Mediterranean Vegetarian Meal at Pèppoli Café in Spanish Bay at Pebble Beach, California by Ruth Paget
To celebrate Memorial Day, my husband Laurent, daughter Florence Paget, and I went to lunch at Pèppoli Café, now open in afternoons, in Spanish Bay at Pebble Beach California.
We sat on the terrace at a table with a fire pit in the middle, which we, of course, had lighted despite a brisk wind off the Pacific. It made dining a little edgy with flames flickering around.
We began our meal with the warm goat and olive appetizer that comes with grilled toast rods. The Pebble Beach Company has a herd of goats (about 100 goats) that you can see grazing around Pebble Beach throughout the year. (They are natural lawn mowers for forest floors.) I assumed the warm goat cheese came from the milk of this herd.
In any case, the goat cheese arrived warm and melting in a bath of extra virgin olive oil with sautéed slices of red bell peppers to drape over the grilled toast. Just that was pretty great, but the real bonus was a ramekin dish full of warm olive oil with pitted Gaeta (maybe Kalamata) black olives, small green Spanish manzanilla olives, and small black French Niçoise olives with a whole spicy red pepper.
The small manzanilla and small Niçoise olives have pits so be careful biting down on them. The hot pepper gave the olives a little zing, which I found delicious.
As my main dish, I ordered eggplant parmigiana (eggplant Parmesan) that was served on a generous bed of lumache (pronounce loo-ma-kay) pasta in the form of a snail with tomato sauce. This a a simple description for a somewhat elaborate dish.
The lumache pasta at the bottom of the dish was covered with tomato sauce made with garlic, olive oil, San Marzano tomatoes, sun-dried tomato paste, fresh basil, and fresh oregano that had cooked for several hours. The flavor is concentrated with pronounced sun-dried tomato and oregano flavors. This sauce is different from the Marinara sauce on top of the eggplant slices and provided a nice flavor contrast.
The eggplant slices in the eggplant parmgiana is sliced and dunked in flour, beaten eggs, and a breadcrumb and Parmesan mixture before sautéing. The thick crust on the eggplant made me think that it had been double dipped before sautéed.
Once the eggplant was ready, mozzarella was placed on the pasta. The eggplant slices went on top of this. Marinara sauce made with garlic, olive, basil leaves, and salt that is cooked for a shorter time than the sauce on the lumache pasta went on top of the eggplant slices with parmesan grated on top.
Finally, the chef placed slices of mozzarella di bufala on top of everything before running it under the broiler. This steaming and oozing delight tasted just great with the views of ocean on the terrace.
I was very happy with the Mediterranean vegetarian meal I ate at Pèppoli Café at Pebble Beach, California and think both vegetarians (lacto-ovo vegetarians) and Italian culture lovers would like the elaborate eggplant parmigiana with ocean views from Pèppoli Café.
Mille Grazie for the delightful lunch!
By Ruth Paget, author Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France and developer of the Novgorod and Bento War Games
