Oenotri in Napa, CA – update, dinner
http://oenotri.com/index.php/menu/
Review date: April 2013

In November 2011 we had a marvelous dinner at Oenotri. The food was delicious, well-balanced, and the creativity and passion were exciting. The service was excellent, with visible supervision by the owners. Riva Cucina in Berkeley was also doing some great cooking at the same time, but their service was nowhere near as professional and cost-cutting eventually took them down a full level.

The competition in Napa continues to increase. There's the River Place heavyweights of Morimoto Napa, The Thomas, and Celadon to contend with. Angele (reviewed May 2012) has settled down to collect some good local reviews. New bistros such as Tuscany and Rose Bistro are right down the block, as are Allegria and Cole's Chop House. Downtown Napa, once a gastronomic wasteland, is giving Yountville and the environs competition at last. It's an amazing jump from early 2010, when the most upscale choices were Oenotri, Ubuntu, and Buckhorn Grill's chain restaurant.

In the interim since our first visit, some changes have happened at Oenotri. They now serve lunch every day. The lighting has been seriously lowered to the point one almost needs a flashlight to read the menu at night. Seating has been expanded slightly by rearranging the front of the house. Once the weather warms up, they have use of the entire L-shaped inner courtyard for outdoor patio seating.

The food, too, seems to have changed. There were only three entree plates (secondi), but a longer list of pastas and starters. The salume menu continues to be extensive and is listed on a separate sheet. Don't overlook it; it sits between the wine list and a top sheet listing specialty cocktails. They really should hand it to you with the menus, but they don't.

BTW, if anyone doubts that hard liquor is making a comeback, it should be noted that all four restaurants we've eaten at so far on this trip, have a separate specialty cocktail menu that is pushed by waitstaff at both lunches and dinners. It has been, without exception, the first thing mentioned by every hostess as we're taking our seats.

How well anyone could taste anything after drinking wine all day and then downing sweet cocktails before dinner, is beyond my imagining. It may account for the changes we encountered here.

Oenotri was full, with several large parties. We could see the plates seemed larger and more substantial than before...in our eyes, not a promising sign.

We started with the chef's choice of six salume, all sliced paper-thin except for the ciccioli, which is shredded. They were:
•	Felino. This is a traditional sausage of Emilia-Romagna, cured with honey. It reminded me of the Spanish chorizo, a lean spicy sausage.
•	Ciccioli. Pork confit, served warm. It's shredded, well salted, and has the rich taste of good Mexican carnitas (the traditional recipe, where they cook it in boiling lard and then crisp the shredded meat in the oven). It was dripping with liquid lard – and I do mean dripping!
•	Pancetta Tesa. Unlike traditional pancetta, which is rolled, this is pancetta sliced from flat slabs.
•	Bresaola. Air-dried salted beef, this is in line with the traditional preserving of meats in many countries. Like prosciutto it is sliced very thin, but unlike pork, the beef is always as lean as possible, completely trimmed of fat.
•	Milano – like a rich salami but softer, with a slightly sweet spice mix
•	Sobbrasada, dried spicy pork; sometimes a spread but Oenotri makes the traditional salame. It's the most popular sausage of the Balearic Islands off the Spanish coast (Majorca, Minorca, Ibiza and Formentera). Here it has a spicy finish, but also a touch of sweetness to it.

Overall, although the salume choices were very good, the ciccioli was too greasy. It's tasty in that salty carnitas kind of way, but it isn't drained very well before serving and literally swims in melted lard. It leaked over most of the platter, and most of the salame are fatty enough – they don't need any more! The platter was generous in size and serving; this could easily be shared by four people. 

We had not previously tried Oenotri's skill with fish. Because they sounded interesting, I ordered a fish starter and entree. But both were a little off-balance and sloppily executed.

My starter was skate with fresh ceci beans (chickpeas) and Castelvetrano olives. Despite the considerable efforts of the French, Italian, and Chinese (who steam it), Americans usually won't touch skate (only the wings are used). This is a shame, because it has a fine flavor and soft, slightly gelatinous texture. 

We were surprised to receive two good-sized pieces of batter-fried fish. I've never had skate battered before, and if the fish had been fresher it would have been a good way to introduce someone to skate. Oenotri did overcook it, though, and this was a flaw that unfortunately continued through my meal. Also, the batter on the skate was oddly heavy, resembling KFC's extra-crispy battering – a terrible thing to do to any good fish.

The skate's accompaniment of ceci were fresh and bright green; utterly delightful. When they're this young, you can eat the whole bean including skin, the same way you can with regular green peas. Even Carlos, who doesn't care for peas, liked these. Again, Oenotri deserves credit for trying to nudge American diners into accepting foods that are different than the 'same old, same old' Italian menu stand-bys.

Also in the dish were paper-thin raw strips of young carrot and young summer squash. What disappointed me most was the Castelvetrano olives, which I love, were in such tiny little slivers and equally miniscule in quantity, that they made no contribution to the flavor of the dish at all.

My entree of mackerel had an interesting-sounding combination of beets, tangerine slivers, and a Meyer lemon passato. Alas, it sounded better than it tasted. The passato was an intense, unsweetened sauce with the consistency of an aioli. The mackerel was filleted and grilled, but sadly as Mokutanya/San Mateo did, the cooking was over such high heat, it went over the line from nicely smoky towards rather ash-flavored. If it weren't such a high-oil fish, it would have been seriously overcooked. As it was, even Carlos noted it seemed too far to the well-done side.

There was way too much of the Meyer sauce underpinning the plate. It tasted harsh in such quantity against the sweetness of the beets and citrus, and the strong-tasting mackerel. The Japanese simply salt-grill mackerel (shioyaki), and I still think it's the best way to treat this fish. I love mackerel, but a lot of people find it unpleasantly strong. So I can't think that an equally strong sauce with a lot of acid will necessarily work. It might sound good in principle, but it felt more like the two main ingredients were shouting to be heard over one another, with the tasty mix of white and red beets getting lost in the fight. The red sorrel leaves were baby in size and left raw. Whatever flavor they might have offered was lost in the mix of heavy flavors.

Carlos ordered the pizza. Oenotri does a Neapolitan-style crust, thin and droopy in the middle. But the kitchen appears to have gotten sloppier. Yes, the restaurant was full; but no, this was not the weekend. Tables were slowly emptying and not being filled immediately. The sausage was outrageously salty, although tasty. The fresh tomato sauce seemed watery, not tasting of much besides salt, and Carlos noted both it and the sausage were very unevenly applied. 

We had joked with the waiter about ordering extra cheese (fresh housemade mozzarella) on the pizza – it's not an option with artisanal pizzas – but he asked the kitchen to do it for us and they did. It's another example of Oenotri's effortless service that we wish other restaurateurs would take note of. The chicory leaves had wilted and gave it a nice bitterness. But although good it wasn't anywhere near the best pizza we've ever had. Instead of being a bit limp in the middle, it was limp almost all the way to the crust. Combined with the overly salty sauce and sausage, we voted thumbs-down on this, compared to the much better execution 18 months ago. This pizza had concept and good basic ingredients, but not the on-point execution needed for three of the five elements.

None of the desserts sounded interesting, although that might be because we were still full after two days of good food! We settled for cappuccinos. Carlos' regular cappuccino was fine, but my decaf cappuccino was simply awful, one of the worst ever. It was tart and sour and weak, despite being dry with a good foam. It's one of the rare times I've taken two sips and then just left the rest.

Summary: After this dinner, Oenotri drops a level down. If we hadn't experienced the better execution and conception that both Oenotri and Riva Cucina/Berkeley showed upon first opening, we might try those two restaurants today and think, wow, these are pretty good Cal-Italian places! 

They are both still good...but they were once better. But do 4.5 million Napa Valley tourists a year care about the subtleties that Oenotri once offered?

Ummm.....probably not. Which doesn't bode well for Brix, our current favorite, either. As Carlos said while we ate our entrees, "You were wondering if Brix would have to change to attract crowds of people who drink all day and want big helpings of over-the-top food. Well, this place [Oenotri] is giving them what they want. Even if the owners want to do better food, why should they bother if only a few people can really appreciate it?"

Wow, that is depressing to contemplate….a future full of "Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives" – overcooked, oversalted, and greasy. 

Two people, dinner: one small salume platter, one starter, one pizza, one entree, two beverages with tip was $117.

Oenotri
1425 First St., Napa, CA
http://oenotri.com/menu.html
Review date: November 2011

Having invoked the presence of the great chef and cookbook author Joyce Goldstein in our review of Mustards, I'll continue the theme by saying right off that I would hope Goldstein approves of Oenotri, because it is everything Mustards was not.

The menu for Oenotri is spare – the separate salume menu is fully half its size – and as the waiter proudly told us, they make everything themselves, from the pasta to the fresh cheeses to the sausages and salume. They'll only bring you bread if you ask for it, BTW.

Carlos found so many things he wanted to order, it took us a little more time than normal to figure out our order. Finally we settled on sharing the bianco mangiare salad. This is a very creamy fresh mozzarella, even softer than a ricotta. It was sprinkled with roasted diced persimmons, whole roasted pistachios, and baby arugula, drizzled with a Meyer lemon olive oil and sweet balsamic. A few wedges of freshly baked flatbread were on the side.

This was one of the finest salads I've had in a while, and Carlos loved it too. The serving was modest, perfect for two people to share, and both of us wiped the plates clean with the flatbread. The balance of flavors was perfect, and the pairing of ingredients inspired.

Carlos got the pepperoni pizza with the additions of anchovies, Calabrian chile (for more heat than the regular chile flakes the pizza came with) and their housemade sausage. This turned out to my mistake for suggesting the anchovies, because the pepperoni had more than enough salt so that the anchovies pushed it over the top. We agreed that next time, we do one or the other, but not both.

We loved the heat and the great crust though, and the sausage was excellent, lightly flavored with fennel. Our one criticism would be it's a little thin in the middle, so it got slightly soggy and was hard to pick up.

He also ordered a side of the Brussel sprouts roasted and topped with parmigiano. I prefer my sprouts roasted more, but the cheese was hardly salty at all, just deeply flavorful. And there was no salt whatsoever on the sprouts, making them ideal for eating together with the pizza. 

I ordered the gnocchi with chanterelles, garlic, and parmigiano croccante, a fancy name for a disk of toasted brown shredded parmesan that is then broken up into irregular pieces for garnishing. I loved this topping, but Carlos didn't care for it. The gnocchi were lovely, pillow soft and properly curled/dimpled to catch the small amount of butter sauce, which was mixed with the mushroom juices. There were more chanterelles in this dish than I've ever seen; fully half the dish was mushrooms. It was a wonderful creation, not too rich, simple and utterly perfect. Here in the Bay Area we spend so much time drowning gnocchi in either pesto or rich cream sauces (or both, LOL), that we forget they are fine without 'gilding the lily'. 

If we'd had room I would have gotten the cheese plate just for the great name of the first cheese listed - “Bleating Heart” from Petaluma. But we didn't, so opted instead to share the chocolate cream puffs, a dish always near and dear to Carlos' heart. The cream puffs were tiny, three on a plate, but stuffed with an excellent mocha cream. The plate was decorated with glazed pistachios (must have been a heck of a crop this year, Mustards had them too) and a paler cream that was the mocha filling mixed with unsweetened whipped heavy cream, for a nice contrast of flavors.

Carlos had a very good cappuccino and I had a regular decaf. Surprisingly, the regular coffee is slightly more expensive than the espresso drinks.

The service was so good it was almost overpowering. The waiter was excellent, and unlike Mustards where our water glasses remained unfilled when empty, we could hardly take more than two sips of the complementary sparkling water before someone was refilling the glasses. Dirty plates and silverware were whisked away promptly with making one feel rushed.

Oenotri impressed us. The food is creative and interesting, full of flavor but the ingredients are treated with respect and the combinations are well thought-out. It reminds us of Riva Cucina, but with a more interesting menu (Riva Cucina's menu hasn't changed appreciably since we first began eating there two years ago).

It didn't hurt that this dinner, which was so much better than our lunch at Mustards had been, was only slightly over $10 more in total. Oenotri is definitely on our “A” list, and we look forward to returning next time we're in the area. 

Two people: One starter, one side, one pizza, one entree, two beverages, with tip was $106