The Other Critics

Bauer Is Unimpressed With Campanula; KQED Falls In Love With Bar Bocce

Photo: Urban Daddy

Mr. Bauer, a longtime fan of Frascati, is pretty disappointed with Campanula, the new restaurant from the Frascati team of Rebecca and Jon Rader, and he asks rhetorically, “Could the North Beach malaise be infecting another kitchen?” (We think he’s referring to now shuttered Joe DiMaggio’s and Joey & Eddie’s, and perhaps to once faltering Rose Pistola, which he recently decided is turning things around.) He starts by complaining of a pair of under-dressed salads, and goes on to find a number of dishes that are “timidly seasoned, as if the restaurant is catering to a stereotypical tourist crowd.” It sounds like a lot of small things that added up to a dissatisfying experience, including a bland Bolognese and a fritto misto that “wasn’t worth the calories.” The most praise goes to an “intense earthy” roast sirloin, and a braised osso bucco that he finds passable, but it isn’t enough to save the place from the dreaded one and a half stars. [Chron]

Our first — albeit somewhat incomplete — review of Sausalito’s Bar Bocce comes from the Bay Area Bites blog on KQED, and writer Megan Gordon. She says the team, and chef Robert Price, have the food down. The meatballs she calls “incredibly flavorful,” and the Dungeness crab pizza is “almost an order-again,” though the crab was a bit “sparse.” But the really winner here, obviously, is the view and the atmosphere. And we look forward to hearing from someone who’s tried more than two dishes. [Bay Area Bites/KQED]

Bauer Is Unimpressed With Campanula; KQED Falls In Love With Bar Bocce