Roscoe’s Blog

Happy Friday!

Now that we finally have a day this week that feels like summer, I feel okay about writing about our midsummer menu!

Of course, this being the Bay Area, that means our dishes are a combination of light and summery and a bit more hearty and warming for those foggy evenings overlooking our garden.

One of our all star dishes, house-smoked salmon over a cornmeal blini makes its summer debut, accompanied by some fantastic avocado and baby beets.

Wendy’s rolling out a new salad, a delightful, fresh combination of shaved summer squash, arugula, ricotta salata and candied almonds. Seriously, it’s perfect.

I’m definitely a carnivore, but I’d be hard pressed to pass up this menu’s vegetarian entrée: our ravioli filled with ricotta and black summer truffles. Surround them with fava beans, a carrot beurre and a chervil puree? I’m sold!

Two familiar dishes get a slight twist:

Chicken two ways: yes! This time, we’re doing a pan roasted breast, with a coq au vin leg with bacon and mushrooms. That’s right, bacon.

One of our summer regulars, white gulf shrimp with creamed corn and potatoes, makes it’s appearance as grilled white sea bass this year, with heirloom tomatoes and grilled peppers.

The reason for switching to sea bass? So we can offer Wendy’s amazing shrimp, crab and scallop chowder; you know, the one served over linguica mashed potatoes.

For your sweetheart’s sweet tooth, Cydne’s got her Summer Berry Pudding! If you’ve had it, you know how amazing this dish is. If you haven’t, put it on your bucket list and get over here. While you’re in the neighborhood, check out Cyne’s art on display at the gallery next door, Nielsen Arts.

Hope you all are well, and we hope to see you soon at Rivoli (and Corso!)

Roscoe and Wendy

Food, Rivoli

Mother’s Day Brunch!

Hello one and all, Mother’s day’s coming up and we still have plenty of room, so do something nice for yo moms, treat her to a little of Rodrigo’s cooking on Sunday.  You’ll be glad you did.

Roscoe

Corso, Food

Hello again!

We’ve got a new menu, which we’ll offer from Wednesday, May 5 through Sunday, May 23.

Wendy’s doing some of my faves on this menu, starting with her AWESOME ricotta salata gnocchi, three poached ricotta dumplings anointed with pears, fried sage, and brown butter, so savory and sweet, great with a Roussanne Steve Edmunds made for us.

We’re also smoking salmon and serving it on a cornmeal blini with buttered leeks, avocado and baby beets. If you’ve never tried our house smoked salmon, Spring’s here, you owe it to yourself.

Wendy does the best crab cake, because you know, it’s not all about the bread crumbs, it’s about the crab, right?

Other main courses, an homage to Joyce Goldstein, a triptych of different Moroccan meats, b’steeya, sausage and mechouia, so fantastic.

Cydne’s making my all time favorite, lemon cheesecake. I know what you’re thinking, you’re thinking Roscoe, cheesecake? Yes, cheesecake, light, creamy, not chalky like from delis of our yout. Best. Cheesecake. Ever.

Got a lot of exciting new wines, especially a Languedoc syrah based red made by the God Rene Rostaing, a Portuguese crisp, dry white, and a new range of Aussie wines, including a Clare Valley Riesling that’s all lime and minerals and bone dry.

Remember, Rivoli now has a full bar, so try the smoked salmon with a little chilled Chopin vodka, just like the Russkies used to do!

Wendy and I hope we’ll see you soon at the Riv.

Food, Rivoli

Well, a bittersweet day today, watching the pizza ovens rolling out the front door. I remember when we bought the place, the pizza ovens were the dominant force, a huge hulking presence in the back of the kitchen. Then of course, we were going to sell them: Wendy was trying to come up with a good idea for the food for Corso, it couldn’t just be a generic Italian restaurant, not after the famous opening of A16 and the real awareness in the Bay Area of regional Italian food. Wendy spent so much time in Florence, it was the food she was most familiar with, so it made sense to feature it. The only problem was, pizza isn’t really done in Florence, I mean, you can get it, but not in a traditional trattoria.

But we had the ovens, so we made it a feature of the restaurant. And though we love our pizza, it never really caught on at Corso. We’d sell a dozen a night, but out of 150 covers, it wasn’t a very high percentage and we had to have a cook dedicated to doing pretty much just that. So after two years, we finally decided to pull the plug and sell them. Moving them out granted us badly needed space, we can now have our salumi refrigerator in house to show everyone we make it all in house, and if you don’t know, Chef Rodrigo gets in whole animals to make it from. We feel we can now concentrate on what we do best: regional Italian food from Florence.

I’ve snatched up some new wines recently, even found some more 2004 Brunellos, not cheap wines, but a great wine from the best vintage in 10 years.

Hope we’ll see you soon at Corso!

Roscoe

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Well not quite. But Wendy figured out that over the course of the last 16 years at Rivoli, we’ve served over 100,000 portabella mushroom fritters. 100,000. Unbelievable. Thank you all for establishing Rivoli as your one and only FRITTERHOUSE!!

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