320 Magnolia Avenue
Larkspur
924.0300
This is a new concept restaurant, where you share your food in family style with your co-diners. (Picco means small plates.)
Their food is basically great! I especially liked vegetable torta, which is, well, an updated upscale version of spinach pie. It had nice flavour, but I had hard time thinking/analyzing what they were, being busy cutting the small piece of pie-shaped object into four equal portions, so everybody at the table could enjoy.
We had shrimp on a bed of cabbage and onions, mahimahi with white beans flavoured with pancetta (Italian bacon), short ribs in Thai currie sauce, mini hamburgers made with Nieman Ranch sirloin, and iceburg lettuce salad.
You know the problem? It was rather awkward to have to cut lettuce or meat or pie into the number of diners, and serve tiny portions to each person. It became a small chore at the end.
Yeah, it works with Chinese meals, but you know why? They have chopstick culture; everything is already cut into bite sizes, so everybody can just dig in with their own utensils. With Euro-American food culture, we need knives to cut food, and somebody has to cut the communal food into pieces.
The other thing I missed was carbs. If you are on no carb diet, it is geat! But like most of us, I like my legitimate portion of carbs, whether it is pasta, potatoes, rice, anything. I got a tiny piece of white bread.
I heard about Picco, and tried it, the food was good, but I think I will stick to Left Bank to satisfy my cravings for Mediterranean-inspired food.
