Information Bistro

As other restaurants have come and gone Bistro Mezzaluna has stood the test of time for over fifteen years in the same location. What attributes to its success is the continuity and consistency of the service and the food. At the helm of this bistro jewel is Chef Brian Rutherford, educated at the Culinary Institute of America, and possessing experiences as vast and impressive as the marine industry his restaurant borders. Chef Rutherford is the cool driving force behind Bistro Mezzaluna’s culinary stability. Chef Rutherford has taken ‘bistro fare’ to a level of wonderment and pizzazz, making the ordinary, extraordinary with a little bit of flash and a whole lot of ingenuity.

Hands down the neighborhood favorite is the pan roasted yellow tail snapper topped with lump crab meat, capers and sweet tomatoes in a white wine sauce and coming in at a close second is the lobster and jumbo shrimp fra diavolo served over linguine and lest we not leave out the landlubbers, the Rack of Lamb with Brian’s specialty bistro mashed potatoes, served with a side dish of goat cheese baked tomato and sauteed spinach. Not your typical bistro fare but you’d expect nothing less from the talented and well read Chef Rutherford as he continuously keeps up with the latest culinary trends, through reading, teaching and experimenting. To credit his humbleness he is confident enough to tell you who inspires him; two of today’s culinary greats, Thomas Keller of The French Laundry and Tom Colicchio of the Craft Restaurants.

Brian makes good food great but that alone cannot make a restaurant successful it needs a great captain steering the ship and Frank Galgano the General Manager of Bistro Mezzaluna sees to it that each guest is greeted and taken care of as if they were a guest in his home. Meticulously trained in the corporate-chain restaurant world, Frank moves through his restaurant like a skilled rower; “catching and extracting” every point of the “front of the house” at just the right moment and like any skilled professional, his timing, demeanor and presence keep Bistro Mezzaluna on course. The guests flock to him, his staff reveres him and his peers admire him. It is a successful and quietly confident person like Mr. Galgano that has made this neighborhood bistro the successful jewel it is.

Bistro Mezzaluna has perfected the formula for taking care of guests new and repeat, offer consistent food and friendly service with a little bit of surprise thrown in for good measure. Bistro Mezzaluna offers a daily happy hour from 5-7pm as well as a $5 Bar Menu. And through the neighborhood grapevine it has been over heard that a few special wine dinners and other food and beverage pairing events are on the horizon. There is no doubt that with Chef Rutherford in the kitchen and Mr. Galgano orchestrating the overall ambiance of Bistro Mezzaluna that it will remain “The Neighborhood Bistro” for many more years to come.

Christine is a lifestyle entertaining specialist and freelance writer focusing on food, wine and events in South Florida, from Palm Beach to South Beach. As the creator and editor of the South Florida Food and Wine blog Christine’s focus is to write and compile up-to-date information on all things food, wine and events in South Florida. To contact Christine visit South Florida Food and Wine at:

http://southfloridafoodandwineblog.blogspot.com/

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My family lived in the area near San Francisco International Airport for a long time, almost 10 years. Although we lived in Burlingame for most of that time, we lived in San Mateo for seven months. The San Francisco Airport area (SFO) has five cities, including Burlingame, San Mateo, Millbrae, San Bruno, and South San Francisco. This restaurant is in Millbrae.

We were on our way home from exercising at the gym one Saturday afternoon. My wife wanted to buy fresh fruits at a grocery shop in Millbrae. We found this restaurant across the road from the grocery store. The name of the restaurant is Zen Bistro. As a Japanese national, I was a bit tired of ordinary Japanese restaurants with California rolls and sushi bars, so I was interested in checking out this restaurant. It looked new and was decorated in an interesting way with a dark wall color and black interior. It looked like Zen Dojo for meditation. A modern style of indirect lighting gave the building an interesting combination of traditional and modern atmospheres.

We decided to have lunch there. Walking into the restaurant, we found that the dining room was more like a contemporary bar than a Japanese restaurant. When we sat at a table, our waitress brought us marinated Japanese vegetables that were good. My wife ordered an eel rice bowl, and I ordered “Tonkatsu” (breaded fried pork). All Japanese eel bowls have some image. It is usually a red lacquered wooden bowl or box with rice and grilled eels on top. However, the dish my wife received surprised us.

It was quite different from our presumption. Their rice was placed on the center of a flat, white ceramic plate. Avocado slices were placed like a surrounding wall to support the rice in the center, and eel was placed on top. More vegetables were placed on the edge of the plate. It was a unique presentation. In addition, as my wife ate, she found pieces of eel meat hidden inside the rice. It was delicious.

My Tonkatsu came with three separate plates. One was for fried pork, another held vegetables, and the last one was for rice. Since they were all separated, the fried pork did not get wet from the vegetables, and the vegetables stayed fresh. Although I had thought it would not be easy to eat rice from a flat plate (because rice in Japan is always served in a bowl), I found out that it was not so bad. Both dishes were excellent.

We took our friends there, and they loved it. The restaurant provides a cozy dining area, which is a comfortable place to stay for a relatively long time while enjoying conversations with friends over our meals.

Shaw Funami is an owner of “zhen international, inc.”, known as a mentor for cross cultural relationship called “Fill the Missing Link”. You can learn about his profile in Facebook, http://www.facebook.com/shaw.funami. Please feel free to contact him at “hisashi.funami@zhenintl.ws” or visit his business website. http://webtraffictoolbox.com/

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Las Vegas houses the most number of elegant and impressive restaurants in America with encompassing price ranges and delicacies. Despite the fact that the world of fine dining has gained extreme popularity in the past years, there are still numerous Las Vegas restaurants where you can find delicious food at affordable prices. Among the numerous restaurants that have flourished in the City of Lights are Mexican Restaurants. Las Vegas Mexican food and restaurants have been known to offer the most delicious and sumptuous foods at low prices. In fact, the number of Las Vegas Mexican restaurants and bistros have already outnumbered local-born cafes and dine-in establishments within the state.

Below is a list of some of the most popular Las Vegas Mexican restaurant and bistros that Americans particularly love.

Pepe’s Tacos is a Las Vegas Mexican restaurant that offers its loyal customers the best tasting breakfasts, which include chorizo con juevos, eggs, beans rice and tortillas. This restaurant provides numerous lunch and dinner meals for such low prices. Their most sought after meals include carne asada, carnitas, mojarra, tortas, different variety of tacos, and super burritos. All types of meals served at Pepe’s Tacos include rice, beans and tortillas. They also serve chips and guacamole, carne asada French fries, and real Mexican drinks like Jarritos and Horchata.

Roberto’s Taco Shop has 11 branches within Las Vegas and it considerably offers cheap eating at its finest. They have a wide array of combination plates, burritos, taquitos, tortas, tostadas, and tacos. Roberto’s carne asada super nachos are extremely delectable and they serve it in huge mouthwatering portions. This Las Vegas Mexican restaurant also serves scrumptious chicken tacos that are deep fried and are stuffed with chicken, lettuce and cheese.

Villa Pizza is a popular restaurant that serves the most authentic and mouth-watering New York thin crust pizzas. The sauce, crust and the piping hot cheese that melts and drips off from the pizza slice is definitely enticing to look at. There are also lunch platters and specials that are very affordable. You can either buy the pizza by slice or order them in whole. They also have an in-house salad bar where customers are allowed to dress up their own salad dressings and ingredients. Their line of desserts, which include fried dough treats covered in a powdery sugar and packed fresh in a paper bag, is just really exceptional.

El Pollo Loco is a huge Las Vegas Mexican restaurant chain that concentrates in creating the most appetizing flame-grilled chicken. If you have not tasted the mouth-watering chicken of El Pollo Loco, you can visit the shop if you are in Vegas. There are a total of 12 branches around the town, and each food chain comes with a plentiful salsa bar to assist you in dressing up your chicken and meal. Their chicken is invariably the reigning king of this place. It is specifically known for its tender and juicy insides and its golden and crispy outsides. El Pollo Loco meals are Mexican-inspired and there are also numerous fresh and healthy food choices included in their menu.

Our slogan is the drive dictating our dedication to always bring the south of the border flavor to the local community. We have a great love of the real Mexican flavor and our motivation is to give the opportunity to enjoy the real flavor with our Fresh South of the Border Cuisine. Check out our website www.elpicante.net, experience our restaurant and Contact us at erick@elpicante.net

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The ambience is spacious and comfortable, and most importantly with décor unique to Oaxacan eateries … the old Mexico of the 20′s, 30′s and 40′s. The consistency of theme begins with reception: vintage iron sewing machine bases with thick rosewood-stained table tops, and artwork of the epoch adorning the walls.

The restaurant is furnished with antique-style pine tables, chairs and servers. An absolutely magnificent antique bar complemented by period posters of liquors and mixed drinks is set off to one side. An iron treble clef titivates another wall, with old brass instruments appearing to hang from a page of sheet music striking a pleasant chord. The baby grand is without pianist this evening, but playing nevertheless. A long glass showcase with three shelves upon which are displayed vintage kitchen, dining and imbibing gadgets, and green glass pieces from the depression era, cries out for attention: if you didn’t know what this restaurant was all about before, just take a look now. Of course Chory is always there to explain.

When Fernando Gonzalez was a child growing up in Oaxaca, they used to call him Shorty, which naturally, translated into Spanish became Chory. It’s taken Don Fernando some fifty plus years to turn what must have then been an embarrassing stature for him, into something of which he can now be proud, Chory’s Bistro. He certainly has the pedigree to make this most recent entry into the Oaxacan restaurant lottery a success, with over thirty years in the hotel and restaurant business and training in the United States.

Piping hot from the on-site bread and pastry ovens to the table, a round loaf of bread arrives almost immediately upon being seated, accompanied by a dish of roasted garlic with fresh rosemary and drenched in olive oil for spreading. The selection of blended scotches and other liquors is sufficiently broad for both Oaxacans and travelers alike, the wine list is short but covers all bases for matching menu selections, and the mixed drinks reassure that the bar is there to serve.

The menu is shorter than most, but the selections seem to be just that, carefully chosen items developed by Don Fernando over the years. We began with appetizers of Caesar salad, baked oysters and paté, each of which is unique to Oaxaca, even though the salad appears on several menus. In this case the dressing was not from a bottle, but rather freshly prepared, with anchovies and all, in the kitchen … not the regular kitchen, but the “secret kitchen” in a separate building where Don Fernando personally prepares certain mixtures and salsas so as to assure that his recipes do not find their way into competing eateries. Even the croutons are baked on site. The chicken liver paté was the best I’ve tasted outside of my grandmother’s haimishe home. The oysters were to die for, prepared au gratín with manchego cheese in a moderately spiced cilantro salsa. If you are disposed to ordering this plate, consider the larger size so others in your party can appreciate it … they won’t let you keep it to yourself.

Two of Chory´s “Signature Dishes” which we tried were “Chory’s Steak Select” and the smoked shrimp. The latter consists of 5 oversized jumbo crustaceans smoked on the premises and served with a chipotle dipping sauce and garnishes. They were cooked to perfection. The “carne negra” is beef tenderloin marinated in another secret salsa, comprising one or more of the multitude of local chilies, and other herbs and spices, then flame grilled — unique and delectable to the extreme. Our final entrée was barbecued pork ribs, perhaps not unusual to the American palate, but in the case of southern Mexico, something not commonly encountered. Thankfully the ribs were more than expected in that they were not fall-off-the-bone, signifying no over-boiling (if they’ve in fact touched water at all), and the Texas-style BBQ sauce was tangy and rich.

Rather than selections from the antique pastry cart which was rolled out to our table, we opted for Singapore style plantains prepared with Kahlúa, and Oaxacan lime pie, both of which were up to par and did the trick.

I recommend all of the “Signature Dishes” as well as the foregoing plates found without the special designation. Over the past dozen years of friendship with Chory and his family, my wife and I have tried them all.

Chory’s Bistro

Flores Napolitas No. 301

San Felipe del Agua, Oaxaca

(951) 133-6136

Tues – Sun, 2 – 10

Entrées from 60 to 200 pesos

Private dining room for 12 available.

Alvin Starkman together with wife Arlene operates Casa Machaya Oaxaca Bed & Breakfast (http://www.oaxacadream.com). Alvin received his masters in social anthropology in 1978, and his law degree in 1984. Thereafter he was a litigator in Toronto until taking early retirement. He and his family were frequent visitors to Oaxaca between 1991 and when they became permanent residents in 2004. Alvin reviews restaurants, writes about life and cultural traditions in Oaxaca, and tours couples and families to the villages.

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