Fourth Time is a Charm

Marking our fourth attempt to dine at Barbacco, my parents and I headed to the new-ish California street spot armed with reservations (which seems to be the only way to get a seat after 11:30am). Upon being seated, we ordered the salted focaccia bread to tie us over while we browsed the menu. This isn’t a slight on the rest of food - because the bread is truly one-of-a-kind - but the $1 app was my favorite aspect of the meal. It’s doused in olive oil and topped with flavorful sea salt. Top 3 bread of all time.

Since it’s polite to spend more than $1 and actually order an entrée, I ordered the warm duck confit spinach salad and split the salumi platter with my dad. My dad had the lasagna and my mom the muffaletta sandwich. The salumi platter is what Barbacco is known for and I can see why. The platter consists of several salami and bologna-type selections, bread sticks, and small toasts. By the time my spinach salad arrived, I was closing in on full. I suppose it was wise ordering, as the salad was light and didn‘t make me uncomfortably full. It was tasty but not something I’ll be talking about in a day or two (do salads every ingrain themselves in one’s memory, though?). My dad’s lasagna looked amazing (warm, cheesy, comforting), and the bread in my mom’s sando gives carbs a good name.

I use a gymnastics analogy to describe my attitude toward certain genres of food. Just as there are varying maximum scores on the vault in gymnastics depending on degree of difficulty, some kinds of food are simply not out of a perfect 10 for me. Even if Barbacco were to “stick it,” it’d probably be out of a 9.0; pasta simply doesn‘t have the thrill-factor for me. Burgers, on the other hand, have a max score of 10. That being said, Barbacco probably scored an 8.5 - which means it’s about as good as it can get for me but just can’t compete with the more difficult routines…