As of 2013: Restaurant now called Homespun: same owners, same chef, comfort food menu.

I-Squared, Oakland (update, dinner)
Review date: December 2010
(previous review appended below)

We first dined at I-Squared on November 2009 and liked it quite a lot, although it wasn't a perfect meal. But it's a lovely space, if somewhat small, and it was clear they were trying hard to do things well. 

The Persian/Italian menu, also offered by a few other restaurants, is somewhat of an awkward mix. On our first visit, Inez's Italian entree topped our Persian dishes. The tiramisu was excellent, almost as good as our favorite Caffe Venezia/Berkeley, and the cappuccino was perfect.

This time we began with their two mushroom starters to share. One is mushroom caps stuffed with chopped toasted garlic and cheese, baked in a white wine sauce. The other is sauteed slices, in a cream sauce that was nice but a little flat. A dash of a good umami ingredient would have livened it up – cheese, soy sauce, or even a touch of anchovy paste – along with a needed sprinkle of cracked pepper. 

Indeed, that pretty much describes the two Persian beef dishes Carlos and I tried. Both came with a mound of fluffy, excellent Basmati rice. Mine was a tomato-based stew with eggplant. It was the more successful, with a good squeeze of lime giving it a brightness without making it overly sour. It was tasty and filling, if not especially memorable. 

Carlos' was a saffron-based spinach stew. In both the meat was fork tender; but his stew, like the sauteed mushrooms, lacked the edge it needed to make it completely satisfying.

Inez's lamb shank, served with the large round 'pearl' couscous, was tender, savory, and much more successful. Carlos observed that I-Squared really does a much better job with the Italian dishes than the Persian half of the menu.

We tried to have dessert but ran into a brick wall. First they were out of tiramisu. We chose baklava, and it turned out they were out that as well. The waiter was embarrassed – which he should have been, the kitchen is supposed to tell the waitstaff BEFORE opening for business when the listed menu dishes are not available that night. 

He brought us faluuda without being asked, but we sent it back. I am not fond of sweet noodles, fried or unfried, and Carlos doesn't care for gelato at any time. So a square of honey-drenched deep-fried noodles with a large scoop of vanilla gelato didn’t interest us.

The cappuccinos this time were mixed – the regular was perfect, with a silken foam that was just as it should be, but the decaf was a little overmilky. The blend they use is very good though, so it was fine in place of dessert.

I-Squared is a decent, inexpensive neighborhood bistro, and if you stick to the Italian dishes it has a lot going for it. But there isn't enough depth of flavor in the Persian dishes, and that means half the menu is really a waste of paper and food. They're good, but not satisfying enough in the mouth.

The fiasco with the desserts was very amateur, and they have been in business long enough for that to be hard to excuse. The trouble was not that the meal was bad, as it was not. But although the food lacked the slightly-too-salty edge of before (which is a positive), neither had it improved in the 13 months since we first visited (which is disappointing).

I-Squared is the restaurant of a good cook, but not a great one. It has the advantages of being a good inexpensive place to eat and socialize if you pick your way through the menu, and that's a formula which works for many restaurateurs, not just I-Squared. 

But...they should be striving to be a little bit better. The waiter told us the menu is being changed, and if it's something more than just a seasonal shift, perhaps that's the lift they need to get to the next level up.

Two starters, three entrees, one dessert (Inez had a scoop of vanilla gelato) and three beverages, with tip, was a reasonable $91.

I-Squared (aka I2)
5403 College Avenue @Manila, Oakland 
Review date:  November 2009

I2 is a small (about 67 seats, max) restaurant easily overlooked between a couple of coffeeshops. If you see the Hudson Bay Café in the triangular corner building, I2 is next door to it. 

It’s a modern, spare space – almost too spare, with no art on the walls. The name comes from the Iranian and Italian dishes they offer (no crossover between the two). Shrimp with ‘pearl pasta’ (fregola, or Sardinian couscous, is the actual name) sits next to skewers of barg (ground beef) and koobideh (beef filet) with Basmati rice.

All three appetizers are Italian. We chose the fried calamari, which was so good Inez ate a larger portion of it than she normally does. The calamari were still juicy, something not many restaurants get right, and the marinara sauce had a nice tang and saltiness to it.

In fact, that was a minor problem with I2. Both entrees – Inez chose the shrimp with bean puree and fregola, Carlos chose the skewers of barg and koobideh with Basmati – were on the salty side. The flavors were lovely, but the consistent saltiness was off-putting for us. The koobideh was flavored with sumac; the barg with saffron and perhaps a touch of pomegranate.

Inez’s shrimp with pasta was quite good. Five large shrimp were beautifully lined up on a long thin rectangular plate, atop the fregola with a generous bean puree sauce accented by the garlic butter the shrimp were sauteed with. But again, the saltiness was just at the edge of our tolerance.

I ordered the I2 salad to start, which sounded like a lovely combination: warm goat cheese, roasted corn, mushroom, avocado, mixed greens, with a balsamic vinegar/olive oil dressing. It was exactly that; in fact, one of the finest salads I’ve ever had in a restaurant. The greens were fresh and flawless, the warm cheese with corn and sauteed mushrooms was perfect with it. The dressing was so spare it was barely there, a finely balanced whisper instead of the overwhelming shout most restaurants slam you with.

The waitress, who otherwise was excellent, failed to warn me that my lamb burger also came with salad. This was quite a different type, however: a sharper, black pepper vinaigrette with diced cucumber and tomato. It was actually ideal with Carlos’ kebab skewers and rice, so it didn’t go to waste. 

The lamb burger is good, but it’s an oddity, more lunch-oriented than dinner fare. The bread is one step up from Wonder Bread buns, the meat tasty but very thin. The yoghurt, tomatoes, and lettuce combine to make it more a room temperature meal, and with the colder weather these fall nights bring, it wasn’t quite right. Maybe if I’d ordered a bowl of soup, it would have been more satisfying as a hot meal.

Another oddity was the iced tea. It was mint, which didn’t match the cold autumn evening outside. 

We finished with a tiramisu, one regular coffee and one decaf cappuccino. The tiramisu came in a cup, but other than having less liqueur than Venezia’s stellar version, is the closest runner-up we’ve come across so far, and we ate all of it very happily. The regular coffee was French press, which is far from my favorite….but the cappuccino was nothing short of spectacular! It was hands-down the best cappuccino I’ve had, the ideal blend of robust flavor with that slightly bitter edge that stops well short of over-roasting, and just enough milk to slightly tame that bitterness without hiding it. I really dislike how most barristas put out an amateurish, more-like-latte cappuccino. This one will serve as the gold standard of what a great cappuccino should be, to me.

Although we weren’t completely wowed by I2, the things we did like – the calamari, the namesake salad, the dessert and coffee – were so good as to make us want to come back and try some other menu items. That says a lot, especially on a street with as much competition as this has (Oliveto, Somerset, Garibaldi, Marica, Marzano, Citron, and A Cote, just to name a few).

Two starters, three entrees, one dessert, three beverages, with tip cost a modest $114.