The thought of taking part in a multi-course tasting menu evokes a certain degree of formality. White tablecloths, German composers haunting the dining room with piano concertos, rows and rows of cutlery, flowers arranged like avant-garde sculptures. But more than the décor, what really sends a restaurant into the upper echelon of fine dining is the unspoken yet agreed upon attitude that permeates the atmosphere.
At the point of entry, an hauteur springs to life when the host and servers start to interact with the well-endowed wallet of a paying customer. The snootiness, once engaged, surreptitiously tiptoes across the room all evening, like an elegantly choreographed pas de deux. When the illusion of exclusivity is exhausted at the end of the meal, both parties—the servant and the served—head home with sore feet and a hankering for fresh air, respectively.
Chef Mark Liberman’s tasting menu at Mägo consists of many consecutive mini courses. When I visited the restaurant earlier this summer, the first course signaled the start of a fine dining meal—blackberries bathing in tamarind water and topped with the fleshy leaves of charred onion. Disconcertingly sour and yet strangely refreshing! Liberman and his small but efficient staff are making and serving dishes like these, but the self-important snobbery is, by and large, checked at the front door.
Soft rock and pop tunes play overhead at a slightly overheated volume. It was hard to hear our first server’s explanatory notes about the menu. But the music and the purple, blue and mustard colored walls bordering an open kitchen do harmonize to create a California casual vibe. To thread that comfortable middle ground between high and low, tablecloths and TV screens were nowhere to be found.
The chef and his sous chefs sport T-shirts and aprons. When seated at the bar, their every move is visible to diners. No one in the kitchen shouts or dissolves into a panic. They assist each other while concentrating on the prep work and assemblage of each dish. Liberman concedes that the food he serves does qualify as fine dining. But after five years at the helm of Mägo, the chef is more concerned with building a communal feeling amongst the diners who are willing to trust his culinary vision.
“As someone who dines out, I don’t love the formalities of sitting for four hours doing a tasting menu,” he said. Our meal lasted two and a half hours, but it could have been cut shorter if we weren’t in the mood to linger. I kept looking forward to each new dish rather than feeling impatient to leave.
“One of the things that’s annoying about fine dining is that it can be very intrusive,” Liberman said. “There are a hundred captains filling your water, and lots of spiels.” The chef often reminds the servers that he’s interested in creating “a unique experience” rather than making sure that plates are cleared from the left and served from the right. He leaves it up to the guests, who can decide for themselves how often they want to engage with his team.
Seated at the bar, I witnessed the number of steps it took to arrange tuna on top of cucumber, tomatillo and strawberry slices until they were huddling together and capped with nasturtium petals. “People’s correlation with fine dining is that it’s going to be super expensive and stuffy, and not what they want to do,” Liberman explained. “In crafting the food and cocktails, there are things we do that are fine dining and things that we don’t want to do.”
The outdoor patio in back has recently been refurbished to include couches, love seats, benches and bistro tables. Meals will now start outside, where diners can mingle with cocktails and snacks before moving to one of the inside tables.
Many of the dishes at Mägo are informed by the chef’s Colombian heritage. Often, there’s a combination of sweet and savory flavors. A sea bass yakitori skewer was sweetened with banana and tucupi. Served on a tiny piece of toast, a morsel of mackerel nestled above a thin layer of papaya jam. Liberman explained that Colombia has a “very big sweet tooth,” but he does temper it with spice. “If you’re eating 12 different bites, it’s nice to have some balance to give your palate a reset, whether it’s sweet or acid or savoriness,” he noted.
The chef’s arepas are among the most delicious things to eat at Mägo. Liberman said that they’re a food staple in Colombia and Venezuela. Essentially, every meal there comes with an arepa, which is used there the way other countries use bread. They’re also made differently from tortillas. Generally, he said, the corn is boiled and then ground. But they can also be made with yuca or with rice.
Liberman’s arepa de choclo is made with fried corn, topped with chanterelle mushrooms, mascarpone and spiced with pasilla chile. If Mägo had a second life as a pop-up, it would make culinary headlines by simply selling arepas.
“When we first opened, it was California cuisine, which can just be a hodgepodge of different things,” he said. Liberman shifted the direction of his menu after his father passed away. He wanted to do something more personal and more focused. Being half Colombian and Jewish, he considered cooking both cuisines before switching gears to focus on South American flavors.
The chef had some family recipes, and he read through his mother’s old cookbooks. “I’ve never been trying to replicate my mom’s and my grandmother’s cooking,” he said. Initially, he thought about adapting traditional dishes like sancocho and bandeja paisa by trying to make them with Bay Area ingredients. But that approach slowly evolved.
“I’ve been going to Colombia more frequently,” he said. “If you go to a big city like Bogota, the food is very cosmopolitan and modern. There are things from all over the country, and all over the world, infused with Colombian flavors.”
Liberman had spent most of his career at high end $300 tasting menu restaurants before settling down with his family in the East Bay. “When I opened Mägo, I didn’t want to do that anymore, and I don’t think Oakland necessarily wants that either,” he said, adding that there are already a few places filling that particular niche. Depending on the night, dinner at Mägo runs $82-$110 minus beverages. Pairing alcohol ($70) or non-alcoholic beverages ($55) raises the tab.
Mägo, open Wed to Sat 5–9pm, 3762 Piedmont Ave., Oakland. 510.344.7214. magorestaurant.com.
