Reviews
Metro Santa Cruz, May 11, 2009
Beautiful Bittersweet – Big-city dining with an intimate attitude keeps Bittersweet Bistro on target. Metro Santa Cruz review.
Metro Santa Cruz, September 5, 2007
Restaurant Review: Bittersweet Bistro – Dessert first could become a habit here. Metro Santa Cruz review.
Adventures in Dining, Spring 1998
(Published with permission.)
Bittersweet Bistro – Culinary Bliss
Even though the quality of restaurant food in America has never been higher, it is still a rare experience to have a near-perfect meal. When it happens to me, I feel blessed, which is how I felt when I visited Bittersweet Bistro in Aptos.
Now housed in the 100-year-old former Deer Park Tavern, Bittersweet was originally a small cafe on Mission Street in Santa Cruz. Owners Thomas and Elizabeth Vinolus moved to the new location two years ago, more than tripling their 47-seat capacity and giving Thomas, a Culinary Institute of America graduate, a kitchen large enough to accommodate his exceptional talent.
The interior was designed and decorated by Elizabeth and Thomas. They’ve created a feel-good atmosphere that is both elegant and comfortable. The large dining room is done in warm earth tones with dark woods and soft lighting. The adjoining bar-room boasts a handsome mahogany and black granite bar as well as high backed, upholstered booths. A private banquet room behind the bar area accommodates up to 250 for special events. The bar is an especially popular place during the early cocktail hour when customers come to enjoy a late lunch/early dinner (beginning at 3 pm), feasting on Thomas’ divine bistro appetizers, including pizzettas from his imported Italian wood-burning oven.
The dinner menu is varied enough to satisfy the most discriminating palate, but not so extensive that Thomas, who makes everything from scratch, can’t prepare and expedite the food easily. Starters include pizzettas, vegetable quesadilla, roasted garlic with crostini, three-seed bread sticks, stuffed mushrooms and roasted artichokes. There’s also smoky Grilled Shrimp over crisp Organic Greens with Garlic Sage White Beans; a trio of luscious Mediterranean dips served with crostinis; and Tomales Bay Oysters, called “ugly” oysters because of their gnarly shells, anything but ugly on the palate. These succulent bivalves come in two versions – raw with the best red cocktail sauce I have ever tasted (house-made, of course) and Thomas’ exceptional Oysters Rockefeller.
A separate menu of specials is presented nightly, and on a recent visit we found three exquisite first courses: House-cured Salmon Pastrami; Santa Cruz Mountain Chanterelles (which I later learned had heen gathered that morning); and the hands-down winning starter that night, Pear & Blood Orange Salad. It doesn’t sound all that intriguing, and I probably wouldn’t have ordered it, but a table companion did, and once we’d all tasted and retasted it. she barely had a bite left. Thomas roasts fresh peeled pears over an oakwood fire, slightly caramelizing the outside. Blood orange sections, Belgian endive, mesclun greens and small chunks of Roquefort are added to the cooled, sliced pears, then drizzled with a balsamic glaze and hazelnut vinaigrette. Heaven on a salad plate! If I had no other reason in the world to drive to Aptos for dinner, this salad would be motivation enough.
There are seven other salads, including a first-class Caesar, and several pastas which we did not sample because we were dazzeled by the tempting array of entrees.
We debated over grilled swordfish with two sauces – Roquefort-crème fraîche and a red wine demi-glaçe; roasted monkfish over a vegetable ragout, finished with rosemary oil; braised beef short ribs with Cabernet demi-glaçe over garlicky mashed potatoes; and veal medallions with a Brandied wild mushroom sauce.
We settled, however, on Roasted Mahi Mahi, dusted with minced porcini, finished with an exotic mushroom Marsala sauce, served with garlicky mashed potatoes, as fluffy in texture as they were dense in flavor; Black Angus New York Steak, cooked (as ordered) to the moment of medium rare, with a lusty, rich Cabernet-shallot sauce along with au gratin potatoes, served browned and bubbling-hot from the oven; Grilled Lamb Tenderloins with a luscious black currant sauce and Cabernet demi-glaçe (not a whisper of fat had been left on the mild, succulent tenderloins); and my favorite, Monterey Bay Halibut en Papillote which came in a parchment paper package the size of a baby pillow. When it was placed in front of me and cut open, I steam cloud of exquisite aromas billowed forth, leaving me salivating before I’d even taken a bite. The white, flaky halibut had been sealed in the parchment “pillow” for baking along with a melange of fresh vegetables – spinach, zucchini, yellow squash, fresh chopped tomatoes, mushrooms, baby artichokes, eggplant, sweet peppers, Kalamata olives, garlic and shallots, plus white wine and fresh herbs. (A similar preparation, done with salmon filet, is a signature dish at Taste Cafe & Bistro in Pacific Grove.)
We had been warned by friends who know Thomas’ talent not to miss desserts. Prior to opening his first restaurant, he had been the pastry chef at Casanova in Carmel. (He and Elizabeth met and fell in love when both were working at Casanova.) We ordered Lemon Napoleon with Raspberry Puree, Tiramasu, a Chocolate Plate and a delicious house-made Jack Daniels chocolate ice cream.
The lemon Napoleon was a superb balance between tart lemon and sweet raspberry sauce. Tiramasu, which can either be the celestial creation it was designed to be – or a dreadful concoction of liquor-soaked sponge cake, reaches its zenith here. Flavors of hazelnut espresso génoise, mascapone, zabaglione and white chocolate dance across your palate.
For chocolate-lovers, Thomas has created an over-the-top, hedonistic indulgence. His Chocolate Plate includes a rich chocolate mousse on Florentine cookies, an even richer chocolate pâté en croute with an almond coconut crust, and deep chocolate bread pudding with a caramelized banana cap sprinkled with pecans.
Magnificent! All of Thomas’ food is beautifully presented, but his desserts are truly works of art.
Elizabeth has put together an outstanding wine list, which has won a Wine Spectator Award for excellence every year. Hundreds of wines are offered – all the best Californians, some Italian and German, and many French, including valued old Bordeaux and Burgundies. Prices range from $15 to $500, but most are in the $30 range.
There are a myriad of details that separate fine dining from good eating, and all have been attended to here, including expert service and timing. Food not only arrives when you want it, every dish is temperature-perfect.
Given his wondrous way with desserts and his obvious passion for chocolate, one would assume the restaurant is named for bittersweet chocolate. Not so, says Thomas. Instead, he chose the name because he felt it described his life and relationship to the hospitality industry—the “bitter” and the “sweet” of life, and especially of life in the restaurant business.
Undoubtedly there are bitter times, for no “calling” in the world is more demanding than running a first-class restaurant. Thomas’ and Elizabeth’s guests, however, are blissfully ignorant of the bitter. All you have to do is look around at expressions on the faces of diners at Bittersweet Bistro to know that for them the experience is sweet indeed.