Camino, Oakland California

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of dining with my good friend The Corkdork at one of the best new restaurants in the Bay Area. The name is Camino, the location Oakland. Oakland is the Bay Area's version of Brooklyn, where cheaper rents, a young, hip, and appreciative audience, have spurred the opening of excellent food establishments over the last 10 years.

Camino is owned and operated by husband and wife team chef Russel Moore and general manager Allison Hopelain. They present a small menu which changes daily, is concise and extremely locavore centric. Rustic Mediterranean cooking at its best, all done in an open wood burning hearth, it is a sight to see, smell and taste. There were six appetizer choices including several composed salads and a soup, three mains including one vegetarian option of wood oven-roasted chanterelles with belgian endive gratin and green beans, four desserts, and a fiscalini cheddar cheese on that Sunday's dinner menu. We started with fresh local ling cod fritters. Crisp and crunchy on the outside and moist on the inside, they were accompanied by a lively chervil and radish salad dressed lightly with lemon and high quality fleur de sel (french sea salt). The fritters were the perfect hors d'oeuvres to begin the festivities, and gave us a chance to get into our first wine of the evening, the stunning 1998 Bonneau du Martray Corton-Charlemagne courtesy of The Corkdork. This organic wine from high on the Hill of Corton was really in a sweet spot. Incredibly complex, with great verve, minerality, toasty bread (yeast) and flowery fruit. You should be able to find this wine for around $90 retail, and while expensive, it is one of the few white burgundies worth searching for, especially for a special dinner.

We moved on to wild nettle soup, and the pork and greens crepinette with arugula salad. The puree of nettles was a vibrant green, fresh and bracing with a dollop of creme fraiche to offset the acidity. A crepinette is a loose sausage patty, in this case of pork and a few greens for color, wrapped in caul fat and sauteed or grilled. This version could not have been more flavorful and moist. The richness of the pork was perfectly offset by the super fresh peppery arugula salad, again dressed with lemon and fleur de sel.

Although we had ordered a bar snack of locally foraged porcini mushroom toasts early on, a misfire on the server's part only brought them to table after the appetizers. Making up for the mistake, we were served two orders! A nice gesture and a most welcome touch. The superb mushrooms were simply served on toasted baguette with a little persillade (parsley and garlic chopped together). My only complaint here was that the mushrooms had been cooked previously and were served a bit cold. Having said that, they were still very tasty indeed.

Since upon walking in to the restaurant we could see the open wood burning hearth and the lamb leg rotating in front of the embers, we could not resist the lamb lamb leg a la ficelle, grilled loin chop and braised shoulder with peppers and polenta. The roasted peppers added the correct acidity, the lamb was cooked perfectly in all three of its guises and the long, slow cooked polenta rustica was creamy and earthy. This polenta from Anson Mills is made from Otto File organic heirloom corn and is absolutely the best quality. To accompany the lamb The Corkdork was kind enough to bring another stunning wine. This time we ventured to the Northern Rhone for a 100% Syrah. Located high on the hills to the west of the Rhone river, around the small city of Tournon and directly across from the famous Hermitage Hill, this 2006 Saint Joseph from Stephane Otheguy was an extremely good match for the lamb. Very earthy, full of minerals, black pepper and purple fruits it is, along with Domaine Gonon and Domaine de Miquettes, one of the finest Saint Josephs I have had the pleasure of drinking recently.

For dessert I had the chocolate pudding which was a rich and thick classic, made from a high quality dark chocolate from Tcho chocolates in San Francisco.

The organic/bio dynamic wine list features eleven whites and ten reds, all fairly priced and well suited to the cooking. Corkage is a very fair $15 per bottle.

Camino
3917 Grand Ave
Oakland, CA 94610
510 547 5035
Dinner: Friday and Saturday 5:30pm - 10:30pm, Sunday 5pm - 10pm
Monday, Wednesday, & Thursday 5:30 - 10pm (closed Tuesday)
Brunch: Saturday and Sunday 10am - 2pm