Famed Oakland restaurant, Oliveto, is closing after 35 years

Rockridge’s Market Hall will never be the same.

Oliveto, the iconic Oakland restaurant that carved a path for Cal-Italian cuisine within the farm-to-table movement, is shuttering at the end of 2021 after a 35-year run.

“We’re tired,” co-owner Bob Klein told The Mercury News Thursday. “Running a restaurant these days is really difficult. The pandemic was really difficult. It’s time to retire.”

For four decades, the Kleins — wife and celebrated cookbook author Maggie Blythe Klein co-founded Oliveto — worked with world-renowned chefs including Paul Canales, Michael Tusk and Paul Bertolli to build menus, memorable meals and special events that highlighted Northern California famers and purveyors from Paul Muller of Full Belly Farm to Matt Magruder of Magruder Ranch and Tom Worthington of Monterey Fish Market.

Oliveto opened just 15 years after Alice Waters unveiled Chez Panisse in Berkeley. The restaurant has a similar layout, with a cafe on one floor doing Roman-style pizzas and other casual fare and a white-tablecloth dining room upstairs showcasing dishes like Piedmontese flat iron steak or Saffron Chitara. The Kleins’ devotion to locally-sourced, seasonally-driven cuisine paved the way for countless Bay Area restaurants of the same vein, like Delfina and A16.

“We have tried for 35 years to bring the natural food environment to our customers,” Klein says.

Klein will continue his mission of soil and place, “of knowing where you are through food,” via Community Grains, the heritage wheat and whole-grain flour company he founded to support California grain farmers. Also based at Market Hall, Community Grains sells chef-approved, planet-friendly pasta, bread and polenta, and has plans to expand its already robust education and outreach program. So, Klein’s not really retiring.

“The idea of wheat has been butchered by an industrial veil that has made it so generic we’ve kind of lost it,” he says. “Let’s bring it back again.”

Klein does not want to end Oliveto’s legacy on a sad note. He is working closely with people like Worthington, who has done countless “Oceanic Dinners” in the storied upstairs dining room, to infuse Oliveto’s final two months with joy. Expect special dinners and other events before the close of 2021.

“The key is celebration,” he says. “And celebrating being part of what has happened in Northern California over the past 35 years. I once went to an organic farm in Ireland and when I told them I was from Northern California, they were in awe.”

Klein did not comment on what will become of the iconic space at 5655 College Ave., but alluded to discussions of a possible sale.

“We haven’t really had time to deal with it,” he says. “I think I’ll be getting calls.”