Title: June 21, 2013
Author: jean komatsu
Last saved by: ENU

Hopscotch in Oakland, CA – update, dinner
http://hopscotchoakland.com/menus/
Review date: June 2014
(previous review appended below)

Retirement is a wonderful thing. It gives people like me way too much time to read, as well as write, about food. These days there is so much written about food on the Net, you could probably fill up a full working day merely reading what's been published about your metro area during any 24-hour period (and much too often I do, LOL). 

The good part is that we occasionally find out about special menu events in time to actually take advantage of them. This isn't as easy as it sounds. For one thing, we prefer not to be driving over any bridges late at night if we can avoid it. And many times, a special menu isn't that interesting. Or in the case of one restaurant we happen to like, is often priced with a wine pairing which doesn't offer a discount if you refuse it (we seldom drink).

In June 2013 we visited Hopscotch for lunch with Inez, only to experience an unremitting disaster. We had heard so much praise about this place, but a basic menu of fried chicken, burger and fries, and fish 'n' chips were uniformly mediocre. It was some of the worst comfort food we'd ever had, which is saying a lot. Carl's Jr. and Wendy's have better food, and they're terrible.

The only item that impressed us was the housemade ginger-limeade, which was great but not enough to draw us back in again.

Our review panned them, but we continued to hear praise about their food. We noted that almost all this praise was for dinner, not lunch. This year Hopscotch began staying open seven days a week, plus serving brunch. I thought it possible we had encountered a less-than-well-trained line cook, rather than chef-owner Kyle Itani.

About three months ago I started thinking Hopscotch deserved a chance to show us what it could do for dinner. Fortuitously, on June 11^th the Diablo Dish e-news mentioned Hopscotch was planning a special prix fixe for one week to celebrate its second anniversary. 

Diablo Dish described it as: "a special prix fixe menu for two featuring a kanpachi starter, 20-ounce veal chop with gnocchi and celery root croquette, and yuzu meringue pie for dessert, all for $80."

Oooooooooooooohhhh...veal chop!

I love a veal chop. I first encountered it at the old MacArthur Park restaurant in SF's Jackson Square, and immediately fell in love. Disdaining the famed BBQ ribs, I ordered the veal chop on every subsequent visit to MacArthur Park. When it was eventually bumped off the menu, I couldn't find any other nearby restaurant that offered it. Like foie gras today, much was being made at the time of the "cruelty" of slaughtering calves for veal, despite the fact that US veal is almost never true milk-fed veal as one finds in Europe, but instead is baby beef. 

For many years it's been difficult to even find veal in a Bay Area restaurant. Steakhouses stopped offering it, and only rarely would one of the upscale French or Italian restaurants put a veal chop on the menu. To this day even Bouchee, our favorite Carmel restaurant, can't get people to order it (they've since switched to a rack of veal, which we ordered on our recent visit April 2014). 

I showed Hopscotch's prix fixe menu to Carlos, who agreed it sounded worth a try. We made a reservation for the first night of the prix fixe. Hopscotch is a noisy restaurant, a small triangle shape with high ceilings, a large bar, and hard surfaces. Choosing Monday was perfect: there was hardly anyone there so Carlos and I could talk without having to scream over the table.

The prix fixe turned out to be a larger menu than DDish had indicated, as follows:

Start:
Kanpachi Tiradito: lime, ginger, red onion, red and yellow peppers
At first Carlos didn't even realize there was raw fish in this. The young ginger and red onion were fine shreds scattered over and under the thick-cut fish slices, while the bell peppers were separate purées underpinning the food. The dressing flavors were bright but not harsh, both onions and ginger surprisingly mild. There was hardly any salt that we could taste, and we were happy that it turned out this was fairly consistent all the way through the meal. The kanpachi was very fresh and excellent; it's a great fish raw or cooked.

Little Green Salad: cress, endive, cherry tomatoes, tamari-sesame dressing
The mixed baby greens were cut lengthwise with two types of halved cherry tomatoes and a lovely dressing. The latter didn't taste like tamari to me. It seemed like crystals of salt with toasted sesame oil, in just the right amount. Whatever was used, the dressing was very light with no acid, just the way we like it. Carlos remarked it isn't very often he would call a salad "refreshing", but this one qualified, and I agreed.

Tenpura Okra: sesame salt
Okra fritters by any name are always welcome in our eyes, although the "sesame salt" seemed to be all ground toasted sesame meal and no salt. But the fritters were in need of something, so instead of asking for a salt shaker, we swiped the okra halves through the bell pepper purées that came with the kanpachi salad. Carlos and I love okra, although there were a couple of older, slightly tough-skinned ones. But most were young and tender, and we finished them off with pleasure.

Main: 
Veal chop: 20 oz., burnt shallot compound butter, grilled shishitos
The waitress didn't ask how we wanted the chop, and it came rare. Not purple, but a good deep pink rare. Carlos is fine with this, and I'm the same when it comes to veal. This wasn't the best quality chop: the cut was a bit uneven and the meat was as close to being a reddish-beef steak instead of pale-pink veal as it could get. Still, the more delicate flavor of veal was there, as well as a nice juiciness. We pushed most of the compound butter aside; it was tasty but we preferred to savor the flavor of the veal without too much in the way. The grilled shishitos were good, but too similar to the okra although they lacked a batter coating. We ate a couple, but left most of them.

Baked Gnocchi 'n' cheese: sweet corn
This was undimpled but good housemade gnocchi, boiled and then pan-fried. There wasn't any cheese that we could taste, but there were fine shreds of sautéed red onion along with some indifferent yellow corn. It wasn't a great side, but it didn't upstage the veal, which we appreciated.

Cauliflower Croquettes
These were two breadcrumbed and deep-fried balls of mashed potato with some (not a lot of) chopped cauliflower, set in a small puddle of puréed cauliflower. Again, this was mild but tasty and didn't upstage the veal. This and the gnocchi weren't quite perfect, but all three dishes on the main course complemented one another very well.

Dessert:
Yuzu Meringue Pie
A square of shortbread-crusted delight: an intense citrus-y yuzu filling with its echoes of lemon and grapefruit, topped with a housemade marshmallow meringue with a well-browned top. It's been a long time since I had a 7-minute frosting, but it seemed very similar in texture and flavor. Neither Carlos nor I like marshmallows, but we do appreciate a good citrus meringue pie. This was a very fine version. 

Donuts & Cream 
We are not doughnut lovers. I grew up on homemade beignet and crullers, one of the few desserts my mother would ever (rarely) make. The first time I tasted a commercial donut, I wasn't rude enough to spit it out but I don't think I even finished half of it. Classic recipes called for shaking them in a brown paper bag filled with sugar or cinnamon-sugar because the dough itself should be barely sweetened – not even as sweet as Jewish challah.

These perfect "donut holes" were just right: a pair of beauties served warm, topped with a light dusting of Ceylon cinnamon-sugar, then served with the most luscious coffee cream imaginable. It was like thick melted Hagen Daz coffee ice cream, whipped to a meringue texture. The donuts were just slightly sweet, tender with a texture in-between a cake and a biscuit. Yum!

So often restaurants fall down on one course or another – Artisan Bistro/Lafayette comes to mind, where in the last two years the entrées have definitely fallen a level below where they were previously. Rivoli/Berkeley is another, where the entrées have always been less interesting than the starters. But Hopscotch was consistent all the way through, no small feat for such a tiny restaurant. As mentioned, this excellent dinner was so opposite our disappointing lunch, one could imagine they were two different restaurants.

We received very good service, but as there was only one other table occupied and two singles sitting at the bar, it would be more surprising if we hadn't. The food whizzed out of the kitchen, each course appearing as soon as the dirty dishes were cleared, which was promptly done. It didn't feel as if they were hurrying us, I think it was simply the kitchen had almost no other food orders to fill. 

Carlos and I really enjoyed this dinner. He liked the comfort food menu – the regular menu was also full of alluring choices, unlike the more limited lunch menu we had seen last year I appreciated having a veal chop again, even if it was perilously close to a beef rib-eye, as well as the creative choices in assembling the prix fixe menu as a cohesive whole. 

Everything went well together, the courses segueing in what felt like a natural progression of flavors. Unlike our lunch, which had been leaden, greasy and heavy, dinner was full of light, natural flavors. If the veal chop hadn't been very slightly oversalted – maybe a too-big pinch of fleur de sel - it would have qualified as a 4.5 star meal, a notable achievement for a three-star neighborhood bistro. Add in the modest prix fixe price, and we felt we received a bargain meal.

We enjoyed Mockingbird a couple of weeks ago, which is just one block down San Pablo Ave. Mockingbird's dining room is much more comfortable; airier and with tables less crammed in. But Hopscotch's food, at least at dinner, wins hands-down, at least this time. I asked Carlos what he liked and what he didn't, and he replied he liked everything about the meal. He doesn't often say that! 

He agrees that Hopscotch is back on our "A" list, at least for dinner. We'll look forward to returning and trying some of the regular dinner menu items, too. 

But we'll avoid coming for lunch [smile].

Two people, a prix fixe dinner: three beverages, with tip was $117.

Hopscotch
1915 San Pablo Ave. @19^th St., Oakland, CA
http://hopscotchoakland.com/menus/ 
Review date: June 2013

The revitalized Uptown neighborhood technically borders the northern edge of Downtown Oakland. In reality it's becoming the new Downtown. Anchored by major employers like Clorox Corp., BART, and Kaiser, it already has a well-established public transit hub. In the last year the area has been given an upscale push from the luxe Broadway Grand development, which wisely changed its boring condo-only plans to a mixed-use plan that promises to turn this into a real neighborhood – the first true 21^st century urban vision for what's long been a blighted area.

It won't be an easy transition – it's taken almost two decades just to get half of the Jack London Square area gentrified – but Uptown's revival has already brought in a number of well-regarded restaurants, with plans for half a dozen more to come.

One of these newer restaurants is Hopscotch. It has gotten a whole lot of love from Internet reviewers since opening almost exactly one year ago. Parking being what it is these days in the Uptown area, we decided to take a chance on finding street parking and headed out for lunch with my MIL Inez.

A modest isosceles triangle of an updated diner, Hopscotch comes with true chrome-legged red leatherette stools around a short L-shaped counter. The floor is a classic checkerboard, but not of black and white vinyl tiles. Instead there's the sustainable/green use of cork tiles, dyed black or left natural tan. The diner-style chairs have thick comfortable seats, but the traditional metal-edged Formica tabletops lost out in the design column to sustainable wood. The ceiling is high; the noise, despite the relatively few number of seats, is thunderous. If the room was bigger the decibels would probably approach the ear-splitting levels of Hudson (a restaurant we avoided after a one-hour dinner left our ears ringing).

The menu is limited to the upscaled comfort food so popular today that has driven vegans and vegetarians to the wall. A veritable blizzard of oysters, chicken wings, oxtails, and chicken liver buries the lone salad in the starter column. I'm not going to count the vegetables tempura since carnivorous eaters like Carlos are suckers for anything deep-fried, even when it's a green bean. Under the mains, healthy eating is limited to a vinaigrette on the Cobb salad and the obligatory vegetable patty. Except for those, it's fat and/or meat all the way.

On a recent Chowhound discussion thread on East Bay burgers, Hopscotch had won a number of plaudits for their burger, so I was looking forward to trying it. I'm a burger lover (is there anyone who grew up in the Midwest who isn't, LOL). But I don't really care if it's griddled or fried. I don't care if the buns came from Orowheat or were made by somebody's grandmother in the back who grew the wheat, ground the grains into flour the day before and then lovingly kneaded the dough by hand for a triple-rise. I'm not impressed by grass-fed claims and the CA style of unsalted ground beef makes me both frustrated and furious. 

I want three things from my burger. First, I want it salted beforehand, because salting afterwards never really works. Second, I want it to cover the bun, no matter what bun is used, because I'm paying someone else a fair amount of money for something I make very well at home. If that means the kitchen has to trim the bread not only on top but along the sides, then that's what I expect them to do. I am paying for a burger on a bun, not a bread-heavy sandwich.

If the patty is thick enough then trimming the bread isn't so critical; but a patty that's overly thick is too messy to eat when you're adding everything else, like tomatoes and lettuce and sautéed mushrooms and...well, whatever else you feel like that day. 

And third, I don't want the bun to fall apart. I want a juicy burger with lots of 'stuff', but the bread has to hold up all the way through. It needs to meet that perfect crossing point of tender texture vs resilient cohesion, no matter whether it's brioche or telera or whole-wheat or Kilpatrick's.

We decided to skip any starters. We ordered fish 'n' chips for Inez, the fried chicken for Carlos, and the burger for me. I added the extra of pork belly for another $2, and also ordered the duck fat chips. Inez was getting the regular chips – Hopscotch does their own thin-sliced American chips, this is not the British name for what we call fries – so I could do a side-by-side comparison. 

What did I think of Hopscotch's burger? Well, ummm....they had a very nice bun.

It was tender but held together. It had good flavor and texture. Unfortunately it was also buttered, which for a burger is unnecessary. 

Hopscotch uses all chuck for their burger. This is one of those menu-writing tricks that sounds better than it is. "All chuck" was once a good thing when this cut used to have consistently better flavor than, say, filet mignon. But with today's cattle coming younger to market, chuck has so lean a profile as to be little better than strip loin, with a correspondingly mild flavor. And you wouldn't want a high proportion of suet (beef fat) anyway; the melting point is too high. 

Any good commercial burger starts with at least 25% fat, preferably lard. It can be done with less, but you won't like it as much unless the cook takes advantage of a few tricks that commercial kitchens don't normally use. The texture, juiciness, and flavor of a 30% mix (preferably different cuts of beef – the best is beef heart and/or brisket added to the grind) is optimal. With a properly cooked medium-rare patty, the juiciness renders any buttering of the bun unnecessary.

Hopscotch's patty wasn't too thick (good) but came woefully short of covering the not-that-large bun (very, very bad). Mayo on the bottom over the melted butter, fresh tomato and lettuce leaf along with a few (not enough) housemade pickled onions. The top half of the bun was undressed except for the buttering, ready for the semi-spicy sesame aioli which came on the side. All the aioli did was add more greasiness. I had ordered medium-rare; the burger was more to the medium side (bad). There's no option of cheese (irritating), and with an unsalted burger the pickled onions were a necessity. I should have asked for the ketchup; this burger desperately needed some Heinz. 

The thin slice of beef tongue was tender but dried out. They would have done better to double-grind the uncooked tongue into the burger mix. The pork belly was griddled so it was just chewy unsmoked bacon. I took it off the top of the burger (which comes cut in half, a nice touch) and ate it separately; there was enough fat floating around the table so the burger didn't need any more.

The chips, both regular and duck fat, were oily. Thin and crisp but not super-crisp, they were on the edge of being a little too greasy, especially as they were accompanying fried fish and the burger, which have their own natural fat slicks. There's a subtle taste difference to the duck fat chips, but I can't say that I was so impressed with them that they would be worth yet another $2 extra. There are restaurants where duck fat fries are well worth ordering; Hopscotch isn't one of them.

Inez's fish was more like irregular nuggets than the usual small filets. She thought it and the chips were good, nothing exceptional. We have gone to several restaurants that do a far better (and more generous) version than Hopscotch.

Carlos' chicken was a fried disaster. The batter was the extra-crispy style, which he dislikes, and was fried so hard and so long that even the dark meat was dried out. It also had the dessicated look of fried food that had been sitting around, although he said it was very hot all the way through. He did like the raw pickled cauliflower florets with it, however.

My iced tea was a strange sassafras/black tea blend, but his ginger-limeade was superb. Hopscotch uses fresh-pressed limes and housemade ginger syrup. It's barely sweetened and hands-down the best thing about our meal. The bartender was furiously busy making both alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks; I imagine it must be chaos behind that tiny counter on weekend evenings!

We were so discouraged by the food, we didn't even want to look at the dessert menu, or have an after-meal coffee (Hopscotch has no expresso machine).

We did appreciate Hopscotch's restraint with the salt. But how Chef Kyle Itani was named a Chron Rising Star is beyond us. We had nothing that was creative, unusual, remarkable, or even well-executed. In exchange for a goodly sum of money, we got one good juice and a few decent pickles. 

We love diners – Mel's in San Francisco was one of our favorite restaurants – but Hopscotch is a travesty of it. The food is more like Carl's Jr. than Wood Tavern. It may have a nicer, more hip atmosphere and better service than Park Burger, but Hopscotch's burger is maybe half as big and less than half as good. 

If you drink – and the majority of Hopscotch's customers seem to – you won't mind the grease, although I can't help but think the low level of salt would taste pretty flat. Hopscotch reminds us of Oliveto when Paul Canales was chef (he now owns Duende, just up the street). Without the bite of alcohol to cut the oiliness, you're missing a planned-for element. 

Except Hopscotch doesn't even have the promise of an interesting new dish to discover. It just rehashes the old ones...badly.

Three people, lunch: three entrées, two beverages, with tip was $76.