Title: Dec 19, 2013
Author: jean komatsu
Last saved by: ENU

Venga Paella
229 Brush St., Oakland, CA
http://www.vengapaella.com/menu/
Review date: December 2013

When we first moved to the East Bay in 1991, there were two "good" restaurants: Bay Wolf in Oakland and Chez Panisse in Berkeley. 

In those prehistoric times, the Jack London Square restaurants were fair to mediocre, all old-school style (read: bad Fisherman's Wharf imitation). Chinatown was still at least 50% Chinese, the SE Asian influx just starting to make inroads. Oliveto was barely four years old and chef-owner Paul Bertolli was still known mostly for the family's olive oil brand. The city of Oakland had three BBQ restaurants good enough that people got into name-calling fights about which one was better take-out.

IOW, there wasn't much happening on the food front. There was hardly any "there" to be found anywhere in Oakland. Certainly not if you were transplanted San Franciscans like us, who dined out 4-5x/week. We were accustomed to walking out the door and being able to choose from twenty+ cuisines at dozens of restaurants within a two-mile radius. When we moved across the Bay Bridge I had a brand-new personally-designed kitchen, but outside the door it was a diner's wasteland for five miles in any direction. 

In San Francisco we had Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Moroccan, Indian, Vietnamese, Korean and more, to choose from, all virtually at the doorstep. Here in Oakland, we were neighbors to...a 7-11.

Fast-forward to 2013, which is quickly drawing to a close. I just finished making a list of new restaurants we want to try (there's an equal number we aren't bothering with). Just in the Oakland/Berkeley/Alameda area alone, the list runs three single-spaced pages. We keep it in our car, for those spur-of-the-moment "let's get some errands done" trips when we are in the mood to try something new. 

There are so many new interesting restaurants open, with more coming, that the list is way too long for our aging brains to remember. The East Bay has turned into a hotbed of foodie activity. While our hometown is lacking in some areas, we're excelling in others.

One of the signs of not only a recovering regional economy, but also a gentrifying city, is to have restaurateurs brave enough to open up where the first reaction is, "Where in the world is that street?" 

Everybody loves to open up on College Avenue in Rockridge, or Piedmont  Avenue, or the Temescal neighborhood. But opening up on Brush Street, which many people in Oakland have traversed without ever realizing it...well, that takes a good amount of chutzpah, optimism, and a lot of crossed fingers.

As it turns out, Venga Paella is easy to reach and accessible from different directions. It is within a short 2-block walk of the Cost Plus in Oakland. If you have ever driven on the 980 Interchange and gotten off at either the 18^th St. or 12^th St. exits, you have been on Brush St., which dead-ends straight ahead at the Port of Oakland/Embarcadero St. Most of the time, you've turned right to park at the West Oakland BART station. Or you turned left to go into Chinatown, Jack London Square, or downtown Oakland. 

Down here it's true warehouse district. In Jack London Square, tall condo developments have shown that there is more money to be made selling fake lofts instead of grimy warehouse space. But on this side of Broadway no developers have been brave enough to venture yet. 

At any rate, if you keep going straight on Brush St., a short block away from where it dead-ends at the Port you'll find Venga Paella on the corner in a small one-story building. Street parking, needless to say, is ridiculously easy compared to the struggle you'd have four blocks away on the other side of Broadway. 

Venga is owned by Eduardo Balaguer, who is of Catalan decent and previously worked at his family’s traditional paella restaurant in Valencia, Spain, before opening his own catering business. Everything about Venga is modest, from its handsome but spare space, to its very short menu, and the size of its portions. Not that they're tiny, but the emphasis here is on quality, not quantity.

Friends who have stuck with us over the last four years of culinary exploration know that we have enjoyed B44 and Zarzuela in SF. We loved Barlata/Oakland early on, but were dismayed on a return visit December 2012 to discover the service had gotten even better but the food had slipped dramatically. 

Although we don't consider Spanish cooking to be a great cuisine, it has a wealth of regional cookery enhanced by several hundred years of being a global power, where foreign ingredients crept into the gastronomic scene to inspire historic creativity. At its best it has clean, bold flavors that fit nicely with current tastes, and the classic bar tapas segue into a perfect fit with our busy lifestyles and a high boredom quotient.

Plus, if you're Asian and you like rice, Spanish cooking is right up your alley. They adore rice as much as Asians do, and are equally fussy about the quality of it. Loving rice and fish is probably why the Portuguese did so well all over Asia; it's surprising how easily those two East-West cuisines merged into a harmonious "country cooking" subset.

Venga, however, stays strictly Spanish, which we are fine with. Its hours and menu are both limited, which we hope they will someday expand upon. Originally open only for lunch, they have now added dinner service. We showed up for lunch on a Thursday, and although a few more people trickled in, the cheerful efficient waitress was easily able to handle the four tables by herself.

We started with the broiled shrimp and the stuffed peppers. The shrimp are large, good quality, and served with a nice chopped garlic/parsley EVOO wash. The peppers are the piquillos, stuffed with fresh goat cheese and chopped green olives. There were seven shrimps, and three peppers, so we split them neatly between us. The peppers were especially good, although there wasn't much stuffing inside. 

Restraint is the order of the day here, nothing too strong, too salty, or too over the top. We like that a lot, but some people don't, so you are forewarned.

There are three paellas. That's it, outside of the starters and desserts. The meat/seafood ones haven't changed since Venga opened two months ago. The vegetarian paella changes every few weeks, but the tradicionale and the arroz negro are, for the moment, the standards.

If you are salt-sensitive, Venga's one of the few restaurants these days where you might actually have to add salt. They are very restrained in their use of it. We were fine with this; there's salt and pepper shakers on the table and I used just a sprinkle on the arroz negro. But there are a fair number of people who think their food is super-bland. If you are accustomed to the excesses of places like Forge/Oakland, for example, you need to pick up that salt shaker and use it.

The paellas, at least at lunchtime, are sized for one person, or maybe one person having an additional tapa with the paella. They come with a simple salad of very fresh mixed lettuces with no dressing except the very lightest misting of EVOO. We used the lemon wedge over both the lettuce and paella. To our minds that bright acid hit is far more interesting than salt anyway, with this kind of food.

At Venga, the cooking style is authentic enough that it reminds you these are carb-heavy main dishes, where the extra proteins and veggies come from the starters beforehand, not from four pounds of meat/seafood added to three cups of rice. Carlos agreed with me that most people would probably want to order the broiled shrimp starter, and add them into the paellas. 

The tradicionale is the standard Spanish chorizo with some seafood, in this case mussels, clams, and tiny baby squid. There was no chicken (thank God; I'm not fond of the "kitchen sink" style that Americans demand of paella), but there also wasn't much seafood. 

The arroz negro is made with black squid ink, something that would have been unthinkable to many Oakland diners even ten years ago. I love it, but I prefer it in the classic Fideuà paella, made with broken strands of angel hair pasta. To me that briny bitterness is more suited to pasta than rice. 

Again, the seafood was modest but fresh and tasty. Ordering the two different types worked out well; Carlos preferred the arroz negro as it was more moist. I had added a very little bit of salt to it before I gave it to him, but he was fine with it. The tradicionale is made with tomatoes, which have high natural sodium. It's probably why most reviewers have preferred it to the other two paellas. It is definitely drier than the arroz negro, with a few small bits of soccarat, the prized brown crusty bottom bits. 

The dessert list is also small. There's manchego cheese with quince paste, a traditional Spanish dessert. There's caramel flan, and a dark chocolate mousse that's probably dark sweet chocolate. Carlos and I shared the flan, which is good but very sweet as Spanish/Portuguese desserts always are.

Carlos had coffee, which was strong and good. I had hot tea, which was Stash's English Breakfast. I told Carlos it was interesting how many artisanal tea vendors there are these days, but when it comes to an English Breakfast blend, Stash remains one of the best. 

We asked the waitress how often Venga changed its paellas. She said they were thinking of changing the two meat/seafood ones soon but had made no firm decision yet. 

We really enjoyed Venga. Admittedly they need a larger menu to keep people coming back, but we liked their restraint and high quality. It wasn't the cheapest lunch, but Spanish food is like Japanese food – the dishes we expect from them are not inexpensive ones to make. The amount of food we received was perfect. Nothing was heavy or oily, which we appreciated. It's Spanish but with a lighter touch than its peers. This is a restaurant that deserves to be on our "A" list right from the get-go. 

Venga leaves Barlata far behind, despite the limited menu. If they can pull people into this slightly-out-of-the-way area, I'm sure Chef Balaguer is eager to expand his offerings into other Catalan specialties (check out Wiki's entry on Catalan cooking for a list of their most famous dishes; Catalonia is considered one of the finest food destinations in the world: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalan_cuisine). 

We'd love to see that happen!

Two people, lunch: two tapas, two paellas, two beverages, one dessert with tip, was $69.