Dinner at Eccolo on 4th Street in Berkeley, was much better than our last lunch (in between the last review and this one) but while we’d return, it is an expensive dinner in a bustling town with many good choices.
Little snacks: Sweet potato chips with sage
Not as good as their frites with sage and rosemary. Some were chewy some were crispy. An uneven dish.
Half a Dungeness Crab with chili butter
Crab was good. We ordered without the chili butter so cannot comment.
Foie gras on brioche with pickled onions and coarse salt
Foie gras was good. The brioche did nothing for it being on the heavy side and just didn’t work as the encasement. Nice idea.
Bruschetta ala caprese: autumn tomatoes, basil and burrata mozzarella on grilled bread
Not a good sign that I couldn’t remember having this dish. All I recall is thinking that it’s past tomato season (the key being autumn tomatoes) and I should have known better.
Casareccia with Neapolitan pork ragu
The pasta was good. I was disappointed that the ragu was made from ground pork rather than a slow cooked cut of pork. This dish needed some other element to make it sing. It was not the great comfort dish it could have been.
Grilled pasture-fed veal chop with frisee salad
On their current website menu it shows it served with rosemary potatoes and it would be a much better choice. Jack was looking for some starch. Too much parsley a top the chop annoyed Jack but he liked the chop overall.
Menu
We ordered a bottle of 1999 J. Hofstätter Lagrein Steinraffler - an excellent wine. (First time I've found this one on a wine list.)
