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A16 is an
The Oakland location was designed by Cass Calder Smith of CCS Architecture. The space is described as "rustic-industrial". There entrance has large glass windows. The bar is made of thick
A16's menu focuses on the cuisine of
''A16: Food + Wine''
Berkeley: Ten Speed Press (2008).
Italian
Italian(s) may refer to:
* Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries
** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom
** Italian language, a Romance language
*** Regional Ita ...
restaurant in California
California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...
. There are two locations: the original location in San Francisco
San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...
and a second location in Oakland
Oakland is the largest city and the county seat of Alameda County, California, United States. A major West Coast port, Oakland is the largest city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, the third largest city overall in the Bay A ...
. The restaurant's cuisine focuses on the Italian region of Campania
Campania (, also , , , ) is an administrative Regions of Italy, region of Italy; most of it is in the south-western portion of the Italian peninsula (with the Tyrrhenian Sea to its west), but it also includes the small Phlegraean Islands and the i ...
. In 2014, the restaurant was named to the Top 100 Restaurants in San Francisco list by Michael Bauer of the ''San Francisco Chronicle
The ''San Francisco Chronicle'' is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of Northern California. It was founded in 1865 as ''The Daily Dramatic Chronicle'' by teenage brothers Charles de Young and M. H. de Young, Michael H. de ...
''.
Description
The original A16 in San Francisco is located in the Marina District. The Oakland location is in the Rockridge neighborhood. The San Francisco restaurant's dining room is long and narrow. In the middle of the restaurant is an open kitchen. There is bar seating in the front and patio seating in the back.
The Oakland location was designed by Cass Calder Smith of CCS Architecture. The space is described as "rustic-industrial". There entrance has large glass windows. The bar is made of thick marble
Marble is a metamorphic rock composed of recrystallized carbonate minerals, most commonly calcite or Dolomite (mineral), dolomite. Marble is typically not Foliation (geology), foliated (layered), although there are exceptions. In geology, the ...
. The exposed brick walls are an original component of the building architecture and wooden beams are visible on the ceiling. The ocean-themed artwork is by Kelly Tunstall. This location seats 85 and 125 including a private dining room.
Menu
A16's menu focuses on the cuisine of Campania
Campania (, also , , , ) is an administrative Regions of Italy, region of Italy; most of it is in the south-western portion of the Italian peninsula (with the Tyrrhenian Sea to its west), but it also includes the small Phlegraean Islands and the i ...
, Italy. A16 is well known for its wood-fired pizza
Pizza (, ) is a dish of Italian origin consisting of a usually round, flat base of leavened wheat-based dough topped with tomatoes, cheese, and often various other ingredients (such as various types of sausage, anchovies, mushrooms, onions ...
. Other dishes include braised octopus
An octopus ( : octopuses or octopodes, see below for variants) is a soft-bodied, eight- limbed mollusc of the order Octopoda (, ). The order consists of some 300 species and is grouped within the class Cephalopoda with squids, cuttle ...
, fettuccine
Fettuccine (; lit. 'little ribbons'; sing. ''fettuccina'') is a type of pasta popular in Roman and Tuscan cuisine. It is descended from the extremely thin capelli d'angelo of the Renaissance but is a flat, thick pasta traditionally made of egg ...
made with black pepper
Black pepper (''Piper nigrum'') is a flowering vine in the family Piperaceae, cultivated for its fruit, known as a peppercorn, which is usually dried and used as a spice and seasoning. The fruit is a drupe (stonefruit) which is about in diame ...
served with pig's trotters
A pig's trotter, also known as a pettitoe, or sometimes known as a pig's foot, is the culinary term for the foot of a Domestic pig, pig. The cuts are used in various dishes around the world, and experienced a resurgence in the late 2000s.
Descri ...
, sirloin steak
In American butchery, the sirloin steak (called the ''rump steak'' in British butchery) is cut from the sirloin, the subprimal posterior to the short loin where the T-bone, porterhouse, and club steaks are cut. The sirloin is actually di ...
and goat chop. Main courses come with a side dish of the diners choice, including cannellini
The kidney bean is a variety of the common bean (''Phaseolus vulgaris''). It resembles a human kidney and thus is named after such. Red kidney beans should not be confused with other red beans, such as adzuki beans.
Classification
There are ...
beans or broccoli
Broccoli (''Brassica oleracea'' var. ''italica'') is an edible green plant in the cabbage family (family Brassicaceae, genus ''Brassica'') whose large flowering head, stalk and small associated leaves are eaten as a vegetable. Broccoli is cl ...
with calabrian chile
Calabrian may refer to:
* Calabrian, the people or culture of Calabria
* Calabrian Greek dialect, a dialect of Greek spoken in Calabria
* Calabrian languages, the languages and dialects spoken in Calabria
* Calabrian (stage), a stratigraphic stag ...
s and colatura di alici
(, translating to "anchovy drippings") is an Italian fish sauce made from anchovies, from the small fishing village of Cetara, Campania. The sauce is a transparent, amber-colored liquid, produced by fermenting salted anchovies inside ''terzigni' ...
. For dessert, the restaurant serves a chocolate tart
A tart is a baked dish consisting of a filling over a pastry base with an open top not covered with pastry. The pastry is usually shortcrust pastry; the filling may be sweet or savoury, though modern tarts are usually fruit-based, sometimes with ...
with sea salt. The menu offers many local ingredients from the San Francisco Bay Area
The San Francisco Bay Area, often referred to as simply the Bay Area, is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco, San Pablo, and Suisun Bay estuaries in Northern California. The Bay Area is defined by the Association of Bay Area Go ...
, including coffee from Blue Bottle Coffee Company
Blue Bottle Coffee, Inc., is a coffee roaster and retailer once headquartered in Oakland, California, United States. In 2017, a majority stake in the company was acquired by Nestlé (68%). It is considered a major player in third wave coffee. Th ...
. The San Francisco location offers three-course lunch meals for $20. During lunch time, the kitchen staff can be seen butchering fresh animal meat for dinner service, including pig, rabbit, goat, chicken, and duck.
The wine list is maintained by owner and sommelier
A sommelier ( or or ; ), or wine steward, is a trained and knowledgeable wine professional, normally working in fine restaurants, who specializes in all aspects of wine service as well as wine and food pairing. The role of the wine steward in hau ...
, Shelley Lindgren. It lists over 1,500 bottles of wine and focuses on Southern Italian wine.
History
A16 was founded in February 2004 by Shelley Lindgren, a sommelier turned restaurateur, Victoria Libin, a tech lawyer, and Christophe Hille the founding chef. The restaurant is named after the Autostrada A16 in Italy. Christophe Hille was the founding chef, followed by Nate Appleman. Christophe Hille earned three stars by the San Francisco Chronicle in the opening review. Nate Appleman was awarded the James Beard Foundation Award forRising Star Chef Award in 2009 and then quit A16 to move to New York. After he left, Liza Shaw became executive chef. A16 opened a restaurant in Tokyo Japan in 2009 in partnership with Giraud Restaurants Limited at the Marunouchi Park Building. The menu was tailored to be financially cost effective (i.e. they removedfennel
Fennel (''Foeniculum vulgare'') is a flowering plant species in the carrot family. It is a hardy, perennial herb with yellow flowers and feathery leaves. It is indigenous to the shores of the Mediterranean but has become widely naturalized ...
from the menu due to how expensive it was at the time) and the kitchen staff had to modify their habits to meet the kitchen provided by Mitsubishi
The is a group of autonomous Japanese multinational companies in a variety of industries.
Founded by Yatarō Iwasaki in 1870, the Mitsubishi Group historically descended from the Mitsubishi zaibatsu, a unified company which existed from 1870 ...
, which included a gas pizza oven instead of a wood oven. In 2012, Christopher Thompson became Executive Chef. In 2013, Lindgren and Libin opened a second location in Oakland. This second location has a full liquor license, unlike the original. Thompson moved to the Rockridge location and left in 2014. That year, Rocky Maselli became executive chef at both locations. Rocky Masselli left in 2017 and Nicolette Manescalchi became the chef. Victoria Libin left the restaurants in 2014 and Shelley Lindgren became the sole managing partner.
The restaurant is popular as a lunch spot for food and wine industry workers, including Robert Finigan, who frequented the restaurant prior to his death.
Reception
In 2014,Zagat
The ''Zagat Survey'', commonly referred to as Zagat (stylized in all caps; , ) and established by Tim and Nina Zagat in 1979, is an organization which collects and correlates the ratings of restaurants by diners. For their first guide, covering ...
rated A16 a 24. Michael Bauer of the ''San Francisco Chronicle
The ''San Francisco Chronicle'' is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of Northern California. It was founded in 1865 as ''The Daily Dramatic Chronicle'' by teenage brothers Charles de Young and M. H. de Young, Michael H. de ...
'' has named A12 one of his favorite restaurants in San Francisco. In 2013 he gave it a three star review. Bauer has listed A16 in his annual Top 100 Restaurants in San Francisco list seven times. Over the years, Bauer has expressed concern about the quality of the original A16 suffering due to the opening of the new Oakland restaurant, and a frequent overturn of executive chefs. However, Bauer frequently reviews the restaurant and often states that the restaurant has not suffered despite these challenges and changes. Bauer and Zagat both noted that A16 is a loud restaurant. Zagat described it as having an "off putting noise."
The restaurant is well known for its wine list, which is maintained by owner Shelley Lindgren. The wine list was named one of the top three in the country by Lettie Teague in 2010. It was also nominated for a James Beard Award.
References
Further reading
*Appleman, Nate and Shelley Lindgren''A16: Food + Wine''
Berkeley: Ten Speed Press (2008).
External links
* {{Restaurants in San Francisco 2004 establishments in California Economy of Oakland, California Italian-American culture in San Francisco Italian restaurants in California Pizzerias in the United States Restaurants established in 2004 Restaurants in San Francisco James Beard Foundation Award winners