Restaurants in Clayton

Tomatina's chefs rotate their menu three times a year to include the freshest local and seasonal ingredients. Diners can size up appetites with starters such as parmesan-crusted polenta ($6.75) before sinking teeth into more substantial fare on the extensive menu. The culinary wizards ensure freshness and quality by making sauces and dough from scratch and interviewing every tomato before baking an array of specialty pies, including the thin-crusted Pizza Vineyard with oven-roasted seedless red grapes, baby arugula, and gorgonzola ($17 for a large). Similarly, the restaurant's signature piadine dishes cover warm flatbread with cool salads and a bevy of toppings including steak ($10.95), salmon ($11.50), and hummus ($9.95), all of which can be easily imbibed via fork or face-planting.

As the name coyly suggests, East Coast Pizza provides broad, foldable slices of New York–style pizza in a simple, down-home setting. All food is made fresh to order in-house, either baked in ovens or fired up on the grill. Custom-tailor your own pizza, or order one of the prix-fixe menu options such as the contra costa ($10.75–$23.50), decked out in whole-milk mozzarella and tomato sauce with sausage, pesto, and artichoke hearts. The margherita ($10.75–$23.50) is topped with fresh mozzarella, fresh basil, and tomatoes (pizza sauce optional). If you're craving something more three-dimensional, try the classic chicken-parmigiana sub ($9.95), or a grilled California cheeseburger ($8.95) layered with bacon, fresh avocado, and pepper-jack cheese. The bar portion of the bar and grill offers a selection of beers on tap; pick up a domestic pitcher for $12 and split it among friends or Morlocks while enjoying a sporting game on the overhead televisions.

Buttercup Grill & Bar serves up an extensive and eclectic menu of hearty American fare for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and breakfast for lunch or dinner. Start a day of paragliding right with a hearty order of chicken fried steak and eggs ($8.99), or opt for a fresh-fruit-topped Belgian waffle ($6.99). The mid- and late-day menu offers any and everything to satisfy palates of all preferences, including starters such as a cup of soup ($2.99) or lunch-sized salad ($4.95+), or sandwiches like the slow-roasted prime-rib French dip ($7.99). Burgers ($7.59+), pastas ($8.99+), grilled favorites (such as chicken and shrimp jambalaya, $12.99), and other meaty treats ($9.99+) round out the tasty menu. The selection of beer, wine, and frozen non-alcoholic drinks make excellent candidates to chauffer the tasty bites down the body's food chute, and eventually into the gastronomic ball pit at the bottom.

European, Southeast Asian, and American culinary traditions all influence the unique fusion recipes at Vo's Restaurant. Vegetables and rice get simmered in traditional clay pots and prawns and lemongrass are seared in woks; there's even a deep-fried catfish filet with ginger-infused nouc mam, a dip made from fish sauce. The dining room is as colorful as the dishes, featuring warm red walls, bamboo sprouting from tall vases, romantic lighting overhead.

Chef Clive opened Sweet Fingers as an homage to his grandmother, Aunt Lu, who taught him about food, hospitality, and perseverance. He spent his early years in Jamaica learning recipes and life lessons in her kitchen after she took over her husband's fruit-selling business following his death. Building on that robust culinary education and inspired start, Clive moved to New York City at age 18 and went on to graduate from culinary school.

Eventually he worked his way up to the role of supervising chef during a 10-year career at the Marriott hotel. But his career’s turning point came in 2003, when he relocated to California and met the woman who would become his wife. That’s when the pair founded Sweet Fingers, giving locals a bar and eatery that now shines a light on Aunt Lu's recipes and the love she taught Clive to cook with.

By all accounts, Chef Clive has done his grandmother proud. Matthew Stafford of the East Bay Express praised the "juicy" jerk chicken and "creamy" fried plantains, adding that "the escovitch-style snapper, curry goat, brown stew chicken, and braised oxtail are uniformly rich, spiky, and tantalizing." Inside, the yellow and royal blue walls boast Jamaican flags and pictures of the island, and the bar serves a large assortment of cocktailsthat are no less colorful. Patrons also flock to the cozy spot for entertainment that includes live reggae, as well as open-mic nights filled with poetry and music, which often consists of impromptu compositions about intense feelings for the food.

Toscana Ristorante may have opened only in 2006, but chef Samuel Figueroa's culinary chops are of a much thicker cut. Over the course of a 17-year career, which includes a degree from the School of Italian Food Art in Rome, he's honed a large repertoire of traditional Italian fare. In Toscana's kitchen, he and his staff flavor fillets of salmon and veal with accents such as blackberry, lemon butter, and fresh sage. Fillings such as pumpkin, shrimp, and shiitake mushroom stuff raviolis, and marinara and alfredo sauces slather pastas.

Servers transport these and other plates past enormous arched windows in the dining room, which has a floor crisscrossed with elegant arcs of natural light. Racks and shelves behind the blond-wood bar supply white-clothed tables with bottles of wine and spirits. Alternatively, on the verdant outdoor patio, overhanging foliage provides shade for customers and free dessert for their docile pet giraffes.