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Pasta Pomodoro (Oakland)
Author: Ken
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Categories: Near and Far |
Tags: Tags: CollegeAve, Italian, Oakland, Rockridge
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5500 College Ave |
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Pasta Pomodoro is a convenient, reliable, chain of nice Italian restaurants with an excellent space and location on College Avenue in Oakland’s Rockridge neighborhood. There’s indoor seating at regular tables, high tables, and at the curved counter, where you can watch the chefs at work. Outdoor seating on the sunny patio has umbrellas for daytime, and heat lamps for Oakland’s chilly dinner hour. It’s a busy street, so you can sit there and enjoy watching the world go by.
The menu changes around a bit, and I like a lot of dishes here. There’s a good vegetarian selection of soups, salads, and, of course, pasta. There’s always a vegan minestrone soup, and the various pasta dishes are made to order, so you can customize. I always love a side of Italian white beans, which they sometimes offer.
It’s almost impossible to resist the tasty, warm foccacia with olive oil and vinegar, that they bring to the table; practically the only way to stop eating it is to run out. (Run out of bread, that is, not run out of the restaurant, which we don’t advise.) Pomodoro is one of the few places to offer (organic) Farro, which is a specialty grain from Italy.
Even though I’m very partial to small businesses, and generally avoid most chains, Pasta Pomodoro does what they do well, and sometimes a nice Capellini Pomodoro (angel’s hair pasta with fresh tomatos) absolutely hits the spot.
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