Having a fantastic Italian dinner in Oakland is going to be a bit easier soon. Belotti Ristorante e Bottega, a restaurant that the Michelin Guide calls “delicious” and “decadent,” is planning a new eatery in the city with to-go pastas and Italian supplies to cook at home.
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Belotti’s flagship is in Oakland’s Rockridge District but it also runs an operation called Bottega on Piedmont Ave., which is more casual and focused on take-away orders. This third eatery will be another Bottega scheduled for 5319 Martin Luther King Jr. Way, in the old space of Ovo Tavern & Eatery. An employee confirmed over the phone that it will open in 2026, though did not have any further details.
The restaurant’s specialty is the cuisine of Piedmont, where chef Michele Belotti used to work, with house-made pastas that seem flown in from your Italian nonna’s kitchen. The Agnolotti di Lidia is one of the most heralded dishes, being a traditional pasta stuffed with beef shank, flat-iron steak, pork loin, sausage and escarole; it’s sauced with a beef reduction made with ribeye bones roasted in fat that reportedly takes three days to prepare. There’s also risotto with braised veal shank, gnocchi alla Bolognese and refined entrees like seared duck breast with sauteed Treviso and 13-hour slow-cooked suckling pig with caramelized apples.
Chef and owner Michele Belotti, left, cooks Pasta alla Ligure at his Italian restaurant Belotti Ristorante in Oakland, Calif., on Wednesday, Sept. 21, 2022. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)
In 2022, the restaurant made it to fourth place on The Mercury News’ 50 Best Restaurants in the Bay Area. Critic Jessica Yadegaran wrote: “Take that first bite of Michele (mee-ke-le) Belotti’s food, and you can almost hear the dramatic symphonic music that opens Netflix’s ‘Chef’s Table,’ where the Italian chef flicks flour on the cutting board. Belotti, who grew up near Milan, could join their ranks. His eponymous Rockridge restaurant, conceived and run with his wife, Joyce, strips gourmet Italian food to its essence: simple, minimal ingredients combined in ways that print memories on the palate.”
And Michelin seems to agree, stating in its review that the homemade “pastas are also a major attraction here, including the heirloom grain spaghettini in a tomato sauce with creamy burrata.”
Not all but many of the flagship’s dishes are served at the existing Bottega, which does have a few tables for folks who’d rather eat there. There are also twirled skeins dried pastas sold by weight, imported Italian cheeses, salad dressings and sauces like basil pesto and wild-boar sugo for the home kitchen.
Details: Opening sometime in 2026 at 5319 Martin Luther King Jr. Way, Oakland; belottirb.com
