The heady aroma of basil and garlic wafted from the just-opened doors of Sfizio, where the growing line of customers on Claremont Avenue was starting to spill into the street. Who cares about safety? This Rockridge restaurant debut came with a very desirable offering: steaming bowls of freshly made spaghetti for just $10.
The Oakland restaurant was open all of half an hour and already there was a party vibe: The amaro was flowing, Prophet and Mndsgn’s funk-boogie “Wanna Be Your Man” was pumping through the speakers, and those who’d already snagged their pasta were smiling through marinara mustaches.
A woman drove up to the light at College Avenue and rolled down her window: “What IS this place?” A dapper tween declared he was definitely getting the meatballs: “It’s only three for $6,” he told his parents. And several of the patrons at Wednesday night’s grand opening were talking about the excitement over Sfizio, one of their favorite pandemic pop-ups, finally opening its own brick-and-mortar.
There were even some industry folks in line.
“I just love pasta,” said John Hanks, sous chef at Ramen Shop, the restaurant down the street, where Sfizio often popped up since its inception in 2020. “There aren’t a lot of Italian restaurants around here that focus on it.” And the price? “You can’t beat it.”
A line of customers forms outside of Sfizio, in the Rockridge section of Oakland, on the restaurant’s opening night.
Image courtesy of SfizioThe Cal-Ital concept is very simple. Sfizio offers three pastas; two of them will run you $16 each, and the other is always that $10 spaghetti. Fresh pasta typically fetches more than $20 a plate in the Bay Area. Chef and owner Matt Solimano, who previously worked as a sous chef at Pizzaiolo, also features three starters and a dessert (currently strawberry shortcake) on the menu. Add some low-proof cocktails to the short list of Italian wines (all alcoholic beverages are under $12), and that’s it.
“This is the food that I like,” Solimano told SFGATE a few days before the opening. “I don’t feel like I need it to be super fussy. Some of the really nice places that are doing beautiful pastas, it makes sense to have a higher price point, but that’s not what we’re doing here.”
Solimano, a former Seattle resident who opened Sfizio with his wife, was partly inspired by Mike Easton’s Il Corvo, a Seattle restaurant that served pasta lunches for $10 before closing its doors in 2020. “That place was so awesome,” Solimano said. “I’d never seen anyone that had done that or done it since.”
When Solimano and his wife moved to the Bay Area, he said they were shocked by the high cost of eating out.
An interior view of Sfizio, left, which took over the former Noodle Theory digs in Rockridge. At right, a plate of spaghetti and meatballs.
Images courtesy of Sfizio“It felt like there were two options: super expensive or a cheap burrito,” he said. “I want Sfizio to be a place that is accessible to a wide group of people. A place where you can go on a weeknight, not just special occasions. If not cheap, at least affordable.”
The Sfizio team is stepping into some really good juju for that. The bustling corner location at 6099 Claremont Ave. is the former home of Noodle Theory, which supplied the neighborhood with comforting bowls of duck curry and dan dan noodles for 15 years before shuttering in November of 2022 as a result of rising costs and tight margins. The team was clear that it did not want to charge patrons $30 for noodles to mitigate these costs. Solimano remembers that, and takes it to heart.
Once inside, we stepped up to the counter and a friendly host took our order and immediately whipped up our amaro-based cocktails. We liked the refreshingly fizzy bianco spritz ($10), which is made with prosecco and topped with sprigs of fresh thyme. While waiting for our order, we took in the familiar, long and narrow dining room, its walls now painted perky peach, and its counter, deep green. Vintage serving trays and framed black and white photos the Solimanos picked up from a recent trip to Rome decorated the walls.
Matt Solimano puts the finishing touches on a pesto fusilli inside the open kitchen at Sfizio in Oakland.
Image courtesy of SfizioOutside, my family of three tucked into a patio table for two just as our food arrived, piping hot and aromatic. The home-run pasta was the fusilli, a verdant flurry of basil pesto, snap peas and grilled scallions that we didn’t even bother scooping onto our plates. We just sent the large bowl around, taking turns shoveling the herbaceous corkscrews into our mouths until they were gone. The spaghetti, a generous portion of al dente noodles in basil-flecked marinara, was also quite good. It was hard to pass up an order of the pork meatballs (3 for $6) to go with it. They’re large and extra-moist, thanks to the kitchen’s deft use of ricotta, butter and milk.
One dish, a tangle of grilled Monterey Bay squid served with crisp purslane and dark, smoky salsa negra, hinted at something Solimano told me over the phone when he was rolling 60 pounds’ worth of meatballs. When he was in Italy, he noticed that the chefs were less concerned with the technicality of food — “how the carrot is cut,” he said — and more about what is done with the carrot.
“It’s about the feeling you have when you eat it,” he said.
Matt Solimano’s Sfizio opened at the corner of Claremont Avenue and College Avenue in Oakland’s Rockridge district on May 10.
Image courtesy of SfizioAs we ran our fingers over the last drops of salsa negra, I knew exactly what he meant.
Sfizio, 6099 Claremont Ave., Oakland. Open Wednesday through Saturday, 3 to 10 p.m., with happy hour from 3 to 5 p.m. and dinner from 5 to 10 p.m.; www.sfiziopasta.com
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