Belotti Ristorante

My lovely sister-in-law is visiting California from Alaska, and I got to spend Friday with her. We started out with lunch at one of my very favorite restaurants, Belotti Ristorante. I first heard about this restaurant on a local TV show, Check Please, Bay Area, and as I am a huge fan of pasta, I was intrigued. Ted, Maya, and I went for a late lunch there back in March, and I loved it. They loved it too, but they don’t love pasta as much as I do. Kathy, happily, LOVES Italy. She has been to Italy a few times, most recently she went for a month (alone even, so sophisticated!) and took Italian lessons and toured. She had an amazing time. Friday, I was able to take the day off of work, but Ted and Maya could not. So Kathy and I had a wonderful Italian lunch, perused a local bookstore, then we came home and saw Mulder for a bit.  After that, we went to San Francisco and picked Maya up after work, walked around downtown and looked at the shops, then went to Ted’s office to see where he works.  He gave us a tour and showed us how he does his job, and when he got off work, we went to a local Iraqi restaurant that we’ve been wanting to try for dinner. (Link is to the episode of Check Please, Bay Area where they reviewed the Iraqi restaurant.  The restaurant website is horrible.)  It was a lovely day.

So, the lunch. We started with salads. This is Kathy’s salad, the Americana, which is beets, wild arugula, cranberries, oven baked squash, goat cheese, toasted hazelnuts, and honey mustard cinnamon dressing. She loved it, said it was the perfect proportion of ingredients, and her mouth was very happy.

This is my salad, the Lattuga, which is butter lettuce, lemon dressing, grana padano, and roasted pine nuts. So simple, and so very delicious. I had it last time we were there, and have thought about it many times since. It seems like we could somehow make it at home, but then again, I don’t know that I can do the dressing.

This is Kathy’s pasta, Casoncelli, which is lombardian-style stuffed pasta with beef, prosciutto, pork shoulder, imported smoked pancetta, and sage brown butter. She loved it, delicious and rich and just the right amount.

This is my pasta, house made Pappardelle, with organic hen of woods mushrooms, beef reduction, parsley, and grana padano cheese. This is my favorite pasta dish on earth, this specific bowl of pasta at this specific restaurant. SO GOOD. So rich and soft and tender and amazing. I hope to have more of it in the future.

We had wine with our lunch. Kathy likes her wines a little sweeter and I like mine a little drier. Kathy had a Barbera, and I had a Barolo, both were lovely Italian reds. It was delicious, but I think next time I may go for a white wine instead. Kathy was interested in the tiramisu, but we were too full.

There is a fancy market in the neighborhood, where I like to go ogle expensive cheeses and jams and chocolates that I likely won’t buy, and we found some little two bite sized chocolates with pistachio that reminded her of something she had in Italy. They were perfect.

I didn’t take any pictures of our dinner at the Iraqi place, but Ted liked it so much, I suspect we will go back someday.