Caffe Chiave

Caffe Chiave

Caffe Chiave is a cute and homey Italian cafe overlooking San Pablo Avenue in Berkeley. The interior design has clearly been influenced by Italian style. Its design utilizes warm-colored wood and dark red trim, a color scheme that reminds the visitor that this is an Italian cafe. The cafe is not particularly large; it holds only about twenty small tables. This gives it a cozy feel. The speakers play instrumental music that sounds so Italian that it adds to the ambiance. 

When you enter, you order and pay at a long wooden counter that bends slightly to conform to the shape of the room. It turns into a glass case showcasing beautiful cake, pies, and other artistically crafted sweets, and then a counter where you can get condiments and water. Behind that counter, you can see them make your order right then and there. You can hear the food sizzling as it is carefully prepared.

Caffe Chiave serves as both a coffee shop and a restaurant. They sell coffee (including house drip and cold brew), espresso drinks (like lattes, mochas, macchiatos, and americanos), and tea (including matcha and chai). They also sell an assortment of sweets and pastries, including slices of their specialty cakes.

The restaurant menu has some typical breakfast options, soups, salads, paninis, sandwiches, and pasta dishes, all for a reasonable price. For breakfast, you can have egg dishes, avocado toast, bagels, breakfast burritos, or sandwiches. They also have a soup of the day, several salads, six different types of paninis (including grilled cheese, turkey and bacon, and Italian meatballs), five different sandwiches (including BLTA, Italian sub, and vegetarian), and three pasta dishes: spaghetti and meatballs, fettuccini Alfredo,  and rigatoni chicken pesto.

I tried the spaghetti with meatballs. I was not disappointed!  The recipe was an Italian-American classic with big meatballs smothered in marinara sauce and parmesan cheese on top of a bed of sauce-covered spaghetti noodles. The sauce had a bright tomato flavor, and it was thick and chunky. The meatballs tasted like good meat with a touch of cheese. It was all served with crunchy, buttery garlic toast, which was a wonderful addition. It tasted comforting and homemade, simple yet immensely satisfying to eat!

When I was done, I walked up to the glass case that held a few types of cake (caramel, chocolate, and carrot), a pie (which was key lime pie), and some nice eclairs, and a few other elaborate pastries. They were all very pretty, and after some deliberation, I decided on the carrot cake. It was so beautiful I almost didn't want to eat it. But when I did, I fell in love with the sweet cream cheese frosting, which was topped with toasted nuts. The cake itself was very delicious, but it was not your everyday cake. It was incredibly moist with noticeable bits of carrot and a bit of crunch from the nuts. It was clearly made from an elaborate recipe by a trained professional; it would be nearly impossible to recreate this much magic.

In the end, I have only scratched the surface of this cafe's menu, but I strongly recommend it. It serves high-quality Italian and Italian American recipes in a relaxed and attractive environment. There is no rush here, and the service is good. It even has free wifi; the password and username are printed at the bottom of the receipt. 

The spaghetti and meatballs made me feel nostalgic. They were warm and homey, a satisfying yet comforting meal.

The carrot cake blew me away. It was gourmet, beautiful, and completely delicious--one of the highest quality desserts I have ever purchased for myself.