Locanda Olmo, Berkeley

Before I left for Japan, I decided I was going to eat as much Italian, Mexican, and American food as possible. Craving gnocchi for some reason, I yelped Italian food and came up with Locanda Olmo. It was listed on yelp.com as being way better than Trattoria Siciliana, two doors, down, so I was intrigued. After guilt-tripping Andy into going with me (it was my last night in the Bay), we made a quick reservation and headed over.

Locanda Olmo is a tiny restaurant with two floors. The decor is pretty simple but very cute. There was one young woman who greeted us as we came in--it turns out she and her husband are the owners. She was very nice and welcoming. Since I was with Andy, I didn't have the opportunity to try some of the delicious looking appetizers (rolled eggplant with ricotta and arugula...tuna carpaccio...), and settled on the bruschetta. Please note--the waitress/owner is fluent in Italian and the proper way to pronounce bruschetta is with a hard "c" and hard "t" as in "brusketta," thank you, Italian 1! She told me after I ordered it that drives her nuts because so many people (not me, thank goodness) say it incorrectly.

Anyway, after all that, I wouldn't really recommend ordering the bruschetta there anyway. Perhaps I'm just not a fan of authentic Tuscan bread...It was too crusty and dense for me. But, the restaurant does use really fresh ingredients, including fresh mozzarella cheese, which was delicious.

For our entrees, I ordered the Gnocchi Incazzati, which is gnocchi in a thick tomato, eggplant, olive, garlic and herb sauce. You can order it spicy or mild. I chose spicy. Andy ordered the Risotto della Rufina (No seriously, he did! No spaghetti with meatballs here!), which is risotto with Italian sausage and a spicy tomato sauce.

The food took kind of a while--I think about 20 minutes--to come out, but I guess it's attributed to everything being made from scratch. Both of our dishes were really well-cooked and piping hot, both in temperature and spiciness. My gnocchi was also good texture wise, which I really appreciate at an Italian restaurant. The problem was, neither of us LOVED the food. It was good, and the service was great, but the food wasn't anything super special.

The restaurant is family-owned, and they pride themselves on having authentic family recipes from Florence, Italy. I think that I need to go back and just have the waitress order for me because I really want this place to work out. But so far...I'm not in love.

If you want to try Locanda Olmo out and let me know what you think, they are located at: 2985 College Avenue (at Ashby) in Berkeley.

For reservations, call: (510) 848-5544. They are open 7 days a week, serving dinner every day from 5:30 p.m. to 10:00 p.m.

They also have a website: http://www.locanda-olmo.com