Cafe Chloe (San Diego)

[Honkman]

Full review with photos: Cafe Chloe

While foodies love to discover new places and restaurants, at the same time they like to come up with top lists of their favorite ones for different cities. We are no exception to this typical “foodie behavior”: there are certain places that we love to go to over and over again, and because we visit them so often and get to know the people there quite well, they start to feel like a second home or living room to us.

In San Diego we were fortunate enough to have two of those “second living rooms”: the Better Half Bistro in Hillcrest and Cafe Chloe in East Village. With quite some substantial pain to us, the Better Half Bistro unfortunately closed its door last June – but happily we still have Café Chloe which we never get tired to visit. On so many occasions have we ended a long and tiring week at work with a nice dinner at Cafe Chloe, and it is always amazing that within just a few hours we are reenergized to start into a nice weekend.

Cafe Chloe was founded by Tami Ratcliffe and couple Alison McGrath and John Clute about five years ago, and even though East Village might not look like some touristy place in Paris (but some arrondissements in Paris don’t look that inviting either) once you step inside the restaurant, a lot reminds you of a bistro somewhere in France. Cafe Chloe has a nice casual and relaxed atmosphere with its wine bar in the center, and several small tables and bistro chairs throughout the cozy room. One of our favorite places is the elevated gallery which is a quieter place for two people, and which has a nice view throughout the restaurant. They also have a few tables outside; a nice option on a beautiful summer night (of which, of course, we have plenty in San Diego). We also admire their great taste in desiging the whole place, starting from the two stone dogs greeting you at the entrance, over beautiful paintings and other decorations, such attention to detail is rare to find elsewhere – and again adds to our feeling of “being home” at this place.

As already mentioned above, Cafe Chloe recently celebrated its fifth anniversary. We started visiting them shortly after their opening, and over the years we got to know many of the wonderful staff at Cafe Chloe by name. By now they also know many details about us, e.g. our preference for a slow pacing of the meal etc. which makes all of our visits even more relaxing.

Cafe Chloe’s chef, Katie Grebow, creates a wonderful menu with her own interpretation of French (American) bistro dishes. We also enjoy that they don’t make the same mistake of many other restaurants with a small menu to not change their menu often enough for their regular visitors. They always have two daily specials, one meat and one fish entrée, and even their “regular” dishes have small seasonal changes. We have to yet have a dinner at Cafe Chloe which disappoints us, but at restaurants as Cafe Chloe which consistently deliver great food, there are still those special nights when somehow everything works together, and you have another “perfect” night, like the one we had recently:

Mimosa with house-made peach sorbet

Cafe Chloe doesn’t take reservations (except for one table for parties of five) so that sometimes you have to wait for a table, but that is an excellent “excuse” to start the evening at the bar with a mimosa with house-made peach sorbet.

Pork meatball with small salad

This was a new addition to their Small Plates section and reminded us of a German “Frikadelle”

Chicken Pate with grilled bread, pickled carrots and mustard

Cafe Chloe has an always changing Charcuterie du Jour plate with outstanding house-made charcuterie by Sous-Chef Jacob Rodriguez.

Pinot Noir - Domaine Henri Delagrange, Hautes-Cotes De Beaune, 2007

The Pinot Noir had a nice acidity and gentle tannins with a berry taste. A simple but elegant wine which paired nicely with the different courses.

Cider-braised Wild Boar with sautéed apples, braised red cabbage and buckwheat Spaetzle.

One of the best main dishes we had at Cafe Chloe and perfect “German comfort food” on this rainy night. We wished they would put it on their regular menu !

Cheese plate with kumquat compote, wine gelee and honeycomb

We still had some wine left and decided to have some cheese instead of dessert.

This was a wonderful evening at one of our most favorite places in San Diego – thank you, Cafe Chloe, for this beautiful place !

[kalypso]

Cafe Chloe is, indeed, a gem in SD. A late summer breakfast at one of the sidewalk tables is a delightful way to start the day. So relaxing and so good.

[Honkman]

Full review with photos: Fort Ross Wine Dinner at Cafe Chloe

The Fort Ross Vineyard is uniquely situated for a vineyard with just a miles from the Pacific Ocean. It is located close to the mouth of the Russian River between Jenner and Fort Ross, and at a height of 1200 to 1700 feet overlooks the ocean. The Fort Ross Vineyard is made up by 28 small vineyard blocks at the top of the coastal ridge.

The South Africans Linda and Lester Schwartz started winemaking at this location in 1994. Today the Fort Ross Vineyard focuses on three varietals – Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinotage. The name Fort Ross Vineyard might be not as familiar as some of the “big” vineyards in Sonoma and Napa County but nevertheless their numerous favorable reviews for many of their wines show that many wine connoisseurs appreciate their wines.

For many years now we have been very interested in food and cooking and always enjoyed drinking a good beer or wine to accompany our food, but only over the last two years or so we really started to get much more interested in learning more about wine, beer and cocktails. You can of course learn a lot by reading about these areas, but one approach that we have started to enjoy is to participate in wine/beer dinners, or to opt for a wine pairing with a tasting menu. So when recently Cafe Chloe hosted a wine dinner with wines from Fort Ross Vineyard we decided to take this opportunity to combine good food with some good wines.

Tasting menus with wine pairings can sometimes be quite formal but in this case it turned out to be a laid back and relaxing night. Only a limited number of tables took part in the wine dinner but at the same time regular customers could select a few of the courses with the wine pairing individually which was a good idea to at least get some taste of the food and wines.

1st Course: Chilled chicken & truffle galantine with Persian watercress and green garlic sauce vert.

Great start for the evening and our favorite course of the night. Galantine is stuffed meat (often forcemeat) that is poached and coated with aspic. The addition of truffle gave it a very elegant taste. The green garlic sauce vert completed the dish by giving a nice light, herbaceous touch. The 2008 Rose of Pinot Noir was a good pairing with its taste of strawberries and jasmine tea and a smooth finish which didn’t overwhelm the delicate taste of the galantine.

2nd Course: Branzino with sauce au vin blanc, spring vegetables – peas, asparagus, favas, pea vines, radishes and beets.

This Mediterranean seabass had firm, moist flesh and a nice crispy skin. The vegetables were perfectly cooked, and especially the beets had a nice earthy flavor which suited the fish. The ingredients and the colorful presentation made this a great spring dish. The 2005 Chardonnay Reserve was interesting as it was an unfiltered wine. It had some fruity tones of peaches, apricots and melon with some acidity and a long finish.

3rd Course: Grilled duck breast with tangelo duck jus, wild mushrooms, creamed spinach and duck rillette crepe Breton.

Also one of our favorites of the night – the citrusy sauce helped to balance the richness of the duck breast and the meatiness of the large pieces of wild mushrooms. The creamed spinach and especially the buckwheat crepe with duck rillette filling were outstanding “side” dishes.

This course was accompanied by two different Pinot Noirs – 2007 Pinot Noir (left) and 2005 Pinot Noir Reserve (right). You could already see by the darker color that the reserve would have a much stronger and refined taste than “regular” Pinot Noir. The reserve had a strong taste of brambleberry, cherry and plums and quite a lot of tannins whereas the “regular” had less tannins and also less intense berry flavor.

4th Course: Smoked pork shoulder braised with rosemary, roasted fennel, tomato, cranberry beans and local olive oil.

Altogether a good dish but probably the weakest part of the tasting menu. The meat was very tender and had a slight smoky flavor. The beans worked as a good base for the dish but the fennel was hardly detectable and it felt overall unbalanced and overly rich. Some balancing flavors which would have cut through the richness of the meat like some bitter kale/chard or some vegetable mash with some added sweetness from carrots or winter squash would have been nice. The paired 2006 Pinotage reminded us not surprisingly of a Pinot Noir with some raspberry and blackberry flavors with a smooth finish.

5th Course: Irish cashel blue cheese, roasted green grapes and honeycomb.

A good finish of the dinner with this Irish cheese which reminded us of a mixture of Gorgonzola and Roquefort. The honeycomb had the perfect balancing sweetness to the tanginess of the cheese. The roasted grapes with their slight smokey flavor were a nice addition. This course was paired with a Sauternes from Café Chloe which had a good balance between its sweetness and raisiness.

Supplement Dessert: Affogato – drawn espresso with vanilla bean ice cream.

Even so we were quite full we were thinking about some coffee and sweets to finish the night. What is better than combining these two than in an affogato. Cafe Chloe has very good house-made ice cream, including their vanilla bean ice cream, and they use high quality Illy coffee beans for their espressos. By the way, this is one of our favorite desserts at Cafe Chloe together with their exceptional pistachio bread pudding, or their outstanding chocolate pot de crème… we like desserts…

Overall we enjoyed this wine menu at Cafe Chloe a lot, and it was a good combination of excellent food and good wines. We found most of the Fort Ross wines to be good “restaurant” wines which means we would easily order a glass of them in the restaurant. On the other hand they sometimes felt raw and unfinished so that we probably would not order larger quantities for home enjoyment, one exception might be the 2005 Chardonnay Reserve. John, one of the three owners of Cafe Chloe, mentioned that they are planning three more wine dinners over the course of this year, and we hope that we might have time to enjoy them.

[agnolottigirl]

What a lovely place! I was in town for a meeting and looking for something within walking distance of the conference center that has good food but is not super-touristy. Cafe Chloe was all that and then some. I was there in time for happy hour -- an unbelievable array of bargains -- and it was warm enough to sit outside. Service was fantastic, food (salad, blue cheese/mac gratin, pistachio bread pudding, vino) delightful. Reminds me a lot of one of le Pichet, one of my favorite places in Seattle. Strongly recommend -- and thanks, SD Gulleteers, for saving me from mediocrity!