4 days ago
A New(ish)-to-the-Bay Style of Pizza Drops With the Reopening of This Italian Restaurant
After 16 years, Redwood City's Donato Enoteca has undergone a much-needed renovation, as well as significant changes to the menu that will reshape the neighborhood favorite. Donato Enoteca reopens on Tuesday, August 12. The updated interior was a byproduct of 16 years of wear and tear, explains co-owner Donato Scotti, but as for changes elsewhere, it was a matter of survival. 'The demographic is changing,' Scotti says. 'A lot of younger people live in in Redwood City; we still have a regular customer base from the neighboring city and [our] city as well, but I felt like we needed to act on it, in order to say, 'How do we last another 16 years and be as successful the next 16, as we were before?'
It's a question that many restaurateurs and chefs who have managed to stay open for over 10 years have asked themselves. An eternal question, really: How do you stay fresh and continue to attract new customers? 'The hardest part to me is how you keep generating [people] coming into your restaurant and how you sustain it, keep it going in a way so that you don't feel the downturn of the economy or whatever,' Scotti says. 'I know that a lot of the industry generally is suffering because of all the costs and the tariffs and this and that. But at the end of the day, it's a circle, and we'll all going to come out in a better position just like we did in 2009.'
As part of the changes, Scotti will no longer be in the kitchen. He's brought on chef Marco Bertoldo, who worked at prestigious European restaurants such as Michelin-starred Ristorante Le Calandre and Osteria Degli Amici Figino before he moved to San Francisco as chef at Poesia. The new menu will offer shareable plates, and the bar menu will center cicchetti (Venetian snacks and small plates). 'If you wanted to keep the prices of our items in line with what our vision is, as far as pricing or check average, why don't we manage portion — offer smaller dishes, and increase the amount of dishes that people eat, so that they could try different things?' Scotti says.
Nadia Andreini
Nadia Andreini
Nadia Andreini
Nadia Andreini
The homemade salumi is still on the menu, but from there, Bertoldo has new things in store for diners. Particularly, Scotti is excited for the new pastas, like the pasta patate e Provola, a pasta dish with potatoes that Scotti says is a staple of Naples that is lesser-seen in the Bay Area. The colore croccante, with crisp pork belly and Brentwood corn, is 'to die for,' per Scotti, while the baccala mantecato is a Venetian dish of milk-braised salted cod, another upcoming menu item. Another addition is the padellino-style pizza, a type most associated with Northern Italy. Created by Simone Padoan in San Bonifacio, Italy, pizza al padellino is a pizza that rises and is parbaked in a pan before being finished in a wood-burning oven. The result is 'really airy and very fluffy and very light,' Scotti says. 'After you bake it, you put the topping that you want on, or you slice it in half, lengthwise, and you can fill it with meat, tuna, or whatever. And so they became really popular, and nobody's doing this [here].'
The bar menu is composed of cicchetti and cocktails, and with the food, Scotti says, 'we try to bring some of the tradition, but let Marco express his creativity and flavors.' Another bacala, or salted cod, appears on the menu as baccala e beitole, served with red beets and toasted bread, while the tonno al rafano is a seared ahi tuna with horseradish mayo. It's a step in a new direction for the restaurant. 'We've been here for 16 years,' Scotti says. 'We try to do something different now, because that's what we did when we first opened. We wanted to improve our bar business in general, because of the younger generation. So we redesigned the whole bar to create a sense of community.'
Donato Enoteca (1041 Middlefield Road, Redwood City) reopens on Tuesday, August 11, and is open from 4 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday, 4 p.m. to 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday, and 4 p.m. to 9 p.m. on Sunday.
Nadia Andreini
Nadia Andreini
Eater SF
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