The result is a slightly rich and tangy cottage cheese. They don't want it to taste barny or grassy - all those are negative terms. One of Tomales Bay Foods' clients is Oliveto restaurant in Oakland, Calif., home to Bertolli, the former Chez Panisse chef, and where Stoll cooked as he prepared to open Delfina. Here, as chef and co-owner, Bertolli has turned simple cooking into high art. A typical menu offers the best spit-roasted meats, grilled fresh fish and, perhaps, roast pigeon, all with an Italian sensibility.
Every dish is prepared with a minimum of fuss and ingredients.
I recently dined on slices of rosy spit-roasted veal with a splash of jus and a handful of buttered carrots. It was perfect. That's not exactly California cuisine's reputation. Jeremiah Tower, who became chef at Chez Panisse a year after it opened, is credited with composing the first menus identified as California cuisine. Up until that time, ''Continental'' was used to describe most upscale menus.