An Exploration of New Restaurants Yields a World of Surprises

BY JILLIAN WIEDA

Just a few years back, the restaurant choices in San Luis Obispo County were slim. You were pretty much limited to pizza, steak, chop suey, or tacos. The gastronomically adventurous might try a little Thai.

Those restaurateurs who attempted something different either were greeted with empty tables or changed to more pedestrian fare.

Today, thankfully, chefs of a new breed, attracted by the SLO lifestyle and killer local wines, are opening terrific restaurants, ranging from nearly fast food to fine dining, and finding a fairly receptive dining audience.

In recent months we’ve seen new or expanded offerings of French, Baja, Cajun, Indian, Austrian, Moroccan, Russian, Japanese, and Mediterranean.

A quick tour around the county offers a round-the-world smorgasbord of taste treats.

Michel Olaizola opened Le Fandango restaurant and cocktail bar three months ago in downtown San Luis, where Art of Sandwich used to be.

Olaizola moved here a year ago from Paris with his wife to get away from the big city. He said he likes the California weather and the hard-working young people, but admits that it’s not easy offering foreign cuisine on the Central Coast.

"It’s hard starting a new restaurant when you aren’t local," said Olaizola. "People don’t just change their eating habits like that. They need time to get used to new things.

"I’m different from other restaurants–but for me I’m not different," Olaizola said. "I don’t know if that’s a good thing"

The menu is based on French-Basque cuisine. Olaizola’s homeland is a small Basque mountain town in southwestern France.

Some menu items include seafood, fish, red meat, and pastas that are best served with red wine.

Olaizola has changed his menu three times to cater to the San Luis Obispo customers who weren’t ordering many of his traditional Basque dishes. Fois gras de canard (a traditional French spread made of duck liver), a rabbit dish, and the wild boar stew were all eliminated due to lack of customer interest in these unfamiliar dishes.

"It’s hard to keep international cuisine traditional in a small town," he said.

Olaizola said international restaurants have a hard time surviving in San Luis Obispo, and that many of his customers haven’t heard of Basque cuisine.

Not that SLO County’s reaction is unique.

"If you opened up a hamburger restaurant in Basque country, you’d have a hard time making it" Olaizola said.

Olaizola, who cooks at the restaurant every day, said he doesn’t like ordering products that he cannot see before he buys.

"I’m trying to provide a better quality," Olaizola said. "I don’t hide myself because it’s important to a restaurant’s atmosphere to see what’s going on in the kitchen."

Plates are simply presented without a lot of garnish, just potatoes and carrots on the side.

"It’s not the envelope, it’s what’s inside," Olaizola said. "I just hope people will start eating better and take more time to enjoy life."

The Old Vienna restaurant was opened in 1972, offering authentic Austrian cuisine to the Central Coast. So it’s not new–but it is growing. The Shell Beach restaurant is adding a 2,000-square-foot beer garden. The traditional-style beer garden will allow patio dining and an Alpine garden feel complete with waterfall, owner Joe Reithofer said.

"The whole atmosphere transfers you back to the Old World" Reithofer said. "It’s a nice thing to be able to sit outside and enjoy a quality beer."

Reithofer offers traditional Austrian and German cuisine but said he has added some items geared toward the Central Coast lifestyle.

"I have a hard time getting Americans in that haven’t traveled," Reithofer said. "They don’t know what it is, so they don’t try it, but once I get people in here, I see them again and again."

Diners are served homemade breads and pretzels and such entrees as veal, pork, and duck. Goose is available by special order. Reithofer even serves a vegetarian steak and makes homemade steak sauce, sauerkraut, red cabbage, sweet basil carrots, and oil-and-vinegar potato salad.

"I offer some specialty dishes like Viennese potato soup [and] North Sea clam chowder, but the food itself is very basic, with unprocessed ingredients," Reithofer said. "I stay away from prepared foods."

Reithofer said that his customers enjoy the relaxed atmosphere.

"I never rush anyone," Reithofer said. "I want it to be the place people can come relax and eat without any electronic gadgets to interfere."

The new beer garden will open by the end of July for lunch and dinner. The patio menu includes clam chowder, fish and chips, German frankfurters, Polish sausage, bratwurst, and a veggie-Muenster sandwich.

Reithofer said he hopes the new beer garden will be a place for locals to meet.

"People get lost in the hustle and bustle," Reithofer said. "We don’t meet our neighbors anymore."

In keeping with its European flavor, Old Vienna restaurant hosts an annual Oktoberfest beginning Sept. 15 and continuing through the end of October. The popular celebration is full of dancing, raffles, bands and traditional sing-alongs."We used to have to turn people away." Reithofer said. "The new patio should help."

According to Reithofer, it’s important to experience different ethnic foods to discover that each culture has a lot to offer.

"As more Americans travel abroad and experience other cultures, they tend to come back and come here," Reithofer said. "Once they experience the food and the music, they just love it."

GiGi’s Mediterranean Cafe is opening around the second week in July, bringing Mediterranean cuisine to downtown San Luis Obispo. Dawn Deibert, a local resident, grew up in San Luis and bought the former Angelo’s restaurant, on Monterey Street, with the intention of starting something different.

"SLO is ready for something new," Deibert said.

The cafe will have a California casual atmosphere with a Mediterranean garden feel, said Deibert.

The cuisine will represent all regions of the Mediterranean but focus on Southern France. The menu will also have Italian, Spanish and Greek specialties. Mediterranean dishes will include fresh fish, chicken, salads, homemade soups, fruit and cheese plates, and homemade desserts. Deibert said that people are moving towards a healthier, lighter cuisine that is hard to find downtown.

"Everything will be very fresh–we don’t even have a freezer, except for the gelato," Deibert said.

The idea stemmed from her long-time dream to open a creative, artistic cafe downtown.

"I want to emphasis what a cafe originally stood for, which is a place to gather and share ideas," Deibert said, "a place to come have great conversation and great food.

"San Luis is becoming more culturally aware and people are looking for more but they don’t want to move to find it.

"My heart has always been in downtown San Luis because I’ve always loved the energy behind it," Deibert said. "Now I want to do something totally new and different, a place where all your senses will be awakened."

It may be a stretch to consider Cabo San Luis in SLO a departure from the usual fare. After all, we’re talking tacos and quesadillas and the like. Still, the former Burger King on Foothill has been transformed. It is not your average taco stand. The place has been gutted and cleaned up and brought to rustic life with weathered wood planks taken from the historic Filipponi ranch. Pictures of Cabo San Lucas and a gorgeous 500-gallon fish tank make you wish you were in Cabo. The staff was friendly and helpful even when I didn't order anything.

Dan Harper manages and co-owns Cabo San Luis with Brad Boulais. Both Dan and Brad grew up in SLO with a bunch of guys who now run restaurants of their own: Olde Port Inn, Café Roma, Scotty's, and A.J. Spurs.

As Harper tells the story of Cabo San Luis, it started–where else?–in Baja’s Cabo San Lucas, with these two guys sittin’ on the beach, suckin’ down cold Coronas, and eatin’ fish tacos. As they indulged in the beach life, they thought, "Hey, why don't we take this home to San Luis Obispo?" The name didn't immediately pop into their heads, but Harper says it wasn’t long in coming.

"We knew it would do well, but the success is greater than we expected," Harper says. On opening day, Cabo served 8,000 people. It has averaged 1,000 customers a day since then. That seems amazing–obviously it's a place locals already love.

Harper says everything is made fresh daily, from the salsa fresca to the chips, the guacamole to the beans. Price of a Cabo taco, a Corona, and tip: five bucks. But don't call it fast food, says Harper; "It's upscale counter service."

The explosion in international restaurants has been so quick and so pervasive that there isn’t time or space here to cover them all. Here are some tidbits:

• Another excellent new restaurant is Mosaics, in San Luis Obispo, owned by its chef, Steven Hazell. After working in several other restaurants, Hazell couldn’t be happier to have a place of his own, despite the fact that he's there "18 hours a day, making every plate." Hazell described his food as "globally eclectic–four people can dine together and enjoy four different cuisines." Indeed, just looking at Mosaics' appetizers takes you on a round-the-world tour. Take your choice of Thai potstickers, Caribbean pork tamales, Dungeness crab cakes, and seared ahi cups.

• Morocco, an established restaurant off Foothill Boulevard in SLO, is another international eatery that has suffered the parochialism of SLO County diners. But Mohammad Ben Brahim’s response hasn’t been to Americanize; rather he has made the restaurant increasingly authentic. What was and looked like a former sub shop when it opened has been remodeled with colorful Moroccan decor to complement the falafel, couscous, and other dishes. You can even dine to the sights and sounds of belly dancers on Friday evenings.

French-themed restaurants have certainly been on the rise. Two old favorites, Bon Temps Creole Café and Bistro Laurent, are opening new restaurants; a third opens for weekend dining.

• Bon Temps in Pismo Beach, due to open July 1, is meant to be exactly like the SLO original. Co-owner and co-chef Phil Lang says the time was right to open in a second location, now that there's a larger pool of trained cooks locally to draw from.

• Chef Laurent Grangien, owner of Bistro Laurent, has opened a new cafe, also in Paso Robles, Le Petite Marcel. Grangien had meant for Bistro Laurent to be a true bistro–a casual place. But locals saw his extraordinary restaurant as a special place for fine dining, so he adapted to their needs. Grangien still wanted to open a casual cafe. He says that the new place, which features Mediterranean dishes, is different in several respects. For one thing, it’s open only for lunch, with a menu of salads, sandwiches, pizza, and pasta. For another, no dish is over $10, and most cost less. Good wines are offered by the glass or carafe, with one local winery featured for house wines every week.

• Meanwhile, in San Luis Obispo, Et Voilà is primarily a caterer, but opens on the weekends for fine French dining.

These are just a few of many new restaurants opening in SLO. Be adventuresome, and give every new type of cuisine a try. These days, you're sure to find many a delicious and affordable surprise. Æ

Jillian Wieda is a New Times intern. Kathy Marcks Hardesty contributed to this article.