Taste of the Town

Worth the Wait

Hip Acquacotta Debuts With Good Food, Fine Wine

    For the better part of two years, reports of Acquacotta’s imminent opening were like those of Mark Twain’s death, which he noted were “greatly exaggerated.” In January 2006, the West Alameda Business Association newsletter ran a detailed item about chef John Couacaud’s remodeling of the old location of Coffee for Thought on Webster Street. About a year-and-a-half later, the Alameda Sun anticipated the new Italian bistro’s opening in June—2007. This magazine stayed off the hype wagon until its November 2007 issue, getting a few quotes from Couacaud about his new restaurant, “shortly before its opening,” we said.
    All good things, and some bad, come to those who wait: Sam Clemens finally went the way of all flesh, and Acquacotta opened its doors in April of this year, immediately rewarding the patient and the hungry with such starters as crusty, piping hot saffron risotto balls (arancini, $9) filled with Fontina Val D’Aosta, and hearty entrees including wine-braised pot roast (stracotta di manzo, $22) that surrenders to the slightest touch of a fork.
    All items on the limited menu—a daily soup, a.k.a. acquacotta (“cooked water”) ($7), three pastas ($15-$16) and four secondi piatti, including wine-braised tripe ($16), roasted chicken breast ($18), grilled sea bass ($23), sliced grilled top sirloin ($24), plus sides of broccoli rabe, luscious cannelini beans and buttered peas (all $6) and such classic desserts as panna cotta ($8)—are prepared by Couacaud in an open kitchen and delivered with cheerful professionalism by black-clad servers who fit right into the hip vibe of the interior. The decor offers a modified Tuscan color scheme (terra cotta, golden yellow and green), tinted concrete floor, handsome bar, black-and-white photos and atmospheric lighting.
    Just a week or so after opening, Acquacotta was running smoothly. But then, Coucacaud did have plenty of time to get all his ducks in a row (if not yet on the menu). “I signed the lease in November ’05,” the San Francisco–born chef explains. “I thought we were going to be opening late March ’06, maybe April. But getting a liquor license required having two ADA [Americans with Disabilities Act–compliant] restrooms.
That meant drawing plans and pulling permits, so at that point we thought, let’s build a real kitchen. It just kind of snowballed from there.” While negotiating the bureaucratic maze (with help from WABA executive director Kathy Moerhing and city development manager Miriam Delagrange), Couacaud worked on and off for Jeff Diamond at Farmstead Cheeses & Wines in the Alameda Marketplace, fostering relationships with wine distributors who have helped him build
a fine wine list of about two dozen white and red Italian wines ($5–$9 by the glass, $20–$38 per bottle) plus a few Rosés and sparkling wines.
    Couacaud is clearly the kind of guy who parlays challenges and dues into payoffs. He entered the restaurant business as teenager, washing dishes at a Howard Johnson’s in San Luis Obispo. Later he “moved up to Denny’s.” By  the time he was in college, he says,  “I realized that I looked forward to  going to work and dreaded going to school, and that kind of made up my mind for me. I started looking for restaurants with a career track.”
    Couacaud worked up the culinary ladder through Italian and Greek restaurants in San Francisco before landing as sous chef at Oliveto in Oakland under Curt Clingman (before Paul Bertoli’s tenure). Clingman and Mary Joe Thoresen later founded the popular French restaurant JoJo. “One of the things that Curt was adamant about was to taste it—taste it every time you make it. It’s one of the things I worry about if I see a menu that’s carved in stone someplace—when was the last time anybody tasted it as they were making it?”
    After his three years at Oliveto, Couacaud spent another three as executive sous chef at Prima in Walnut Creek, just as chef Peter Chastain was updating the menu to contemporary Italian. Then Couacaud opened the Blue Mermaid seafood restaurant in San Francisco for the Kimpton Group; that exhausting experience convinced him that “if I was going to work that hard, I was going to do it for myself.”
    Looking for a location for his first restaurant, he turned to Alameda at his wife’s suggestion. “Growing up in the Bay Area, Alameda was that funky little island with all the uniforms on it,” he says. “I came over on a beautiful late summer day, and the thing that really convinced me was that I was driving down Encinal and this gaggle of kids, 10, maybe 12 years old, all rode their bicycles up to a house, threw their bikes down on the lawn and ran inside. In Berkeley, Oakland or San Francisco, those bikes would be gone like that. It was just this short of a Norman Rockwell scene, and that appealed to me.”
    Couacaud’s initial vision was a bar and restaurant open from late morning through the evening, where neighborhood folks drop in for a bite of great food and a glass of fine wine, and relax and read the newspaper, along the lines of César in Berkeley. Acquacotta built out as something more formal, but Couacaud, who lives just a few blocks from his restaurant, hopes to open for lunch and create a casual scene, yet keep his focus on a simple, ingredient-driven menu.
    “It’s about the food on the plate and not the ideas in my head,” he says. “The molecular gastronomy trend is really cool. Capturing hickory smoke in a bubble made of edible gel is groovy, but I want to make it hot and put it on a plate. The next step is, just eat it.”

The Details

    ACQUACOTTA. Italian. Serves dinner 5 p.m.–9 p.m. Tue.–Thu., 5 p.m.–10 p.m. Fri.-Sat. 1544 Webster St., (510) 523-2220, www.acquacotta.com. Credit cards accepted, full bar, wheelchair accessable, $$-$$$.

—By Derk Richardson

—Photography by Lori Eanes