A Cote
If you know enough French, but not enough about the Oakland dining scene, the name À Côté might be confusing. Next to what?
The answer is Citron, a chic restaurant on College Avenue near Rockridge BART. I think the two share owners and maybe even kitchen space. À Côté is the more casual of the two, set up as a tapas restaurant. We've heard good things about both restaurants, and so when we wanted to thank our friend Suzie for sending an e-mail five or six weeks ago that resulted in my current job, we decided to take her there.
The restaurant featured 16 dishes, 7 cheeses and 6 desserts that evening, and it was tough to choose. To start with, we ordered Salt Cod Fritters with Romesco ($9), Cauliflower and Kabocha Squash Gratin ($8), Pancetta Wrapped Monkfish over Lentils with Mache ($12), and Duck Breast with Risotto and Cipollini-Cherry Agrodolce ($14). We figured we could always add more as needed.
It turns out we didn't need to. This may be a tapas place, but the four dishes made for a satisfying, if light, entrée equivalent. It's a good thing, too. Service was very slow, but this was mitigated by the restaurant's response when they realized the snafu; we chose three cheeses on them. Of course, Suzie and we are members of Slow Food, so it's not like we were in a rush; we were just hungry.
And was it worth the wait? Sadly no. The food was quite good but not really interesting or memorable. We only went once, and they may very well have been having an off night. Our waitress was quite surprised when she realized we hadn't been served, and so I suspect something was not right in the kitchen. I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt and try again at some point in the future.
But there was certainly nothing off about their wine list. For the restaurant's small size, they offer a respectable variety of wines. Of course, I'm always willing to give extra points to a restaurant which offers a decent selection of German and Austrian wines.
The other interesting thing they offer is a nightly selection of wine flights. You get three 2.2 oz glasses of wine, and the selection might be a vertical flight of various vintages from one winemaker, or a sampling of representative wines from a region. I decided to branch out a bit and opted for the 2000 Gigondas flight, which focused on three wines from the Southern Rhône. I had a hard time picking my favorite from the Domaine La Bouïssiere and the Domaine du Cayron. The first had a lot of the character I find in Northern Rhône wines, which I enjoy quite a bit, and so probably had a healthy amount of Syrah (Southern Rhône wines are more often blends, whereas Northern Rhône reds are always Syrah). But the second offered a different bouquet, with rosemary being the scent that stuck in my mind.
Melissa and Suzie each had the "La Roche" Mâcon-Vergisson Burgundy, 2001 flight, a selection of white Burgundies (which are always made with Chardonnay grapes) from, one imagines, a single vineyard. They both liked the third one the most, the Michel Rey bottling.
We probably would have opted for some cheese anyway, but it was very kind of the restaurant to treat us. We had a Roquefort and two cheeses I hadn't had before, Bica, a "three milk" cheese from Portugal, and a Pecorino Tartufo from Italy ("pecorino" means sheep's milk cheese). I didn't taste the truffles that give the latter its name, but all three cheeses were great, and they were served with some deliciously addictive salted almonds and dried figs. A great cheese platter. For this, I decided it was time to go for their Germans. I would have loved a Spätlese Riesling, but the ones they had were only available by the bottle, and we decided to get actual dessert wines for the final course. Instead, I chose a Niersteiner Brückchen 2001 J.u.H.A. Strub Kabinett Riesling from the Rheinhessen. Strub makes great wines, and 2001 was a spectacular vintage by all accounts, but I think this could use more time in the bottle. It still felt a little raw, for lack of a better term.
For dessert, we shared the Profiteroles, a Meyer Lemon Curd and Panna Cotta tartlet, and a Gianduja Mousse Cake. Suzie refrained from a dessert wine (we also had a glass of Prosecco to start, so there had been plenty to drink that night), but Melissa went for a glass of the Oremus Tokaji Aszu (5 puttanyos). Me, I went straight for the most expensive dessert wine on the menu, a 1998 Bründlmayer Beerenauslese Riesling ($28/glass) from the Kamptal region of Austria. Bründlmayer is a top-notch winemaker, and this was a very nice sample of his prowess. You don't find that in many restaurants (nor do you find Grüner Veltliner, one of my favorite grapes, but they had some; if I hadn't decided to try the Gigondas flight, I would have been drinking that all evening).
In the end, we felt very satisfied by our meal. The cheese selection and wine menu are reasons enough to spend an hour or so enjoying the casual ambiance, but if I go back and the food is the same, I'd probably opt to eat dinner somewhere else before finding myself there.
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