Is it Italian? Is it Asian? I dunno. It was good, though.

You could just as easily serve this over some basmati rice (and omit the cheese) but I really like the huge rigatoni we had with this and of course, the Parmesan. It was a fusion, as the kids call it.

Ginger-Garlic-Cilantro Shrimp
Originally, from Bon Appétit magazine, with 6 tbsp of butter instead of 3.5.
3.5 tbsp butter, room temperature
1/4 cup (packed) chopped fresh cilantro
3 garlic cloves, minced
2 tablespoons chopped fresh chives
2 teaspoons minced peeled fresh ginger
2 teaspoons toasted sesame oil
1 pound uncooked, peeled and deveined shrimp (large — 26-30 ct)
1 tbsp olive oil
1 small white onion, diced
1 orange or yellow bell pepper, cored and diced
Lime wedges
1 pound rigatoni or other large tube-like pasta of your liking
salt and pepper

Mix the first six ingredients in small bowl until well blended; alternatively, throw in the food processor and process until smooth. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Also, add a little lime juice from one of your lime wedges, just for fun. See, it’s fun! Set aside.

I used a food processor, so it’s all blended-like.

Cook the pasta in salted boiling water. Meanwhile, heat the olive oil in a pan and saute the onion and bell pepper over medium heat until soft and they start to get a little color, 5-6 minutes. Turn up the heat a bit and add the shrimp and the herb butter and cook until the shrimp are about done and pink (3-4 minutes).

When the pasta is just barely al dente toss into the pan with the shrimp and veggies and let it all cook together for about a minute more. Serve into bowls and top with grated Parmesan cheese and some lime wedges.

And now, as I am still catching up on my sleep from our trip and recovering from our garage sale this weekend…to bed!

*snore*

Flea Street Cafe
3607 Alameda de las Pulgas
Menlo Park, CA 94025
650-854-1226

I have very fond memories of Flea Street Cafe in Menlo Park. You see, I used to live in an apartment above the restaurant. I would walk up the backstairs and smell all the amazing smells from the open kitchen door. In the summer, there was even a mini-farmer’s market in the parking lot. As if that all wasn’t enough — my studio apartment also had hardwood floors. All in all, it was a pretty great place to live.

When jwa & I ate dinner there, if we didn’t finish our wine — no problem, they would let us take it upstairs. Awesome. (This happened once — I think when we had 2 bottles, it’s not like jwa and I can’t drink a bottle of wine with dinner. Oh — we can).

This last trip to California, we scheduled it so that we could spend a night in Menlo Park (this actually turned into two nights, as he wanted to go to the Maker Faire — another post, perhaps). As we were there for a couple of nights, we couldn’t stay in Menlo Park without having dinner at Flea Street!

The meal started with a a basket of bread and buttery biscuits. Oh, how I remember the biscuits. I love the little biscuits. What a nice way to begin the evening.

We struggled and went back and forth a bit — first course choices included a lemon and vegetable friso misto, grilled diver scallops with escarole and green garlic and Thai curry mussels and clams with ginger shrimp toast. All tempting but ultimately I got a trout and crab cake and jwa decided on an Heirloom Farms sweet lettuces salad. Mine came with micro greens and roasted red pepper sauce and the salad was accompanied by Point Reyes Blue Cheese. They were both very good and left us looking forward to more.

Oh, there’s more…
Main course decisions were very difficult to make as well. There were a number of things that caught my eye — the asparagus, chevre, olives, spring garlic and whole wheat pasta, the portobella mushroom, spinach, and goat cheese Wellington and the Niman Ranch pork osso bucco all sounded wonderful. Eventually, I couldn’t pass up the “Which Came First?” pan roasted organic chicken.

The which came first-ness of it was because it was a roasted chicken with a poached egg (wacky!), caramelized leeks, roasted cauliflower, apricot mustarda and toasted pine nuts and it was delicious! I wouldn’t have thought to put a poached egg on chicken, but the yolk kind of blended with the mustard sauce and made it extra creamy!

jwa’s choice was the “Niman Ranch Lamb Two Ways” — a grilled loin chop and braised riblets. He seemed very pleased with his entree. It came with tomato pear chutney, wild rice pilaf with chanterelle mushrooms and spring vegetables. I snapped a quick picture before he devoured it all.

We also split an order of the braised brussel sprouts with shaved Sonoma Mezzo Secco cheese. These were amazingly tasty as well and disappeared quickly.

As we finished our wine and ate the last morsels from our plates, we contemplated desserts. It didn’t take long because we both agreed that, yes, dessert was a great idea! A few minutes after our plates were removed, dessert menus made their way into our hands. How convenient!

I briefly contemplated the vanilla custard tart with blood orange compote. Oh! And then there was the double chocolate pecan pie. Ultimately, however, I ended up with the sour cherries poached in port with olive oil and sea salt over vanilla gelato. I liked this so much, I recently attempted something similar at home.

jwa, liking lemons like he does, got the lemon semifreddo, consisting of sponge cake, lemon mousse and pomegranate reduction sauce. All of this and then Jesse Ziff Cool, the owner, stopped by our table to see how our meal was. Okay, I think she was stopping by everyone’s table but still…

We finished off the evening by taking a long walk, across Las Alameda las Pulgas up by all the Sharon Heights condos, by the Safeway and back down to Flea Street. It was a walk we would do almost every Sunday night when I was living in Menlo Park, usually right after the X-Files — (insert X-files reference here).

It seemed a bit longer this time.

Flea Street Cafe gets four cherry bunches out of four.

Wild Abandon
2411 SE Belmont
Portland, OR 97214
(503) 232-4458

Traditionally, we walk to Bread and Ink for Valentine’s Dinner, have a bottle of wine, food and walk home. That’s what we did last year and for the last three years. This year, I was in the mood for a change.

I’ve been wanting to try Wild Abandon quite some time and Valentine’s Day seemed like a good night to do so. Yeah, I know — is a holiday when everyone else is trying to go out to dinner really the best opportunity to try someplace new?

The atmosphere was funky and dark. I’m not sure if they made it extra dark for the holiday or of it’s usually that way. I’m not complaining — I’m just saying it was dark but cozy and romantic. Our timing was right on (of course we had a reservation), as we got one of the velvety booths along the wall. Fun!

They had a special menu for Valentine’s Day which included a few appetizers (including a goat cheese tart), salads, and some pasta dishes, salmon with red beans and rice, chicken marsala and prime rib.

I really, really wanted the goat cheese appetizer but we were good, both starting with a simple, mixed green salad. I got a lemon basil vinaigrette and jwa got the blue cheese. Now, let me say right now that, overall, I was a bit disappointed with the food. But, I loved-loved-loved the lemon basil vinaigrette. That right there is enough of a reason to give Wild Abandon another shot. We also got some bread and hummus with our salads, which was quite nice.

Our dinners consisted of the chicken marsala for jwa and the salmon with red beans and rice for me. Overall, I’m just not sure the salmon went well with the red beans and rice — it was an intriguing idea but I don’t think it quite worked. Perhaps if the salmon had been seasoned more or spiced up a bit it would have come together, but as it was, I couldn’t help but think I was eating red beans and rice with some salmon someone stuck on top as an afterthought. Alas, I think perhaps one of the pasta dishes would have been the way to go.

(See, it’s very dark)

jwa enjoyed his chicken but thought it was maybe a bit greasy. It came with some mashed potatoes, which he loved, but a butter sauce on the side he thought was way too rich.

The evening ended with creme brulee and sorbet, along with a glass of port that we split.

The service was good. I was a bit worried that they might try to push us through as quickly as possible but that wasn’t the case. We had 6:00 reservations, we were seated promptly and didn’t leave until about 7:40. So, that, as well as the vinaigrette, makes me want to give Wild Abandon another chance on a different night.

The Recap:
True, I was a bit let down by the food (I had very high expectations) but had a nice meal all the same, as I was eating and talking with someone I love. But, you know, at $98 (with a bottle of wine), the food should have been as enjoyable as the dining companion.

On a slightly related note, Fusion (on Division) seems to be gone. Wah! Does anyone know if they are gone for good? This makes me so very sad. I loved that place. I bring that up because Fusion had all the funkiness and candlelit ambiance of Wild Abandon but with much better food, imho.

For now, Wild Abandon gets 2.5 wine bottles out of 4.

Mendo Bistro
301 North Main St
Fort Bragg, CA
707-964-4974 (Reservations for parties of 6 or more only)

My original plan, when I thought we would be back the Friday before New Year’s Eve, was to cook a meal at home, have some wine, then perhaps some champagne and be in bed by 12:15 AM. All but one of those things happened and Mendo Bistro turned into our New Year’s Eve Plan B.

The Mendo Bistro is in an old building (The Company Store) in downtown Fort Bragg. It’s super cute looking and despite the circumstances, I was excited to eat there for our impromptu New Year’s Feast. The windows look out over the street and it’s a very nice view, as you can see below.

They have a number of appetizers including: an artisan cheese plate, “award winning” crab cakes, mussels with kaffir lime, ginger, garlic and chile flakes (which really sounded interesting to me — except for the mussel part), a bistro salad and a warm spinach salad. They also have a Caesar salad, featuring polenta croutons (I love polenta!) and horseradish dressing. It was all tempting, but jwa and I finally decided to split some crab cakes and we each got a Bistro Salad.

Unfortunately, it was kind of dark in the restaurant, which is a shame, as I set up an artful shot with some cabbage slaw, a lemon wedge and my “award winning” crab cake-scape.

Entrees include pastas, sautéed ling cod with kalamata olive vinaigrette and rock shrimp risotto, seared rare albacore tuna and pumpkin-chile tamale. All of these things sounded quite tasty and were each a contender as I perused the choices.

One very interesting thing that they do at Mendo Bistro is a “Choose Your Ingredient/Cooking/Sauce” kind of thing where you pick one from the following: free range chicken, pork loin, fish of the evening, portobello mushroom, tofu or hanger steak. Then, you specify a cooking process: roasted, grilled, sautéed, fried or braised. Next, comes the sauce: Marsala, barbecue, roasted garlic gravy, Dijon-tarragon cream, lemon/garlic butter, ginger soy Bistro steak sauce.

What a fun idea — plus it’s entertaining to come up with odd combinations (deep fried hangar steak with lemon/garlic butter! ) while trying to decide on your entree. I almost got the roasted chicken with roasted garlic gravy but I was swayed by a New Year’s special — squab stuffed with black trumpet and hedgehog mushrooms, morel jus and a crispy potato cake. As for jwa, he finally decided on the rigatoni with Italian sausage, capers and roasted peppers. That jwa, he likes the pasta.

I was pretty happy with my meal choice and jwa seemed to like his too. I think I would have rather stuck to the original plan and made dinner at home but this was a very good and memorable meal. One of my favorite tastes of the night, however, was the dessert: Meyer lemon meringue tart with blood orange sorbet. Mmm!

The crust was baked meringue, followed by a a thin, cookie type layer, lemon filling, more meringue on top and a dollop of sorbet, all sitting on a honey-swirled plate. It was both attractive and delicious. I might try and make something like this at home one day, for it was very tasty and a perfect end to the last meal of 2005.

The Recap
I liked our meal quite a bit and really liked the atmosphere. The restaurant space is on the second floor of a large building, with an open, u-shaped floor plan that looks down over the first floor and all the small shops down there. The food was quite good and there was a variety of menu items to choose from. I would definitey like to go back sometime and maybe try the free-range chicken, roasted with the roasted garlic gravy. Ohhh or maybe the pork loin with Dijon-tarragon cream. Hmmm…

Mendo Bistro gets 3 lemons out of four.

Pangaea
39165 S. Highway 1
Gualala, CA 95445
Reservations: 707-884-9669

As promised — the first of the Northern California restaurant reviews. While staying in Gualala, we went to Pangaea for dinner last Wednesday night. We’d never been there before and I was pretty excited to try it. I had seen a sample menu at our hotel (conveniently right across the street) and well, that was that. We needed to go there for our splurgey-spendy meal.

First thing after stepping in the door, I loved the decor — it was very bright and colorful. Each room was painted a different hue — yellow, blue, red, purple. It made me want to come home and paint different areas of the house different colors. Maps and geography (duh!) seemed to be a theme and there were many paintings decorating the walls.

The menu from December 28, 2005 (half-remembered and half pieced together from a rain-spotted photo I took from outside the restaurant the next day) was as follows:

First Courses
Two bitter greens salads, one with olives and croutons, the other with pancetta, beets and blue cheese $8-$9
Butter lettuce salad with fennel, red wine vinaigrette and croutons $9
Braised artichokes, grilled onions, mâche, goat cheese and parsley oil $9
House-cured duck prosciutto, watercress, pickled red onions, blood orange oil and Parmigiano Reggiano $9
House made pappardelle, local mushrooms, spinach and Parmigiano Reggiano $10

Second Courses
Duck Confit, soy, ginger, bok choy, jasmine rice, winter squash and peanuts $21
Cumin lamb kebab, couscous, cauliflower, roasted peppers and pomegranate yogurt $23
Grilled juniper pork loin, fingerling potatoes, Oz Farm apples and Dijon cream $24
Seared wild striped sea bass, local mushrooms, leeks, mashed potatoes and watercress $24
Rosemary flat iron steak, artichokes, fingerling potatoes, oil-cured olives and spinach $24

Where to start
We began the meal by ordering a bottle of Zinfandel and munching on a plate of olives and bread. Then it was time to pick some food. I have been on a duck kick lately and I love blood oranges, so my first course was pretty easy to decide. jwa went for the pasta starter (which he has been known to do). Both dishes were quite pleasing. His was a huge steaming bowl of fresh pasta, while mine was more delicate in size, with a few pieces of duck, a few sprigs of watercress, a small pile of onion and shaved Parmesan strewn about. It was very good, but honestly, I was worried. It seemed…well, a bit small. I was concerned that the main courses, although probably artfully arranged, might be rather diminutive in portion-size for $20+. Yeah…I was wrong about that.

Mmmmm….rosemary
After much going back and forth, I finally decided on the Flat Iron steak, mainly due to my rosemary fetish.

The steak had small pieces of grilled rosemary about the plate and the meat was perfectly medium-rare. It was very tender, with tasty grill marks. In addition, we both got very generous portions — I should not have been at all worried, as I ended up taking about three slices of steak, a potato wedge and some spinach back to the hotel room. This was seriously more meat than I’ve ever seen on a plate before — which either means I need to get out more or that the portions were H-U-G-E. And the potatoes…ah, they were creamy on the inside and crisp outside and there were these mushrooms that just defy adequate description. Crunchy, creamy, succulent. Oh! So, good!

jwa chose the pork loin, which he seemed to like quite a bit. I got a bite of his and it was pretty yummy — especially the sauce. It was creamy and had little mustard seeds in it. If I hadn’t been so involved in my rosemary steak, I would have tried to steal some of his meal.

What to do when you’re too full to finish your meal…
When it came to be dessert time, at first, I was very sad. They had an orange cinnamon creme brulée on the menu. I ordered it, only to be told a few minutes later that they were out. I cried a little inside and then recovered enough to order the molten chocolate cake with ice cream and caramel sauce.

Actually, this was a little funny. The table next to use was ordering desserts and the server remembered to inform the table that the creme brulée was unavailable. There was a collective “Ohhhhh…” People like the creme brulée, I tell you! jwa ordered the grilled apples and ice cream. He ate it all. I ‘m guessing it was good — I attempted to try some but he hit my hand with a spoon. No, I’m kidding. Much like the main meal, I was actually way too involved in my chocolate cake to even attempt a sneaky dessert invasion. It was really, really good.

The (New & Shorter) Recap:
All in all, this was a wonderful meal. I’m really glad this restaurant opened up in Gualala, as there previously weren’t a lot of choices in town for “fine” dining. The atmosphere is bright, colorful and a little funky. The food was quite delicious, with lots of different flavors and ingredients that went well together and came together creatively on the plate. I want to go back already (okay, not really, mainly because I am never leaving the house again). But one day, I’m sure we’ll head back down to California and when we do, they better have the creme brulée when we get there.

Pangaea gets 3.5 wineglasses out of four!

Fusion
4100 SE Division St.
Portland, OR 97202
(503) 233-6950

A Celebratory Dinner:
We recently went out for a celebratory dinner. I got a new job (yay!) and if that was not enough, my old company pretty much laid everyone off, starting with my department (Content Development) — on my last day there. Now, I don’t normally have bad luck but that is a crazy kind of lucky luck that typically doesn’t follow me around either. The occasion clearly called for a bottle of wine and tasty food!

We’ve been to Fusion a couple of times and I’ve really liked it each time. In fact, we’re going to take my mom there when she’s in town next month. I love the atmosphere. It’s comfortable, dark (but not too dark) and a little quirky, all with a varied menu. Oh, and there’s the housewares, glasses, and lamps for sale. Eating and shopping — what’s not to love?

Meal Choices:
We started the meal with a bottle of Tyee Pinot Noir and split some prawns in garlicky, lemony butter. This dish also came with bread to dip up all the buttery goodness after the shrimp were gone. Other small plates include yucca fries (very good), salmon cakes (haven’t had) and a few others. You could probably make a meal out of just cocktails and appetizers!

After our shrimp, it was on to the main entrees. It’s weird, normally when we go out, I see one or two things on the menu that I want and then I have a tough time deciding between the two. At Fusion, there were at least four items I couldn’t decide between: seared scallops on spinach with spaetzel, a lamb and wine stew, salmon with a cucumber bell pepper slaw and chicken marsala. There was also a chicken curry and an Asian prawn dish. Oh, and an ahi tuna special. Needless to say, my choice took awhile — I wanted to try them all! Finally, I went with the salmon and jwa went back and forth between a seared tuna special and the hamburger. In one of his trademark last minute switch decisions, he ended up going with something completely different — the lamb stew.

The salmon was very good, with a spicy crust on the bottom — the cool, crispy cucumbers and peppers provided a great contrast in textures and taste. jwa really liked his stew as well. In the end, our delicious meal was capped off with Spanish coffees and the chocolate hazelnut tart. Mmmm!

To Recap:
Atmosphere: Dark, candle-lit and a little bit funky. Twelve or so scatted tables about the room with a bar near the door. Shelves line the back wall, packed with antiques, vases, cups, saucers and other interesting knick-knacks for sale.

Food: Everything we’ve ever had here has been very good. Nice presentation, good use of spices, a lot of choices on the menu and a full bar. Excellent.

Service: Very friendly and attentive all of the times we’ve been there. Getting there around 7:30 pm on a Thursday, we were able to be seated right away. We stayed until a little after 9:15 (they close at 9:00) and we never felt rushed. When we left, there were still a couple of tables occupied, one sipping coffee and eating desserts, the other just finishing up their entrees.

Overall: Fusion is one of those places I wish we remembered to go to more often, because I really enjoy a meal there. I love the funky atmosphere, as well as the food and I like looking at all of the stuff for sale.

Fusion gets 3.5 candles out of four.