Enoteca Molinari — Restaurant in Oakland

Working at a completely remote job, it was the first time meeting some of my coworkers. We booked a reservation here for a Friday evening. It was not crowded and we were able to get outdoor seating. In all there were probably about a dozen or so tables, so it was an intimate setting.

This is a good place if you want to spend a few hours socializing and enjoying a meal. They had heaters at every table so it wasn't too cold and being outside made it feel like we were just hanging out on someone's porch.

We spit a few appetizers and all ended up getting the ragu. Each dish was average. None of them really stood out. Enjoyable, but not memorable. I would have to say that the baked cauliflower was probably the most underwhelming dish of the night. It definitely looks better than it tastes. The croquettes and arugala salad were tasty a d enjoyable. The salad came with 4 small slices of bread with some very good olive oil. We all ordered the ragu which had a good ratio of meat to pasta, but the flavor was bland. The noodles ate house made, but didn't seem like much of a specialty. The meat was ground meat, so I'm not sure why 5 hour beef makes any difference and from my first bite it seemed like there was something missing.

There were 3 options for dessert and we ordered all 3. My favorite was the panacotta. It had a perfect blend of flavors and textures and a perfect pallet cleanser.

Overall we had a good evening, the servers and ambiance were great, but I probably wouldn't come here...

The good news is this is delicious food at affordable prices. Unfortunately, they operate with a bad system such that when busy the staff gets easily overwhelmed. Their service system, referred to as "casual", entails everyone doing everything: all front of house staff do seating, taking orders, serving food, busing tables, taking payments, etc. This turns into chaos on busy nights; the two or three staff can get easily overwhelmed. They would benefit from a runner system whereby each person has a dedicated role (one person taking orders, another serving food, etc ). Our recent evening there was a disaster, with one of us getting their appetizer and main course at the same time and another waiting 30 minutes to get any food at all. Then another 30 minute wait to get our bill. This was not a question of staff competence: everyone was working their butts off. It's that their system is not designed for big crowds. Maybe this is simply ownership cheapness -- not wanting to invest in a better system or hire more staff -- but my advice is if you must go, go early or on a slow Tuesday night, or be prepared for...

I really wanted to love Enoteca Molinari. My wife and I dined there with our 12 year old recently and sadly it wasn’t what I’d hoped.

On checking in at our reservation time - checkin was slow - the hostess spent a rather clear moment evaluating our kid and then hastily pushed together a four top by the toilet door, ignoring the perfect sized window seat behind us.

The lattuga was not washed properly and had gritty dirt on some stems. The service was slow, and the main dishes took a very long time to arrive. One thing for a kid to be bored, but the two restaurant-familiar adults as well. My Orecchiette order was made wrongly without the sausage addition and I had to have the check adjusted. The check didn’t include my kid’s two San Pellegrino sodas so the charge slip was more and I had to inquire why.

Otherwise the food was well-made but these things took the shine off our experience and it doesn’t seem worth trying again for a heady $200+...