Cafe Rustica's European Flair - Part 2 - by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Café Rustica’s European Flair – Part 2 – by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Laurent and I came back on another warm summer night for another gastronomic treat at Café Rustica.  I ordered lamb fillets, and Laurent had the capellini pasta with shrimp.

The meaty lamb fillets came three to a serving and surrounded an impressive piece of vegetable architecture:  a perfectly round mound of au gratin potatoes on a bed of sautéed spinach with strands of roasted red pepper draped over the top of the potatoes.

Sautéed tomato squares flowed down the sides of the au gratin potatoes.  The freshly prepared vegetables all retained their individual flavors.

A cabernet-shallot sauce covered the lamb fillets with pine nuts sprinkled around for flavor.  The sauce enhanced all of the flavors in the dish without overpowering any single one.  The savory lamb, like Florence’s rib eye steak on our previous visit, was tender enough to cut with a regular knife.

I ordered the Yalumba Cabernet Sauvignon from Australia to go with my meal.  The wine smelled and tasted like blackberries and had a strong, lengthy finish.

Laurent love the capellini pasta that came with sautéed shrimp.  The savory marinara sauce paired perfectly with the briny shrimp.  Halves of sweet, cherry tomatoes made up the vegetable contingent in this light, yet filling dish.

Laurent drank a Pichot Vouvray from the Loire Valley in France with his meal.  The mildly sweet taste of this wine went well with the marinara tomato sauce.

The pleasant, hardworking staff at Café Rustica make dining there such an appealing experience.  One of the co-owners told me that they treat all of their employees from dishwashers to hostesses with respect.

“Everyone contributes to the restaurant’s success,” she said.

This philosophy comes from the fact that both owners have been employees in restaurants as well as owners.  They are both chefs in their own right: One trained at the Internant School in Germany while the other trained at the California Culinary Academy in San Francisco.

The owners’ dedication to cooking and their high regard for restaurant professionals have helped them create a restaurant that merits a trip out to Carmel Valley Village from the Monterey Peninsula.

(Congratulations to Rustica for being a 2019 Michelin Restaurant!)

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Cafe Rustica's European Flair - Part 1 - by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

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

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