Grubtrotters

Flora Springs 2005 Trilogy from Napa Valley is our wine pick of the day. I had an opportunity to sample half a dozen Flora Springs wines at a dinner hosted by the third-generation, family-owned winery at Wilshire, one of my favorite Santa Monica restaurants, back in March.

The 2005 Trilogy is a Meritage blend of traditional Bordeaux varietals, 66% Cabernet Sauvignon, 23% Merlot, 7% Cabernet Franc and 4% Malbec mainly from the Komes Ranch estate vineyards surrounding the winery. The wine spent 22 months in new French oak barrels, and it’s wonderfully rich, full-bodied and balanced.

The best wine of the night was actually the 1996 Trilogy, but that one is a lot harder and more expensive to get your hands on at this point. The ‘05 Trilogy retails for $65, but I found it offered online for as little as $39.99.

The family behind Flora Springs owns 650 acres of vineyards in Napa Valley, a total of 10 vineyards in five appellations: Rutherford, St. Helena, Oakville and Carneros. All the vineyards are sustainable, and 20% are certified organic, with another 240 acres to be certified this year. A full 90% of the grapes used in the Flora Springs red wines are from organic vineyards. That means no spraying of harmful chemicals. Instead, they use natural methods such as cover crops, hawks and owls to control problems such as pests.

A quick summary of our dinner to whet your palate: We started with a delicate hamachi seasoned with ponzu and wasabi, which was paired with Flora Springs 2007 Soliloquy Sauvignon Blanc. That was followed by ricotta gnocchi with hedgehog mushrooms, Cippolini onions and chestnuts, which we enjoyed with the 2007 barrel fermented Chardonnay. For our third course, we savored a rich and delicious Moroccan spiced lamb stew with fregola sarda (a healthy pasta from Sardinia), cauliflower, piquillo pepper harissa (a hot sauce) and banana raita (a cool, yogurt-based sauce). This dish was accompanied by the 2006 Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon. And finally, we sipped the ‘96, ‘99 and ‘06 Trilogy wines with some artisinal cheeses before capping off the evening with a dessert of pain perdu with meyer lemon, huckleberries, port reduction and vanilla ice cream. Yum. — Jenny

Huckleberry Cafe, from Chef Zoe Nathan and Josh Loeb, the husband and wife team behind Rustic Canyon, has barely been open three weeks, but word has clearly spread. There was a line out the door today at lunch, despite the rain. Nathan is pretty famous for her pastries, and while Rustic Canyon only had Saturday morning breakfasts, you can buy her goodies for breakfast and lunch every day at Huckleberry Cafe. (Saturday breakfasts at Rustic Canyon are kaput now.)

The cafe occupies a bright, casual space, perfect for Santa Monica, while the menu focuses on “locally sourced, farm-driven” foods, such as salads, sandwiches, soups, rotisserie meats (free-range Jidori chicken, of course, and duck on Thursdays) as well as all kinds of breakfast treats. Also perfect for Santa Monica. There’s a communal table for those who want to mingle with neighbors, a growing trend in LA. I arrived just after 11 a.m. in the mood for a hearty breakfast, but I’d just missed the cutoff. Instead I ordered the one savory, breakfasty item on the lunch menu, a fried egg sandwich with Niman Ranch bacon, gruyere, arugula and aioli on two thick pieces of freshly baked country bread ($9.50). Delicious. The caffe latte hit the spot, too.

I also brought home some moist turkey meatballs in a tomato sauce and three prepared salads, one with farro (a type of wheat), english peas and feta; one with tangy broccoli and one with crunchy/sweet sugar snap peas ($12.75 for the trio). All fresh, healthy and tasty. Thumbs up for Huckleberry Cafe. Not that they need it. – Jenny

Huckleberry Cafe: 1014 Wilshire Blvd. Santa Monica; 310-451-2311.

I have a new story up on Dinela.com called “An LA Carnivore’s Guide to Veggie Dining.” The biggest delight in writing the piece was the wonderful meal I experienced at Madeleine Bistro in Tarzana. Run by husband and wife team David and Molly Anderson, Madeleine serves fine, animal-free cuisine. Sound like an oxymoron? I was shocked by how tasty and filling the food was. David Anderson is a bit of a vegan genius. A veteran of five-star restaurants, he was the only student in his culinary school class to get an A in butchering, although he temporarily lost his voice from the stress.

My favorites were the artistically presented beet tartar, the grilled lemon rosemary seitan and the chocolate souffle. Don’t ask me how he does the souffle without any eggs or milk. Like I said, he’s a genius. If you’re looking for something a little less fancy, he also makes comfort food, including a surprisingly delicious veggie version of the Big Mac for lunch. I brought the leftovers home to Victor, who is the biggest fan of Fogo de Chao’s all-you-can-eat Brazilian steakhouse that I know. He devoured the vegan cuisine and licked his fingers.

If you can’t imagine driving to the Valley for a vegan meal, then wait six months. The Andersons are currently securing financing and looking for a space in West Hollywood to launch a new vegan restaurant by the end of the year. The new place will be “bigger, with a bar, more of a scene kind of place,” says co-owner Molly Anderson. It will also have a new name.

The Andersons have no plans to close Madeleine, but they are considering making it a more casual restaurant to fit with its Valley setting. Whole Foods is opening up nearby, and Yoga Works is coming in across the street. So they want to capitalize on the post-yoga crowd. Right now, hungry yogis sporting Hard Tail and mats may feel out of place at a fancy restaurant with tablecloths.

As a fledgling yoga teacher who worries about the environment, I’m trying to incorporate more vegetarian meals into my diet. Madeleine makes that easy. When the food is this good, you don’t miss the meat. We swear. – Jenny

Madeleine Bistro, 18621 Ventura Blvd., Tarzana; 818-758-6971.

Fans of Tender Greens, rejoice. New locations in San Diego (opening in June) and West Hollywood (slated for September) are just the beginning. Owners of the wildly popular, eco-friendly salad spot in Culver City have plans to expand across the city, state and nation. “I think we see ourselves growing sustainably, maybe three restaurants a year,” owner David Dressler told Grubtrotters. “We don’t see there being a cap to the number of stores. There are opportunities for 20 to 30 from Northern California to Southern California and one-offs in other parts of the country.”

The reason for such massive expansion? Long lines outside the Culver City location are a huge clue. While many restaurants are suffering during the recession, Tender Greens had its best month ever in April (boosted by Earth Day, perhaps) and sells $3 million worth of food a year. “We see a hole in the marketplace,” Dressler says. “There are not a lot of places for good, affordable, healthy food, where you can get a great organic plate for $10. The lion’s share of our business is within three to five miles. People are just so time-crunched, they don’t want to spend 15 minutes in the car to go to lunch.”

Dressler is looking for locations with lots of foot traffic from homes and businesses, as well as outdoor space for sidewalk cafes and plenty of parking. “We’re looking at Burbank and Tarzana, Hollywood and maybe Santa Monica…We’ll get to Santa Monica eventually, but it’s a slightly more difficult restaurant market.”

So could Tender Greens turn into the next Pinkberry or even Starbucks? Whatever you do, don’t use the vile C word. “We may have multiple locations, but we don’t see ourselves as a chain,” Dressler says. “Our goal is to build a company that believes wholeheartedly in sustainability. We’re not trying to build a behemoth.” – Jenny

I sat down with Chef Akasha for a piece on DineLA.com. The Q&A focuses on her efforts to make her Culver City restaurant eco-friendly. But we also wound up chatting about everything from vegetarians to gay men and feng shui. You can check out the interview here, and below are a few extras just for Grubtrotters readers:

Jenny: There are so many people that claim to be green for marketing purposes. How can consumers tell who’s for real?

Akasha: I think consumers have a sixth sense about things. All of a sudden the Cheesecake Factory went green? Look, they’re not a green restaurant. If they went green, it’s better for everyone because it means the products are going to be available. But I think the consumer likes to feel it’s authentic. The green consumer is usually someone that reads a lot, that does a lot of research. And we have to deliver on the food and service, or forget it. You can have a green restaurant, and if the food is bad, and the service is bad, nobody is coming back a second time. They’re just not. Our policy is to treat everybody like they’re the president of Sony.

Jenny: Are the prices higher than they would be if you were not mostly organic?

Akasha: Our prices aren’t any higher than anyone else that has the same kind of restaurant, the same kind of experience. Our preparation is very simple. It’s not fancy shmancy food. Most people tell us we’re reasonable. When you’re using quality ingredients and doing really nice food…And I mean, look at how cool the crowd is. The demographic of our customer is the Whole Foods shopper.

Jenny: Did you have any interesting experiences getting the restaurant open?

Akasha: We filmed eight months of construction and what we went through getting this place open on TLC’s “Flip That Restaurant.” I think that show is one of the reasons we’re so busy. I’ve had a lot of PR, and I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s funny, I never really understood why I liked restaurants so much until I opened my own. I know it sounds almost stupid to say, but I never really understood how the whole experience is why people come back again and again. I feel like the experience people have here is truly wonderful and unique.

Jenny: Have you had celebrities eating here?

Akasha: Celebrities come in here, especially at night. The lighting is much darker. People don’t even know they’re in the room. They’re not bothered. Ed Norton came in, Mario Van Peoples, Amy Smart was in, Rachael Leigh Cook, Rachel McAdams. It’s real low key. Billy Baldwin was in.

Jenny: What are your most popular dishes?

Akasha: The short ribs, the scallops, the onion rings, the pear salad with goji berries. The salmon, too. The turkey burger. You know how many people order this turkey burger at night? I almost didn’t put it on the menu at night, and my friend said, you should really put it on the menu. You’re a neighborhood restaurant.

Jenny: Do restaurants wind up wasting a lot of food?

Akasha: We sell a lot of food. We don’t waste any food. Every single vegetable peeling gets made into stock. We buy the whole chickens for the entrée at night. We cut it up and use all the bones in stock.

Jenny: Are your customers as green as you are?

Akasha: We’re not here to tell people you can’t do this, you can’t do that. You should only eat this, you should only use recycled paper goods. Don’t take a paper cup to go. Take five minutes to bring in a real mug. Because not everybody’s going to do that. I’ve been through that. I was real fanatical when I was younger. You can’t do it. You just have to give the options because this is a business. It’s actually a war on a daily basis. It’s a battlefield back there on a Saturday night.