The Glass Is Greener: East Bay Wine Lists Take Sustainability to the Glass

Tasting Table, January 2010

Oakland’s Gourmet Ghetto?

Diablo Magazine, May 2009

The 4200 block of Oakland’s Park Boulevard is a stretch of Americana. True Value Hardware and an old-fashioned wash and dry shout out in red, white, and blue signs done in Coca-Cola cursive. Keep walking, and you’ll hit a small Tudor-style building that houses a shoe-repair shop.

At first blush, this neighborhood—called Glenview—seems an unlikely restaurant destination. But it’s Glenview’s very hominess that has made it attractive to Bay Area restaurateurs, especially recently. Read more >>

San Francisco Magazine

September 2008

Just when you think Cal-Ital has exhausted its possibilities, this assiduous little place in Oakland’s Glenview district renews faith in the genre. Chef-owner Chris Shepherd (co-proprietor, with wife Elizabeth Frumusa, of Aperto on Potrero Hill) makes a roster of deceptively simple dishes shine, thanks to technical exactness that’s usually unheard of in places where no dish strays over $20. Read more >>

Bellanico Wins, Places and Shows

Oakland Magazine, August 2008

If anyone ever names a thoroughbred racehorse Bellanico, remind me to bet my 401(k) on the noble steed to win the Triple Crown... Read more >>

Oakland's Bellanico a Cal-Ital standout

San Francisco Chronicle, July 16, 2008

If central casting needed a neighborhood restaurant, it might look a lot like the new Bellanico in Oakland's quiet Glenview. At just 6 p.m. on a warm Friday evening, the crowd was already spilling out the door.......Read more >>

In the neighborhood: Don't look now, but your favorite local place just might be the Bay Area's next destination restaurant

SF Chronicle, Wednesday, June 25, 2008

It's hard to open a restaurant and stay afloat - nationally, 27 percent of new restaurants fail after the first year, according to Rob Finley, senior vice president of operations at the California Restaurant Association. It's an even bigger challenge to transport a winning formula from one neighborhood to another. Yet that's what chef Chris Shepherd and his wife, Elizabeth Frumusa, owners of Potrero Hill's Aperto, are attempting to do with Bellanico, the Italian restaurant they opened in March in Oakland's Glenview neighborhood. Read more >>

Familiar Flavors: Oakland is poised to lurch toward restaurant maturity in 2008

East Bay Express, March 19, 2008

...Barakat and Camp may represent the forward march of the city's food scene — seasoned operators with a handle on what Oaklanders actually find delicious. That's what Chris Shepherd and Elizabeth Frumusa aspire to. They're the Oakland couple behind Aperto, San Francisco's well-loved neighborhood Italian on Potrero Hill across the bay — solid, un-flashy, and with an awareness of organic and sustainable. Read more>>