Only five of the Chronicle’s Top 100 restaurants in the Bay Area are in Berkeley, the birthplace of the locavore movement and the home of the doyenne of slow food in the United States, Alice Waters.
Of the five chosen ones — revealed in the paper’s annual league table yesterday, one is relatively new. The other four count as veterans in the fast-moving world of restaurants.
The five are: Chez Panisse — naturally, Corso Trattoria, Rivoli, Japanese haunt O Chame on Fourth Street and Vik’s Chaat Corner, the perennially popular purveyor of superior Indian street food.
Rivoli and Corso (pictured above) are both run by Roscoe Skipper and Wendy Brucker, and the latter opened in the summer of 2008. Its rustic Florentine menu has garnered good reviews, as well as the seal of approval of cookbook author Mollie Katzen who told Berkeleyside it was her favorite neighborhood restaurant. Rivoli, also Italian, has been a Solano Avenue pleaser for more than 15 years.
One Berkeley restaurant fell off the list this year and that was the fishy Sea Salt on San Pablo Avenue, owned by K2 Restaurants which has a total of four restaurants in the city.
