Title: Sorella Di Zza's
Author: jean komatsu
Last saved by: ENU

Sorella Di Zza's			CLOSED
551 Grand Avenue, Oakland, CA
http://www.morezzas.com/menu.php 
Review date: November 2012

We have not been back to Zza's in over twenty years. We remember it as a local spaghetti joint, noisy and fun, a casual atmosphere complete with emblazoned T-shirts for sale. The food was good, nothing upscale or unique.

I recently checked out the menu on-line and thought it sounded a little more interesting than before, so we scheduled one of our weekly dinners here. We were the first ones to be seated in the dining room. There are also more casual bench seats and tables in the enoteca, or wine shop, Zza's has opened next door. Diners have their choice of where to be seated. The T-shirts are gone, and both rooms look…well, "grown-up" is a good way of putting it. Zza's, like its clientele, has gotten older and less collegial.

The waitress advised us that the starter plates are good-sized, so we dropped our idea to include the Cesare salad (advertised as with anchovies, which we love) and settled for just three starters, which we all shared.

•	Lamb spiedini: Skewers of lamb with a yoghurt-mint sauce. Three skewers of small cubes of well-done lamb were served atop a small amount of baby arugula, with a thick creamy yoghurt-mint sauce. Tasty and a nice starter, especially if you're choosing a pasta entree.

•	Burrata with heirloom tomatoes: A very nice burrata (fresh mozzarella stuffed with cream and mozzarella scraps) with cubes of heirloom tomatoes in a light balsamic dressing, served with very thin-sliced crostini. This was a beautiful dish. The last of the heirlooms were dressed with just the right amount of balsamic, a bit of chopped basil and a light sprinkling of salt. They were perfect with hunks of the burrata piled on the crostini. 

Carlos' favorite salad is the caprese; when tomatoes are in season I make it four or five times a week for him. This is one of the rare restaurant versions he thought was as good or even better than what we make at home.

•	Beet salad: Beets, shaved fennel, Parmesan and toasted almonds. Lots of fresh beets – what a concept, a beet salad of just beets. Woohoo! We love beets.  Another light balsamic dressing, thin shavings of fresh fennel, a few shavings of a good Parmesan, and a sprinkling of chopped toasted almonds. All of us thought this was one of the best beet salads we've had in quite a while. It was understated, with all the individual flavors showing through, yet everything was in perfect balance.

Inez chose the roast chicken as her entree. It came with broccolini, roasted cauliflower, and a pinenut-currant relish (two of her favorite foods). It's a half of a small chicken, with the breast boned out. She said she liked everything about her entree and saved half of it to bring home. 

Carlos chose the Linguine Soffritto – tiger prawns, roasted garlic, Calabrian chiles, parsley, lemon zest. Disappointingly, it came with bucatini instead of linguine. Carlos dislikes heavy pasta, and he felt this was a particularly poor substitution with such a delicate, light sauce. Zza's did make it quite spicy, and a sprinkle of decent grated Parmesan spiked it up further. Outside of the pasta subbing, he liked this sauce very much.

I picked the short ribs, which come in a very simple tomato sauce with fresh basil.  I chose the polenta as my contorni, side. The meat had been well-braised, giving the sauce a rich beefy flavor. It wasn't as large a portion as Bistro 1491 gave me last week, but having shared the three starters, I wasn't able to finish all the polenta or the short ribs' sauce. 

Carlos took the bowl of remaining polenta, added the gravy, and agreed they were delicious together. Zza's wisely strikes a balance; their polenta is made with either whole milk or light cream, and a mild cheese, perhaps a Fontina. This was why I wasn't in love with Marzano on Park's super-rich polenta, which we had on June 2010. When it's overloaded with cream and cheese, the polenta no longer makes a good side dish, instead doing better as a main. OTOH, we have gotten too many watery, unsalted, tasteless polentas (Pappo's in Alameda immediately comes to mind) that do no favors for any food. Zza's version is nicely calculated to complement a sauced entrée, neither competing nor distracting.

So far we'd been very pleased with the food. The dessert menu has all the commonplace suspects: chocolate lava cake, polenta poundcake with fruit, panna cotta and tiramisu. We ordered a scoop of vanilla ice cream for Inez, and shared the tiramisu. We were surprised to receive a very decent housemade version. Although we could wish for more liqueur as always (the waiter said they use 'a very little brandy'), it was wonderful to taste a filling based on mascarpone, instead of the 100% whipping cream almost everyone uses. 

Carlos' coffee tasted burnt, but my decaf was excellent, fresh-brewed and very strong.

Service started off well, but more people continued to come in as we were waiting for our food. With the phones ringing non-stop and no busboys, service from the two waitstaff and host remained cheerful, but got slower and slower. Like many restaurants, they are running as lean an operation as possible. 

We liked Zza's and will plan to return. They have an extensive pizza menu, and it will be interesting to try some of them. The price point is in line with their competition, and we'd come back just for those three starters again – they were a terrific combination.

Zza's is just a few doors up from Sidebar, which we reviewed in mid-September. Although Sidebar also had a couple of excellent starters, they fell down a level on both entrees and desserts. Overall, Zza's showed us more consistent quality. If they could up their service level, they would be a serious contender at the "A" level. As it is, they're a B+ until we return to try them again.

Three people, dinner: three starters, three entrees, two desserts, three beverages, with tip was $137.