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Price Guide: $ = less than $15, $$ = $15 - $35, $$$ = $36-$50, $$$$ = over $50
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Alexander split long ago from his original partner, San Francisco restaurateur Modesto Lanzone, but the Italian menu and the display of contemporary art here both echo that original partnership. The space is deep and sprawling, with a blue-tile floor, busy bar set in the middle, and tables up front by windows looking onto the street. Menu choices are for the most part in the classic Italian vein.--Diablo
Here's a one-stop destination for a memorable lunch and shopping spree. Tucked into designer Giorgio Armani's chic retail store is this upscale northern Italian café, serving panini, pizza, salads, antipasto misto, carpaccio, and absolutely stunning desserts.
This moderately priced California-Italian-French bistro serves pizza, pasta, grilled foods, salads, and a large selection of local wines. Local winemakers come here for crisp-crusted pizzas; eye-pleasing carpaccio dressed with capers, olive oil, and grana; housemade breadsticks; and delicious pasta specials such as trenne pasta with lamb, artichokes, olives, roasted tomatoes and ricotta salata.
In this superb cellar trattoria, Tuscan-born Giovanni Leoni serves the dishes of his native Serchio Valley, a garden basket not far from Lucca. The atmosphere is intimate and congenial rather than trendy. Coniglio aficionados return for his extraordinary rabbit dishes, which on some nights number as many as half a dozen different preparations. All of the pastas are made on the premises, and even the coffee beans are roasted in-house.
It seems like everybody's pretending Tuscan these days, but Sandro Rossi and his Caffé 817 are the real thing. Rossi, a former engineer and the most welcoming of hosts, has brought the flavors and elegance of his native Florence to this stylish café in a developing zone of downtown Oakland. Delicious panini, lasagna, and bean soup, and maybe the best cappuccino in 50 miles. You stand in line to order, then grab a table in the art-filled room or on the busy sidewalk.--Diablo
Even on a first visit the friendly staff at this bright, fun corner trattoria will make you feel like a long-lost cousin. Follow the waiters' recommendations--whether for a big bowl of pasta or the daily specials--and dive into hefty portions of highly-flavored yet well-balanced Tuscan specialties. Be ready for garlic and herbs, and no shortage of intense flavors. The wine list is priced right, with some Italian bottles that suit the spirited cooking.--Diablo
Eight tables qualify Gio's as a truly small restaurant, but the welcome and the portions are anything but tiny. A look around the room finds many diners digging into burina, a spicy mix of penne rigate pasta, sausage, and fresh tomatoes.--Diablo
The menu at this colorful spot is essentially Italian, with Latin American, Southwestern, and Caribbean touches. A highlight is the availability of wines from all 16 Livermore Valley wineries, including Garré, the latest on the scene,. Regular wine tastings give diners a good chance to try and buy the local vintages.--Diablo
Tucked away in the rear of the massive Concord Hilton is this nouveau-rustic trattoria. Outside San Francisco there aren't many hotel restaurants that can attract local diners on their own merits, but in addition to a pleasant, unhotel-like atmosphere, Grissini offers contemporary, California-influenced Italian cuisine that can compete with any in Diablo Country. Try the expansive antipasti platter, an excellent starter split between two or even three, then perhaps a richly sauced pasta or an inventive entrée. And don't miss the tiramisu.--Diablo
Haute Stuff fills up at lunch--the only time it's open--with local attorneys and office workers and just about anybody looking for a savory midday meal with a homemade touch. The changing menu can feature lasagna or quiche or a variety of pastas. When they're not making or serving your lunch, the owners conduct a thriving catering business out of the Main Street shop.--Diablo
Il Pavone retains the look of a house in the country, which is probably what it was when the intersection of Olympic Boulevard and Tice Valley Road was truly in the hinterland. The extensive Italian menu adds sandwiches at lunch and extravagances such as rack of lamb with balsamic-vinegar sauce at dinner. Early-bird specials are available nightly.--Diablo
This popular Montclair restaurant, perched above Mountain Boulevard at the back of a small shopping complex, plays friendly host to constant crowds both day and night. But fear not--there's usually room in the sprawling, high-ceilinged restaurant or on the spacious patio for a single diner or your extended family. Lunch means a panino or a bowl of pasta, dinner spells choices from thin-crisp pizzas to a sumptuous lasagna.--Diablo
Locals were amazed when La Piazza was fashioned out of a defunct and cramped Mexican restaurant. With its open kitchen, wood-fired pizza oven, and tiny wine bar at the rear, this trattoria could be straight out of a happening big-city neighborhood. The trattoria fare--thin-crusted pizzas, pasta in bowls, garden salads--can be just the ticket before or after a movie across the street at the Orinda Theater.--Diablo
The principle at Lotsa Pasta is simple: pastas to eat in or take out, at reasonable prices, in a swell little shop. Four basic noodles meet up with a range of sauces, from meat to Alfredo. For the noodle-weary, opt for the chicken scaloppini or a meatball sandwich on a toasted garlic roll.--Diablo
It's no stretch to guess what's in most every dish at this busy restaurant where pastas and Italianesque sautéed items reign. But while the pungent lily is ubiquitous, you can also order any of the dishes with the amount you like. Seafood and chicken are specialties. Prices are right, portions hearty, and the service cordial.--Diablo
The dining room of this modish Mission District restaurant is dominated by a huge brick fireplace recalling the grand hearths of Italy. Delicious specialties such as Sonoma-raised lamb, simple roasted chicken, and daily fresh fish specials emerge from the roaring ovens. Pastas and risottos are first rate.
Marcello's remains a cozy haven where you can ease through a lunch or dinner in the true Italian-Continental vein. Prosciutto and melon, scampi Livornese, sweetbreads sauté--all evoke a style of Italian cooking that has all but disappeared elsewhere but is honored and carefully constructed here. Veal is a specialty, but we hesitated asking what, exactly, is in the Mafia salad.--Diablo
Chef and owner Gaetano Fillari was born in Sicily, and touches of his island home are evident in the decor and menu of this Rheem favorite. A mural of the Sicilian coastal city of Taormina dominates the room and tells you why the chef has such a way with fish, calamari, eggplant, and tomatoes--staples of that Mediterranean isle.--Diablo
If a high-decibel noise level and an out-the-door line of diners are your chosen signs of a good Italian restaurant, Montecatini is the place for you. This small restaurant's kitchen is right on the street, and the cooking action is the side-show while you wait for a table. The crowds are even bigger when the lights are lit at the Dean Lesher Regional Center for the Arts across the street. The menu is full of Northern Italian standards, with barely a nod to the cucina rustica so in vogue. Don't neglect the ever-popular pollo alla schiacciata--crispy, juicy, and rosemary-scented. A well-priced wine list leans to the Italian and has some good values.--Diablo
Sicilian cooking carries all the warmth and color of the Mediterranean, and Nicolo's more than does justice to the cuisine of that dramatic island. Calamari is prepared in several ways, and the house specialty--cotoletta di vitella alla Siciliana--is breaded veal sautéed in olive oil. Homemade desserts are worth the calories.--Diablo
If God is truly in the details, then Oliveto is a church and Paul Bertolli is St. Peter. The former chef at Chez Panisse has brought his formidable culinary skills and sensibilities to the kitchen here, as has chef Mike Tusk, and the result is that Oliveto has gone from being a very good restaurant to one of the finest in the Bay Area. The small menu changes daily to take advantage of the finest and freshest seasonal ingredients, and there isn't a clunker on it. Look for terrific pastas and risottos, wood-fire grilled game, and glorious seasonal fruit desserts.
There's something refreshing about the spare, clean simplicity of this Lafayette pasta place, with its big, streetside windows, and a scattering of umbrellaed tables along the broad sidewalk. The menu is equally direct--and spare and legible--and totally focused on Italian noodles. From fettuccine to fusilli, carbonara to capellini, the choices are nearly infinite and the prices are right.--Diablo
Pasta fetishists will think they've died and gone to heaven; this lively specialist (in exactly what its name suggests) offers more than four dozen different pasta dishes, from fettuccine Alfredo to linguine with stir-fried shrimp, chicken, and vegetables. A few salads--including, of course, pasta salad--are also on the menu, as are starters such as cheese-stuffed eggplant and mussels bathed in marinara sauce. --Diablo
Don't wander into Pasta Primavera for the first time absolutely famished. You'll pass out before you read through the seemingly endless list of pasta permutations. Good-size portions and moderate prices mean the place is usually crowded, but the wait is rewarded. No pizza here, though if you've got a pie in your mind while your pals need noodles, ask for the "pizza fettucine," with chicken, red and green bell peppers, mushrooms, black olives, and mozzarella. No, we're not kidding.--Diablo
As its name implies, Pastas Cafe specializes in pasta, but they're not all Italian. Besides linguini fileto pomadori from Milano and rigatoni Bolognese, the menu also offers such variations as Absolut penne alla vodka, a Swedish-style dish. Entrées such as chicken Gilroy (with roasted garlic), veal piccata, and shrimp jambalaya, along with individual pizzas and homemade desserts, round out the choices. --Diablo
Rare is the moment when all the sidewalk tables aren't taken at this popular trattoria. Choose from a trio of salads (Caesar, Greek, or spinach), individual pizzas, plenty of pastas, and Italian sauté dishes based on veal, chicken, and fish. A deli case at the front door tells you what's happening in the way of dessert.--Diablo
A soaring ceiling and colorful art make Pastavino a delightful spot for an Italian repast. Pizza and pasta are prominent on the menu, and in a monumental nod to a famous Tuscan dish, there's the serious "bistecca Lorenzo," a 22-ounce porterhouse steak served with caramelized onions, mushrooms, and potatoes. Pick a big red to go with this monster.--Diablo
Famous for salads and desserts, including sorbets made with homegrown fruits. Pizzas include authentic andouille with fresh basil; roasted Italian eggplant with fresh oregano, provolone cheese, and garlic. Specials change daily. Beer and wine.
In the woody Danville Livery and Mercantile complex, Piatti stands out colorfully in its coat of pale peach paint alla Toscana. Inside this chain-operated, but purely Italian trattoria, the vast room is bright and lively. The rotisserie turns, the Italian tunes lilt, the staff scurries. Meats and fish from the grill are good bets, and there are plenty of Italian wines to accompany your choices.--Diablo
Prima means "first" in Italian, and this restaurant/wine bar/retail shop was truly a food-and-drink first for Walnut Creek. Long before the downtown started its urban transformation, owners Michael and Janet Verlander were offering Italian food and wine in a small storefront. Since then they've taken over an adjacent business and adding a large streetside patio. More than 1,500 wines are available to accompany the extensive Italian menu. Piano music Wednesday through Saturday nights.--Diablo
Reed Hearon's much-lauded restaurant in North Beach features a menu of Genoese and Ligurian food adapted to the Bay Area's bounty, including antipasti plates of cured fish or fresh fava beans with pecorino, main courses of hearty cioppino, wood-hearth braised dishes, and lots of fresh local fish.
This low-key trattoria beckons to neighborhood residents along outer Sacramento Street. Chef Ross Browne regularly changes the menu, but lunch usually features a daily pasta and specialty pizza.
At lunch this sun-splashed trattoria is lively and bright, with its sponged walls and big windows looking out across Broadway to the green of Civic Park. The place remains lively through the dinner hour, thanks to the attached bar. The menu leans to Sicilian dishes, with a special emphasis on fish.--Diablo
Tucked in a small house on out-of-the-way Rose Avenue, Saro's, which looks like a small-town American cottage, is really home to an ambitious Italian menu. Pastas include house-made ravioli and cannelloni, and the kitchen does lamb sauté preparations usually reserved for veal. The undecided can avoid commitment by ordering "Tre Fratelli": a protein-rich medley of sautéed chicken, sautéed scampi, and a New York steak. Mighty meaty, that one.--Diablo
If you're looking for the kind of food people actually cook and eat in Italy, look no further than this stylish Diablo Country restaurant. The menu offers no eggplant parmigiana or murky, canned tomato sauces, no fried calamari, no goat cheese on everything. What it does offer is food that sings with the pure, clean, forthright flavors of authentic regional Italian cookery, food that's based on fresh, seasonal ingredients and prepared with skill and care by chef Charles Downing and his crack kitchen crew. Anything off the wood-fired rotisserie is a winner, especially the duck and pancetta-wrapped rabbit. Two normally indifferent dishes--mixed antipasti and tiramisu-- are irresistible here.--Diablo
Strings has a pulse, and it's rapid. Day and night, tables are full of workers and shoppers, plus the pre-performance crowds headed to the Center for the Arts just across the street. The menu is straightforward Italian, with personal-sized pizzas, various pastas, and a chicken-fusilli salad among the best sellers.--Diablo
Tradition is held in high esteem at Strizzi's, where you can put together a menu that will remind you of those ancient days at San Francisco's North Beach restaurants. From minestrone to fettucine Alfredo, from manicotti to spaghetti and meatballs, it's all there, in portions that may not leave room for dessert. The open kitchen features a mesquite grill constantly sizzling with well-priced chicken, pork chops, and steaks.--Diablo
An oasis of relative peace and quiet on busy Mt. Diablo Boulevard, Tourelle offers a dining area for every mood, from a sunny, slate-floored room that's perfect for a night out with friends to a cozy, romantic room complete with fireplace to a small but pretty outdoor patio. The food is more Italian than Californian; it's on the pricy side, but quality is high. Among the winners: mussels steamed with linguiça, cilantro, and red pepper; grilled swordfish on a bed of cannellini beans with baby artichokes and pesto; and a homey, satisfying peach crisp.
A perfect spot to while away a Napa Valley afternoon is a terrace table overlooking the patio of this restaurant's picturesque stone building. Although you might dream you're in a villa in northern Italy, the marvelous prosciutto, soft mozzarella, pastas, and breads are made right on the premises.
If you regularly daydream about honest trattorie in Italy, you owe yourself a meal at Vineria. Shoehorned into the newly savvy North Mission, this big sister to North Beach's celebrated L'Osteria del Forno crowns thin-crust pizza with pricey porcini, pairs milk-braised pork with roasted potatoes, and strews sage and butter over pumpkin ravioli. In a smart show of jingoism, the Italian-born owners serve only vintages from their homeland.
The food here is old-fashioned Italian/Continental; the difference at Zio Fraedo's is that the kitchen usually prepares it with a higher level of skill. Service is surprisingly efficient, given the youth of much of the wait staff. Prices may seem a bit high, but entrées are huge and come with soup and salad. Stick with simpler dishes for maximum satisfaction--minestrone, fried calamari, and a great version of chicken cacciatore. Desserts are few, and you probably won't have much appetite left over anyway.--Diablo
Chef Judy Rodgers presides over one of California's most distinguished restaurants. Her kitchen produces great Italian and southern French menus and a superb list of fresh seafood, including a fresh oyster bar. Don't miss the best Caesar salad in town or the wonderfully crispy thin French fries.
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