A Mediterranean menu of shared plates opens at City Center Bishop Ranch
Bollinger Canyon Road is lined with miles of white rose bushes. This month they're in bloom. There's something funereal about them, as if they indicate the way to a mausoleum entrance rather than mark the perimeter of Chevron's San Ramon campus. Wearily, the roses compete with the onrush of cars racing off the freeway towards Renzo Piano's refined vision of an outdoor mall.
Piano and his partners designed City Center Bishop Ranch without factoring in the demands of weekend mall goers. Despite a separate parking garage, motorists tend to ignore pedestrians while they compete for empty spaces. The busy sidewalks surrounding the mall are narrower than the wide interior walkways. Finding my way inside felt like a Herculean achievement. Piano made it difficult for visitors to casually come and go.
Wayfinding signs and employees, digital or the old-fashioned kind, are nonexistent. Before arriving, I should have studied the online directory map to locate Alora Social. Note: It's on an unassuming corner on the left side of the mall's front entrance. Social is chef Nicholas Peters' second iteration of Alora, which belongs to the Good Times restaurant group that also includes Pippal in Emeryville. Alora Pier 3, the first iteration, opened on the Embarcadero waterfront in San Francisco.
During summer, the heat in San Ramon beats down hard on the unhatted. Once indoors, Alora Social's air conditioning counteracts the sunshine with a cooling breeze. The interior design is on trend with a mix of faux and real greenery. A dark-pink vine of papery bougainvillea wreathed the wall behind our table. Grecian blues, whites and blonde wooden tables and chairs contribute to the cheerful atmosphere.
Alora's sharing menu features cuisines from such Mediterranean countries as Turkey, Italy and Greece. On paper, that approach, without a singular focus, sounds problematic. In practice, only one of several dishes needs to be reimagined.
A charred eggplant dish called moutabal ($16) is mixed with yogurt, chili, shallots and mint. This version is as creamy as hummus and could easily replace it as a go-to dip. The five dip options are served with pita bread or a crispy lavash. Focaccia is another bread option for an additional $8. The pita bread is served warm and lightly salted. Vertical spears of lavash arrive golden in color, with herbs baked into the crackers. Both are worth ordering to try out the different textures. I would also recommend the spring pea hummus ($16), with one caveat. It's brightened up by lemon and dotted with fresh peas and microgreens. But it should be served in a bowl rather than on a plate where it flattens out into a green puddle.
Sigara borek ($13) are cigar-shaped rolls of filo dough filled with spinach and feta. They were crisp and light, an elegant version of spanakopita that gets the balance right between greens and feta and crust. The herbal labneh dip that comes with it is a perfect foil for dipping.
Fattoush ($18) was the only dish that left me with questions. It's the second salad I've had this week that didn't work. Shaved carrots, orange and purple, outnumbered by far the shaved pieces of asparagus. Uncooked carrots are a tough sell for me, but when they're shaved I find the texture abrasive. I expected the plate to be more vegetable forward, with cucumber and radishes too, but the ratio of lettuce to other ingredients was off. Reverse it, add haloumi or feta, tomatoes and cubed, not shaved, veggies and then it might awaken dormant vegetarians.
Italy is represented on the menu by several kinds of pasta. With the exception of a Spanish shrimp pincho ($33), the lunch entrees incorporate Middle Eastern flavors on kebabs. Ladolemono souvlaki ($28) is made with grilled chicken thighs. The kebab pieces on their own didn't carry as much flavor as I was expecting. But the dish made more sense when the chicken was paired with bites of rice pilaf, cucumber salad and tzatziki.