Parche — Restaurant in Oakland

Update: yes it's just as good. And we brought friends who corroborated.

Parche's Colombian heritage and experience is the real deal. They must be doing something right when their team is proud, knowledgeable, and advocating when they're off the clock and in their regular life.

The Overall Experience: 5 stars From the time we met Liz, Daniel, and their other lovely Columbian teammate while at Donkey and Goat winery in Berkeley, to when they invited us and treated us like family when we visited the next day, to the SHOCKINGLY AMAZING food & well-paired cocktails by the lovely Liz, Parche is a rare 5 star for me.

The Qualification: Normally when a company's staff raves about how good their [insert stuff] is, it's highly skeptical. it's their JOB to say it's good. We're all biased here. So we went with expectations that it would be good, but not nearly as good as they raved. So happy to say we were DEAD WRONG!

The Service: SIT AT THE BAR WITH LIZ!!! We made reservations because it was Friday, but requested the bar when we saw Liz was there. The whole night she was there explaining the menu, curious about our tastes and selections, and then recommending dishes and the cocktails that paired best.

The Food: Humble & Traditional Columbian served with a new level of refinement, quality ingredients, and historical homage.

I'll briefly get on my soap box and say that I love when food is thoughtful - when it's created based on the history, art, and culture that it represents. With a team that spans these disciplines, it's amazing to see how much thought went into everything. We're lucky Liz and Daniel were there to share this with us, because it completely elevated the experience. ok, off the soap box and i'll spare you the essay on each food item below and let you ask them when you go :)

Our order: complementary appetizer: some sort of cheese-flour balls with a gooseberry sauce - salty & sweet goodness!! The balls themselves somewhat remind me of the potato puffs that Gregoire in Berkeley makes, but only in texture. These are smaller, more refined, with damn good salty cheese in it (not gooey but mixed into the flour so it's more like a bread). and then combined with the sauce OMG it's a delightful contrast.

celery root tiradito: this was the #1 recommend by the team from the night before and they were not wrong. Celery root slices that resemble a whitefish carpaccio, a delicious cold broth with leche de tigre and black garlic, with smoky green grapes that i thought were green cherry tomatoes. comes with a side of plantain chips you use as a little scooper and it was totally out of this world! we had made friends with a woman traveling alone sitting next to us at the bar, gave her a bite, and she said it was the best thing she'd eaten in Oakland. and yes, ask Liz about the off menu pairing. so good!

arepa de huevo - a corn flour type dough that they slit in half, pour a whole egg in then pop in the fryer. what doesn't sound good about that?? it's street food elevated with some bomb guac and either maitake or very small trumpet mushrooms and pickled onions. with the mushrooms that thing is killer. the only complaint here, i'm not a big completely cooked egg type of gal. had it been medium with a little runny-ness this would've had my heart at 2nd place behind the tiradito.

bruselas, aka brussel sprouts: also amazing, but the least different of everything we ate. well executed, and with a nice sweet sauce instead of the usual acidic balsamic glaze etc at other western restaurants.

Last but not least, dessert, i think it's called oblea santander, HECK YES. Liz recommended this as her favorite with the qualification that not everyone likes it... so we had to order it. Just like the appetizer it was all about salty & sweet. Amazing goat cheese, homemade wafers, dulce de leche aka caramel and then some jelly stuff. the last thing not completely necessary. i could've taken a cup of that cheese, caramel, and wafer and been...

We stopped in on a Thursday afternoon at 1pm for lunch. The restaurant was unusually business with a very large group that had decided to dine there as they celebrated.

The host let us know upfront that the kitchen was a little backed up since they were caught off guard by how business it was. They were still able to seat us within a couple of minutes.

Our server came around quickly and let us know again that there might be a little wait on the food. We were not in a hurry, so we didn’t mind. Throughout the meal the service was good with only one small flaw that we had asked for a side of the onion relish that was never brought to our table.

In terms of the food it was solid with the exception of the patacones. We are Costa Rican and eat patacones weekly and are very familiar with how to make them, these were beyond overcooked and left a subtle charred taste in your mouth. At first we thought for some reason they had intended them to be that way, thinking perhaps a cultural difference in preparation but we saw all the other tables and golden patacones instead of brown ones. Someone took their eye off of them and instead of making new ones decided to serve them. This was the only part of the meal that was disappointing.

My husband enjoyed the whole fish, appreciating that it is served with head on as he is use to back home. It was a good portion and had solid flavor.

I had the vegetarian bowl which was good, although the squash was a little undercooked but still very much edible.

The Brussels sprouts were delicious and the patacones appetizer would have been great as well with the 2 topping options if they had not been over cooked.

All in all we would come back, and appreciated that you could please everyone from vegan, vegetarian, and...

Had lunch with 2 of my girlfriends on a weekday and we were seated immediately. It was all of our first time there, and we loved it. We will be back to try more! Let's get into it:

Menu: We came during lunch so we had the lunch menu as well as the Restaurant Week fixed menu. We didn't opt for it because we wanted to try some other items but we heavily considered it. The regular lunch menu was great - 1 page and yet had many options for us. The back listed several great looking drink options.

Appetizers: Everything we ordered was extremely flavorful. We ordered the Salmon Salpicon and Bruselas El Prado to share. The salmon dish was so good and rich. We wish it came with just a few more more plantain crisps but that's our preference. We said we'd come back for that and drinks alone...unless we got the rest of our dishes. The Brussel sprouts were so well flavored and perfectly charred and crispy. I would eat that on it's own.

Main Dishes: We order 3 dishes including: Arepa con Queso, Colombian Chorizo Hotdog, and Posta Negra Sando. I had the Arepa and it was a wonderful vegetarian arepa dish filled with a mix of root veggies, cauliflower and broccoli all topped with an egg. So filling. Highly recommend. I don't eat meat so I didn't eat the other dishes but my friends were not disappointed.

Service: The servers were great. Very genuine interactions. They checked in on us periodically and were never far if we needed something.

Ambiance: The place itself was beautifully decorated. I wish I took pictures of the inside of the restaurant.

Overall, a wonderful treat to experience with friends. Treat yourself to this place! We'll be back to try more food and check out their...