our dinner had been, and there were some issues with service. Our waiter was very nice, but we kept having to ask for water, which was irritating. On the good side, prices are much less expensive at lunch than at dinner, although there were more misses from the kitchen this time.

Four people: Five starters, four entrees, one dessert, two beverages, with tip was a moderate $145.

Zut! On Fourth
1820 Fourth St., Berkeley
http://www.zutonfourth.com/menu.html
Review date: February 2011

Zut! replaced Eccolo, which we visited twice, the last time in mid-2009. We liked it much better the second time, but the recession was proving too much for them. They closed two weeks after our second dinner, so I never sent out the update review.

Zut! kept most of Eccolo's décor, which is a good thing because it's one of the better spaces in the East Bay – as attractive in sunny daylight as it is at night. Unlike many restaurants that seem to think it's romantic to make it so dark one can't read the menu, Zut!'s dark wood tones are properly lit at night, just enough to be warm and inviting but without glare. 

The bar area, preserved from Eccolo days, is one of the best-looking designs around, an actual positive to the dining room instead of the negative it so often is. It's at one end of the restaurant, so it doesn't interfere with diners coming and going. The room's acoustics hold down sound a little, so although it feels energetic even when the dining room is only partially full, the noise doesn't bounce around uncomfortably as it does in so many places.

They've also reduced the number of tables, which is an improvement as Eccolo had crammed too many tables. The service is good, although there weren't many diners due to the rainy weather. The menu is fairly simple, and except for the pizzas, at first glance it seems very similar to Cafe Rouge, one of our favorites which is right around the corner from Zut!

In execution, however, Zut! Is a little more complex, a little more risk-taking – and so their highs are higher and their lows are lower, along with correspondingly higher prices than Café Rouge. 

We shared three of the starters – chorizo-stuffed squid, grilled asparagus, and salt cod fritters. All three were excellent. The squid was just a holder for a very spicy chorizo filling, atop a heap of Bloomsdale spinach that was even better. The squid was very tender and barely cooked. The spinach, an heirloom variety that has to be cooked to be edible due to its thicker leaves, was a marvelous saute of olive oil, preserved lemon, sea salt, and chile oil. Carlos didn’t like this as much as I did, as he felt the chorizo overwhelmed the squid.

The salt cod (bacalhau) croquettes were more to Carlos' taste than mine – I think La Salette/Sonoma's version was better. However, the accompaniments were nothing short of brilliant, and where Zut! edges past Café Rouge. There was a spicy red bell pepper relish on top of the croquettes, and a few leaves of spicy arugula accented what was the best housemade aioli I've ever had. 

The asparagus was six good-sized spears. It was nice to see the kitchen used thicker spears. Like Zut!, I think thicker spears work better for grilling, instead of the pencil-thin spears many bistros use. They were nicely paired with crumbles of a high-quality feta and fresh dill – an unusual but delicious combination.

Carlos tried the tomato soup, which was an excellent vegetable broth with surprisingly good tomato dice melted into it. Considering the time of year, this was possibly the result of high-quality canned San Marzano tomatoes. This is a good thing, much better than using the tasteless mushy hothouse varieties currently available. 

I ordered the beet salad, a combination of beets and Cara Cara orange slices, sprinkled with a crumbled dry farmer's cheese, finely minced spearmint, and balsamic vinegar. It was a small serving, with as many orange slices as beet batons. It wasn't the best beet salad I've ever had, but certainly wasn't the worst, and I liked the unusual lift of mint. 

Inez ordered the petrale sole, and all of us were surprised that she received a whole fish, with a beautifully crisped skin and deboned in the kitchen. It was a substantial serving, and she finished almost all of it.

Carlos ordered a pizza, which was a generous size of pepperoni and mushrooms. It was a little light on the pepperoni, but the quality was wonderful. This was an artisanal pepperoni, not the usual commercial quality brand. The mushrooms were mixed wild mushrooms, and very tasty. It wasn't as good a pizza as the one he had at Gather/Berkeley, but he classed it as one of the better ones. Its most serious fault was that the dough was stretched a little too thin, so although it was properly cooked, the slices sagged badly.

I ordered the rib eye, which was one of the better steaks we've gotten anywhere. Although only a 1”-thick cut, it was perfectly medium rare, well crusted, and only a slight excess of salt marred it. The quality was excellent. The promised kale, however, was subbed by indifferent Chinese gai choy, and unfortunately the horseradish mashed potatoes were far too strongly flavored for my taste, so I left them untouched.

Carlos and I shared the chocolate bread pudding for two, which was soft and moist as we like it, but the layering of chocolate was too sweet and uneven in coverage. It was good but not really memorable. We both ordered Americanos (regular coffee with a shot of espresso added), his regular and mine decaf, which were properly strong and rich Italian roast, a good offset to the bread pudding.

Zut! does things just differently enough from its nearby competitors to warrant making it onto our “A” list – or maybe an A- or a B+. It has the same kind of feel as Hudson, but the food is a little more creative and the ingredients quality is a touch above. And of course, it's only half as noisy as Hudson, meaning you can actually have a conversation without screaming at one another.

Zut! lacks the more intense regional focus of Riva Cucina and the polished professionalism of Five. It doesn’t do everything well, but good enough (except for the overdose of horseradish) overall, with some dishes approaching superb. It's got the atmosphere and the menu that today's diners seem to want. We want to go back to Hudson to try their pizza, but overall I’d rather come here or to Café Rouge, Venus, and La Note, which I’d classify as Zut!’s Berkeley peers. 

Five starters (which was one too many; most of my steak came home with us), three entrees, a double dessert, and three beverages with tip came to $166.