Café Rustica’s European
Flair – Part 1 - by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget
Going
to some of my favorite restaurants like Café Rustica in Carmel Valley Village
when I was a restaurant reviewer for the Monterey
County Weekly (Circulation: 200,000 – California) was an easy assignment
thanks to their perfect food and wait service.
Even
after twenty years, I still love dining on their terrace admiring grapevines at
the wine tasting rooms across the street.
This restaurant merited two review trips and offers daily specials in
addition to their set menu:
Café Rustica Blends
Creative European Cuisine with Superlative Service
Dining
at Café Rustica in Carmel Valley makes you feel like you have taken a European
vacation. The restaurant offers tasty
fare from Italy, France, and Germany along with luscious Californian salads in
a courtyard setting reminiscent of continental European restaurants.
My
family likes the warm valley weather as well as the friendly ambience at Café
Rustica. On a recent visit for lunch, we
conjured up Italian vacations by ordering limonata – a sour lemon soda from
Italy with our meal.
For
starters, I ordered escargots bourguignons (snails), a specialty of Burgundy
France. Butter, garlic, and parsley are
the most obvious ingredients in the sauce, but the co-owner told me that her
spouse uses a secret recipe for this sauce that utilizes no less than fifteen
ingredients. I used the slices of toast
that came with the snails to soak up this delicious, mystery confection.
Laurent
and I ordered 11-inch pizzas inspired by European dishes. Laurent’s Lorraine pizza takes its name from
Quiche Lorraine and is made up of maple-smoked bacon, caramelized onions, and
melted gruyère cheese. For me, these are
the best ingredients in a quiche, so I really liked Laurent’s choice. (So did
he.)
Caramelized
onions were one of the ingredients on my flammekeuche pizza, a dish from Alsace
(France), which shares a border with Germany.
I love the onions with cubes of prosciutto that sat atop a layer of crème
fraîche. I thought these ingredients
would taste especially good with a slightly sweet white wine like Vouvry, which
Laurent ordered on a subsequent visit.
Florence
meanwhile was getting an eyeful and a bellyful of a large rib eye steak. This steak came with a generous helping of
herbed butter and French fries. The meat
was tender enough to be cut with a butter knife.
For
dessert, Florence ate two scoops of Ciao Bello gelato from San Francisco. Vanilla bean flecks colored the gelato and
added flavor bursts to this creamy dessert.
Laurent and I had Lavazza coffees as dessert.
End
of Part 1.
By
Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France
Click here for: Ruth Paget's Amazon Books
Click here for: Ruth Paget's Amazon Books
 |
| Ruth Paget Selfie |
