Title: Metro Montclair
Author: jean komatsu
Last saved by: Owner

Executive Chef Steve Jaramillo, formerly of Lalime/Berkeley, has now left the Metro restaurants as of October 2014 

Metro Montclair in Oakland, CA – update, dinner
Review date: Feb 2014

Carlos and I had a serendipitous dinner here in January 2014, where the mild-mannered sample menu on Metro Montclair's website gave way to a lovely sweetbread starter and a beautifully balanced berry-Bourbon-Meyer lemon tart, both dishes winning raves from us.

We're getting ready to visit Napa next week, so the refrigerator is emptying out and we get to decide on a daily basis whether we want to dine out for lunch, or for dinner, or both. Carlos nixed ethnic food for tonight's dinner, so we hit MM again instead.

Alas, no sweetbreads were on the menu. This was a huge disappointment, but they did have a Salade Lyonnaise, one of my favorites that is hard to find anywhere these days. Carlos skipped the crabcakes for a regular Caesar, which came with a lightly pickled fresh anchovy (they're in season and the local catch has been good).

My Lyonnaise was an "almost". The frisée was beautiful, some of the best quality I've had anywhere. The diced pancetta was generous and very good; the croutons oddly rectangular instead of square-cut but of decent quality bread. But there was slightly too much vinegar, and it had a taste I didn't care for. It was too strong for such delicate baby frisée, although it would have been fine with the usual older frisée most restaurants use. The poached egg was also a bit overdone, so the yolk was not as runny as it should have been to blend with the vinaigrette. 

When properly executed this is one of the finest salad dressings extant. But like most great recipes it requires not just fine ingredients but consistent skilled execution. Otherwise the balance is flawed and it becomes no better than a tangy bottled vinaigrette from Kraft Foods. This was better than many, and although not perfect I would be happy to have it again.

Carlos picked the fried chicken, which came with bland mashed potatoes and very salty/tangy braised rainbow chard. The latter was both salted and vinegared, in an odd way reminiscent of Southern cooking. The fried chicken was boneless, brined, and lightly floured; we both thought it was excellent if very small. MM's cooking is low on salt, so the chard surprised us. But Carlos said it was fine eaten with the potatoes, so he cleaned his plate.

As we usually have three courses when dining out, we weren't looking for huge portions, but it occurred to me afterwards that Metro Montclair's serving size on their entrées is as small or smaller than Flora/Oakland (reviewed August 2013). The difference is that MM doesn't cost as much as Flora, which suffers in comparison with not just Pican nearby but also the many Temescal restaurants less than three miles down the street.

My duck confit suffered only from the usual "don't cook those beans too long!", as if it were a sin to cook dried butter beans into a properly creamy state. Instead, they had the slightest underdone crunch, a good reminder that Metro Montclair may do lovely sweetbreads but a cassoulet here could be a disaster. The beans were mixed with wilted baby spinach leaves, a nice touch that lightened them up.

The duck confit was a little bit bad but mostly all good. The good was that it had been properly cured, at least 48 hours worth. Then it had been aged, which is rare; although this might be just lack of demand. The tough tendons in the leg had turned to soft cartilage, gelatinous and yummy. Very few kitchens are willing to wait this long. It had also been well-rinsed, retaining only a hint of salt. 

The bad was that it was somewhat dry, the cooks doing as too many cooks do, pan-frying the duck for too long over too-high heat. It was fall-apart tender and delicious, but lacked the wonderful juicy texture of Depot Hotel's/Sonoma confit. I'm wondering if Depot Hotel uses the fattier Pekin ducks instead of the more usual Muscovy or Moulard; I think that would make the critical difference. 

Still, I liked my dish. Confit, sweetbreads, and salad Lyonnaise aren't easy to find in Oakland, assuming you could find any other restaurant that offers all three within the city limits, which I doubt. We've seen a huge increase in the number of good restaurants in Oakland, but French cooking isn't one of them.

Carlos and I ended with dessert and coffee. He chose the leche flan with blood orange caramel, and I picked the lemon tart with berries after being assure by the waiter that the berries had been macerated with bourbon, as they were the first time we visited. The menu had simply indicated "seasonal berries." But despite his assurances, my tart had an overload of lemon curd, and a few dry raspberries and blueberries.

When he checked in with us, I mentioned there was no bourbon used, so he brought me some bourbon-soaked fruit from the bar. These turned out to be six small pitted Bing cherries, speared on a toothpick. The bourbon was awful – harsh and biting – quite unlike the super-smooth liquor used previously. Still, we appreciated his making the effort to please us, and the fresh coffee he brought, both decaf and regular, was very good.

Carlos and I were disappointed in this meal, but I'm still inclined to give Metro Montclair the benefit of the doubt and want to return again. Now that Montclair Bistro has fallen into a decline, we really have nowhere else to turn to when we want to satisfy a craving for French cuisine without driving for 30-90 minutes on the freeways to another county. 

Certainly the service at MM is excellent. They go that extra step to keep their customers happy, and their timing is quite good although they do get busy in the early evening, when after-work groups hit the bar and counter-height tables.

I had iced tea with dinner, and it should be noted they brought a very good mango iced tea.

We look forward to trying Metro Lafayette again, and see what changes Chef Jaramillo has wrought there as well.

Two people, dinner: two starters, two entrées, two desserts, three beverages, with tip was $109.

Metro Montclair in Oakland, CA – update, dinner
Sample menus only: http://www.montclairmetro.com/# 
Review date: January 2014

Metro Montclair is a small sibling of the well-regarded Metro Lafayette. We visited Metro Lafayette twice, February 2009 (dinner) and January 2010 (lunch). We enjoyed our first visit, but the food definitely slipped a level over time. When Metro Montclair opened in Oakland we tried it for dinner on January 2012, but were disappointed, judging it more ambitious than reliable.

MMontclair wasn't bad, but not quite good enough to be a destination for us, especially as the EBay food scene literally exploded over the last three years. Over a hundred new restaurants have opened in Oakland in this short time period – and that's not including Berkeley or Contra Costa County!

However, in September 2012 the two Metro restaurants received a new ExecChef, Steve Jaramillo, whose resume was impressive. I noted the change and told Carlos we would try them later, allowing the new chef to make his mark. Jaramillo worked at Lalime/Berkeley when we still liked it, prior to George Morrone taking over (GM being our least favorite chef ever).

That time turned out to be now, with the refrigerator empty before we leave on a quick trip. Carlos and I drove to Montclair Village – street parking is delightfully easy, early on a Tuesday evening! – after making an OpenTable reservation.

Carlos didn't think any of the starters sounded interesting, but I opted for a cup of the roasted cauliflower soup with olive tapenade. Not everyone likes olive tapenade – Carlos eats it only rarely and in small amounts, so it was a good thing he didn't order this. I like olives, but thought olives and cauliflower sounded like an unusual combination. I was willing to give it a try, however.

The soup was puréed well-roasted cauliflower, and that was pretty much all it was. No salt except for the tapenade, so without the olives swirled into the soup, it would have been a little flat. I mixed it in, and liked the result. I can't say it was the best soup I've ever had, but it was far from the worst. What impressed me the most was the balance; there was just the right amount of tapenade. This can be overpowering stuff, but Mmontclair's kitchen handled it just right.

Carlos and I were dubious about the "crispy sweetbreads with duchesse potatoes, pickled onions, and Madeira cream sauce". We adore sweetbreads, but the mania for deep-frying them leaves us cold. We consider it the absolutely worst way to treat sweetbreads, which like liver have no marbling of internal fat. Nobody worth their toque would deep-fry foie gras into crispy hard little cubes, but we've gotten way too many sweetbreads treated like bad McNuggets.

When I asked the waiter, he said the sweetbreads were brined(!) and floured, then fried. I queried him about the brining, because that's unusual. He said the chef uses bay leaf and juniper. I ordered them as an experiment, and to our surprise they were excellent. The chef hadn't used juniper berries, he'd used gin (juniper is traditional with venison, but often gin is used instead). This was additionally surprising because neither Carlos nor I like gin. 

The bay leaf was clearly Turkish, not California, nicely aromatic without being bitter. The sweetbreads were only lightly dusted with flour, just enough to give crisp edges when pan-fried in butter. The brine added a lovely herbal accent without being intrusive. It was a nice change from the usual white wine or vermouth that is the traditional cooking alcohol for sweetbreads. One could taste the alcohol, but as a well balanced element, and the bay leaf tempered the piney aspect of the juniper-infused gin.

The duchesse potatoes are nothing more than mashed potatoes, in this case neatly piped into a small round gratin dish, then lightly browned (which is what makes them duchesse instead of just plain mashed). The sweetbreads come on the side, with a very nice Madeira cream sauce. Next time we will tell them to put the sweetbreads in a bowl, because the sauce floated around the plate so we couldn't scoop up every single luscious bit for the potatoes.

The addition of pickled onions are in small slivers, and should be picked out. We have no idea why pickled onions should ever show up with sweetbreads or a cream sauce, but it keeps happening these days, to our continual exasperation.

Carlos opted for the flat iron steak slices with maitre d'hotel butter, along with fries garnished with baby watercress. We both agreed we had not seen a maitre d'hotel butter on a menu in at least four decades, and that it was worth ordering the dish just for that alone. 

Now that CA diners seem firmly entrenched in the belief that grass-fed beef is superior (ugh), we've seen several restaurants start to add the once-traditional pat of flavored butter on top. The beef today is extremely dry and tough compared to the heyday standards of the grain-finished, aged 1950's/60's beef. Melting a pat of butter on top adds the flavor and richness that was once supplied by interior marbling, but is now only found in the over-the-top Wagyu beef. 

MMontclair came close. The maitre d'hotel butter had a slight excess of chopped (raw) shallot which threw the balance off. Also, they don't heat their impressively thick contemporary porcelain plates. Five/Berkeley heats theirs too much; MMontclair doesn't heat theirs at all, and both camps seriously need to meet in the middle. The steak was sliced already so it cooled off too fast to melt the cold pat of butter. The butter softened, but never actually melted. The fries were thin and pretty good; the watercress just enough for a decorative color on the plate.

I chose the Petrale sole with whole mustard beurre blanc and farro pilaf, carrots and turnips. The sole was so-so flavorwise but the serving was surprisingly generous, and the beurre blanc came studded with capers, not mustard, which was infinitely preferable. Again, the dish had almost no salt at all; without the piquancy of the capers, it would have been butter-rich but a little flat. As it was, I found it close to ideal – I do like a little bit of salt, just not a whole lot – but salt-lovers will probably want to reach for the shakers on the table.

I like farro, but so often it is borderline al dente, taking an inordinate amount of chewing. MMontclair chose a smaller size farro and cooked it properly, so it had just the right amount of chew, similar to a barley risotto, but one didn't feel like a cow chewing its cud. The carrots and baby turnips were finely, evenly diced and nicely cooked, showing an laudable attention to detail that more restaurants should copy. 

Carlos and I divided on the beurre blanc. He doesn't like sweet butter and never will, so the classic sweet butter beurre blanc or Hollandaise, when the kitchen doesn't add any salt (it's allowed in the recipes, but sometimes they just don't) leaves him cold. I like a little salt in my butter sauces, but with the addition of pickled capers I'm willing to go salt-free. Vinegar is like mustard or lemon juice; it amplifies saltiness. 

Still, overall we were impressed with the full step upwards Metro Montclair had made under Chef Jaramillo. This is much closer to what Lalime used to be, than what MMontclair itself was originally, which we consider to be a distinct improvement. It isn't as good as Lalime, but MM is a whole lot better than it was.

We decided to share a dessert, and that resulted in "upping the ante". On our initial visit, the "stone fruit crisp ala mode" was hands-down the absolute worst version I've had in my entire life. What I received that time was a messy, pasty, gloppy mess, consisting of a few fresh nectarine slices and about four blueberries in a large round gratin, drowned in a porridge-like grayish sludge. It was a showcase, not for fruit but for sloppy execution.

But just as Metro Montclair has turned its kitchen around to the French side, it has also done a 180° about-face on the dessert side. We ordered a "lemon tart with bourbon berries", and haven't stopped raving about it ever since. 

This was possibly the best lemon tart either of us have had ever, whether homemade or commercial. We have so often found lemon tarts to be filled with a rigidly stiff, glue-like lemon filling that is either over-acidic or just plain mouth-puckering.

MMontclair sets the proper standard. A shortbread crust was filled with a soft, delicate, creamy Meyer lemon curd. When cut with a fork it barely managed to stay on the crust; it was the perfect blend of tart and sweet, with pure Meyer flavor. Topping it off was a generous sprinkling of whole blueberries and raspberries, soaked in bourbon. No sugar needed, just a nice quick soak in good bourbon! This was another unexpected combination that was magical; I love a good bourbon but I would not have thought to combine it with berries and Meyer lemon. Both Carlos and I were super-impressed with this simple but creatively brilliant dessert.

Carlos had coffee; I stole a few sips. It was good quality, and a lovely accompaniment to dessert.

We're really pleased that the change in chefs has had such an impact on this little restaurant. It wasn't a perfect meal, but it was interesting and creative, and a big step up from our first dinner here. We're going to come back, and hope that we'll find consistency along with that better conception/execution. And as mentioned, we'll put big brother Metro Lafayette on our list to hit again as well.

ExecChef Jaramillo has made a huge difference here. We're hoping for consistency as well as creativity. We've been wanting a replacement for Montclair Bistro for a long time, and MMontclair will hopefully be it.

Two people, dinner: two starters, two entrées, one dessert, one coffee, with tip was $89.

Metro Montclair
2058 Mountain Blvd., Oakland, CA
Sample menu: http://www.montclairmetro.com/menus/MontclairDinner.pdf 
Review date: July 2012

When we first began trying some of the Contra Costa county restaurants on the other side of the Caldecott Tunnel, Metro Lafayette was our first discovery. We loved our first visit in 2009, but a subsequent visit in 2010 saw the food decline a level in creativity and quality. ML was still good, but neither great nor exciting. 

Still, the Lafayette restaurant remains one of the more attractive bistros, with a large U-shaped space they use very well. The inside of the U is a sizable outdoor dining space. It's stylish and full of light, especially pleasant on a nice day (of which there's many in Contra Costa County).

In late 2010, ML opened a sibling restaurant in Oakland's Montclair Village, called Metro Montclair. It feels quite the opposite of its "big brother." It's a rectangle of modest width with the dining tables in an L-shape, and a very small open kitchen for hot food. There's a closed kitchen behind it where the prep is done, but since that also holds food storage and the bathrooms, this sibling is very much smaller, totaling no more than one-third the size of Metro Lafayette's overall dining room. 

It's also very dark, with charcoal-grey walls, dark chairs (uncomfortable and uncushioned) and banquettes (comfortable), with slatted patio-style tables. There are some framed reproductions of 1930's French food advertisements, although the food is about as French as Carlos is. This rather somber décor could be considered a match to our frequent fogs on the Alameda side of the hills. 

Sophisticated? Probably. A little depressing? In today's economy, maybe.

When we sat down, I ordered an iced tea. In these types of places a simple iced tea can be problematical. Sure enough, what I got was....sassafras.

You've probably had sassafras, although not often – unless you're a die-hard fan of A&W root beer. I don't usually use sweetener with my tea, but it's imperative with sassafras. Drinking this iced tea was like drinking cold, flat, weak root beer...not a great match with most foods.

Metro Montclair's menu is divided into three sections: starters, small plates, and entrees. As her dementia progresses, Inez finds menu reading very confusing, so she mistakenly thought a fried chicken filet sandwich was a small plate. Instead, she received the largest entree of all, so she had to bring half of it home. 

We had already shared two appetizers with her. Carlos got the duck liver paté. It was smooth but not very creamy, sprinkled with big salt crystals. Since there was salt in the pate already, such a topping was superfluous. The plate had only a few cornichons and thin, very crisp baguette toast slices. A small mixed lettuce salad was on the side. It was adequate but overall rather plain, especially compared to the exquisite paté plate we enjoyed at Le Petit Bistro/Palo Alto just a month ago.

MM shares the popular duck confit spring rolls with its big brother in Lafayette. The rolls were well-packed and nicely fried, but the confit was a bit salty. This wouldn't have been a problem, except that the slightly sweet, spicy lime sauce we remembered has been swapped out for a sauce that tasted like tamarind and soy. A sour salty sauce for well-salted spring rolls was just too much; we ate the rolls but everyone left the sauce untouched after the first taste.

Inez's chicken sandwich came with a mound of thin French fries, and was topped with an apple-cabbage coleslaw that she enjoyed. It's a hefty sandwich, with a good-sized white-meat cutlet and a high-domed brioche bun.

Carlos ordered the roasted chicken breast. It comes with corn polenta and a salty dark gravy. The chicken and the polenta weren't salted, however, so it wasn't a big problem. The real issue was that the polenta was made with coarse-ground cornmeal not cooked sufficiently, leaving it slightly crunchy. The fresh white corn kernels were sweet, but they couldn't overcome the odd texture and lack of salt. I love polenta, but I never find unsalted polenta pleasing, no matter what kind of salty gravy is added later. Carlos, who only likes top-notch polenta, gave this a D- as a side.

The chicken was a generous serving of a good-sized breast and attached wing, but Carlos didn't care for the execution. The skin was attached, and any crispness was lost when the gravy was added for last minute braising. 

With an unusually plentiful salmon season, I had high hopes for the local King salmon plate with succotash and cherry tomatoes. Sadly, the deep orange filet came slightly overcooked. The succotash was sabotaged by cranberry beans that were starchy/crunchy instead of creamy, undermining the fresh white corn kernels and nicely de-stringed Italian flat green beans. 

I ordered the stone fruit crisp a la mode after asking the waiter to describe it. Having suffered through crisps made with shortbread crumbs (hideous!), I was pleased to hear his detailed description of a butter-flour crumble. 

A crisp, AKA crumble, is a baked fresh fruit dessert, similar to a fruit pie but topped with what used to be called a Dutch crumble, or streusel, of butter, sugar, and flour. Crisps have no bottom pastry crust, which differentiates it from a pie. It should be a showcase for good fruit, with just enough of a crisp/chewy top crust for texture and a bit of sweetness.

This dessert is basic throughout most of America, even easier than making cupcakes. Yet it seems completely beyond the grasp of most CA restaurants, outside of Seison/Oakland.

What I received was a messy, pasty, gloppy mess, consisting of a few fresh nectarine slices and about four blueberries in a large round gratin, drowned in a porridge-like sludge. It was a showcase, not for fruit but for sloppy execution. The streusel, made at MM with not only with butter and flour but also oatmeal, was dumped too generously over the cold fruit and juices, then run under the broiler to brown.

This is a lousy technique to make a fruit crisp. Broiling streusel on wet fruit is very different than baking it. Because of the lack of viscosity in the filling, the streusel needs to cook as fast as possible on the underside, not just from the top down. 

As a result of this ham-handed ignorance, the streusel becomes soggy and mixes in with the liquid to thicken it (think: a beurre manie instead of a crispy topping), rather than cooking all the way through. Ergo, you end up with a casserole full of fruit-flavored porridge. 

I dug out the fruit to eat it with what vanilla gelato I could salvage before it all melted. This left the unattractive sludge, which came up to over half the height of the gratin's side. The decaf coffee, at least, was freshly made and decent. There's no espresso machine at Metro Montclair.

They offer a warm chocolate chip cookie for dessert as well, which I ordered for Inez. No matter how full she is, she usually has room for dessert. She was very happy with the cookie. Carlos thought it was a bit on the floury side, but between the two of them they finished it off.

Service was good. The waiter was well-trained but he had to cover the whole dining room, so there was a longer wait than it should have been for some courses. Water glasses were refilled assiduously.

Afterwards, Carlos and I agreed that although we had eaten enough food, the meal was oddly unsatisfying. Everything was calculated to be just good enough to pass muster but nothing more than that. It felt rote and passionless, adequate yet nothing to be excited about. Despite the fancy descriptions and attempts at stylish food, there was no personality or spark of creativity here. 

Metro Montclair's an imitation, and not a successful one. But they were doing a decent business, so the Montclair locals seem to like it. 

Neither one of us can quite pin down what's missing, but we both felt something lacking. Metro Montclair just doesn't click with us. In the tiny Montclair Village area, we enjoy Italian Colors, Montclair Bistro, and even staid old-style Crogan's for certain dishes. We found a few things to enjoy at Kakui Sushi. We adore the bargain $5 carnitas quesadillas at El Agavero's Happy Hour special.

But this place? It's dull. The food's simply not good enough to deserve a hip décor and decent waitstaff. It's trying to be the Village equivalent of Hudson/Oakland, a place we despise but whose popularity has never dimmed despite numerous re-inventions and renaming. 

For us, we'd rather go elsewhere…and will. 

Three people, dinner: Two starters, three entrees, two desserts, two beverages, with tip was $120.