Comal; cake…

Eastside Road, February 18, 2015—

THE PHOTOS ARE OF desserts tonight: but that's not all we've been eating, of course. Sunday night we had another delicious cabbage soup, with cheese and salad, and the neighbors down the hill as guests.

Cheap Pinot grigio; Cheap Nero d'Avola

Monday was fast day this week, because yesterday we'd made plans for dinner and an opera with friends in Berkeley. We ate around the corner from the show, in a back "patio" room too noisy for comfortable conversation, but the food was tasty: for me, a share of a "bitter green" salad, then patatas bravas and albondigas, three very nice meatballs that filled me up and saw me through an entire bel canto opera. The flan pictured at the right helped fortify me…

Tequila; red Rioja

• Comal, 2020 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley; (510) 926-6300

Tonight we had friends over to supper: Fourme d'Ambert, Beaufort, and Brie to begin with (though in truth I prefer my cheese after dinner); then that delicious shell pasta with peas I've mentioned recently, a green salad dressed with shallots and vinaigrette, and for dessert…

…this superb blood orange upside-down cake. When I was a kid my mother made an upside-down cake from time to time, always with canned pineapple, with cloves here and there, and, if we were lucky, maraschino cherries at certain interstices. To tell the truth I still hanker for that cake, rich with brown sugar and pineapple, but I know my present Cook's cake is infinitely better. Made with butter, for one thing, not margarine. An American classic, skillet-formed upside-down cake, leavened with baking powder, deliciously sweet and, in this case, fruity.

Grillo, Tamì (Sicilia), 2013 (fragrant, full, sound, delightful); vin "rouge intense", Côte Mas ("Sud de France"), 2013 (a little rough, a bit dull, pleasant)

☛Restaurants visited in 2015 are listed at Eatingday's Restaurants