7. Oliveto’s Whole Hog Dinner is plugged into your PDA.
Every February, Oliveto, the gourmet anchor of Oakland’s food scene, brings down the house with its Whole Hog Dinner—and, yes, said hog is shipped direct from a pig farm in Iowa. The annual event incorporates the whole hog, and the 2006 deluxe dinner included everything from expected pork classics like headcheese (coppa di testa), prosciutto and pastrami but rounded out the evening with new treats such as bacon ice cream. This six-course meal remains one of Oliveto’s most popular events of the year, and the reservation list of people looking to stuff themselves silly with salumi and porcine pickings fills up quickly. Chef Paul Canales will be serving up these carnivorous treats Feb. 6-9. (C.F.)15. You’re expert at nabbing a primo table on the Paragon deck.
Tucked away at the mouth of Claremont Canyon on the Oakland-Berkeley border, one can find the Paragon Bar and Cafe, inside The Claremont Resort & Spa. Come for the eats, the drinks and the live nightly jazz, but stay and get drunk on what may be one of the best views of the Bay, its astonishing bridges and the pearl of the West Coast, San Francisco. If you bring your out-of-town friends (or a date) here on a clear night at sunset, you may just have impressed them for life. (C.F.)27. You embrace jury duty, which allows a lunchtime duck into Ratto’s for a sandwich.
If you’re, say, bound by law while serving jury duty in downtown, then you’re bound by tradition to stop in for a sandwich at G.B. Ratto & Co. International Grocers, a cornerstone of Old Oakland eateries. More than 100 years old, the deli is a landmark where you can get a delicious sandwich to keep you fueled for the rest of the trial. While you’re waiting for your sandwich, your wandering eyes (and stomach) may be drawn to the wide assortment of other worldly goods, including grains, pastas and the house brand olive oil. And before you know it, you may walk out with a lighter wallet, albeit with a hearty meal and a heavier grocery bag. (C.F.)
