Cox: At Bottega, eat like you’re in Italy

Two local chefs, both headquartered in Yountville, have become brands. One, of course, is Thomas Keller of The French Laundry, Bouchon, Bouchon Bakery, and Ad Hoc in Yountville and Per Se in New York City. The other is Michael Chiarello, who has created a string of successful businesses that are synthesized in his restaurant, Bottega. The name means workshop in Italian.

Here’s what Chiarello has created. Besides running Bottega, a restaurant on just about everyone’s list of top Italian restaurants in the United States, he’s an Emmy-winning host of the Food Network’s “Easy Entertaining.” He’s developed NapaStyle, a collection of shops in the same complex as Bottega that sells home furnishings and such at the site and online. He’s the owner of Chiarello Family Winery. He’s the author of the “Bottega” cookbook, which won award nominations from the James Beard Foundation and the International Association of Culinary Professionals. And he was nominated as Best Chef California by the James Beard Foundation as well.

Bottega is more like a factory than a workshop. It has squads of staff bustling everywhere, seemingly one or more staff member for every customer. And there is no shortage of customers in the rustic, dark, tile-and-wood floored, brick-walled interior. Some staff wear business clothes - suits on the men and high heels on the women. Other wear a variety of more casual clothing. Some waiters wear aprons, some don’t. Food is delivered to your table by any of them. And they are unfailingly courteous, friendly, and active. They don’t saunter, they don’t stroll. They buzz about like bees. Amid all this energy, you are well cared for.

Great service is matched by great food and wine. Wines are nicely priced. A quartino (one-third of a 750 ml bottle) of the truly excellent Frog’s Leap zinfandel is $16. At that rate, a full bottle would be $48. John Williams of Frog’s Leap sells his zin for $30 a bottle at the winery, so you can see the markup is very fair. Chiarello’s own wine is also fairly priced. Corkage is $25, waived if you also buy a bottle from the list.

Interested to see why an autumnal item, Burrata Autunnale ($15 ????) would be on a spring menu, I ordered it and am glad I did. The burrata itself was made in Los Angeles and was as creamy as anyone could wish, but chef de cuisine Brian Bistrong contrasted it with vinegar-marinated baby mushrooms (that’s the autumn part), sweet segments of satsuma tangerines, a sprig of watercress, and thin slices of fried salsify.

The kitchen bowed to spring with a Ribollita Primavera ($11 ???½), a deliriously light, hot broth containing garden-fresh peas, green favas out of their gray jackets, diced potatoes unfortunately cooked almost to mush, diced carrots, and grilled bruschetta with a slice of pancetta. It tasted fine.

Then came the night’s biggest surprise, the Raviolo di Uovo ($24 ???). One six-inch diameter raviolo is made with potato pasta stuffed with ricotta mashed with cooked spinach, then sprinkled on top with brown butter, a few shavings of black truffle, and oil-crisped sage leaves. The surprise comes when you cut into it and a liquid egg yolk in the center oozes enticingly out, to be swirled up with every luscious bite you take.

Tagliarini Bolognese ($19 ???) was something of a puzzle, as tagliarini are small, flat pasta cut from a rolled-out sheet of dough, while here were spaghetti-round noodles. I wouldn’t complain except that the kitchen was going for unadulterated authenticity with the spot-on Bolognese meat sauce, and in Bologna, it’s traditionally served with strips of flat pasta.

The complete triumph of the evening was Pollo alla Diavola sul Mattone ($28 ????), a half chicken marinated in Calabrian chili paste, white balsamic vinegar, rosemary, and olive oil, then grilled under a heavy weight on a very hot griddle and served with grilled shishito peppers and Italian onions. Absolutely fabulous.

Millefoglie di Castagne ($10 ??½) was four thin panes of transparent sugar stuck into chestnut puree by pastry chef Dorothee Drouet.

To sum up: Forget what you know about Italian cooking in America. This is how you eat in Italy.

Jeff Cox writes a weekly restaurant review in the Sonoma Living section. He can be reached at jeffcox@sonic.net.