Firing the imagination

Along with other hot young chefs, Pastore’s Rex Hale helps ignite SLO’s coming culinary explosion

By Kathy Marcks Hardesty

Walk through the front door of Pastore’s in Los Osos and you may not notice a guy plainly dressed in Levi’s and sweater, his head crowned with thick, auburn curls. Chef Rex Hale is often seen, sans chef jacket, greeting his guests.

He’s an unpretentious cook with none of the arrogance of his showboat counterparts, yet Hale’s reputation as a chef is equal to that of Alice, Emeril or Wolfgang. Hale’s doesn’t need the embellishments of a starched white coat and tall toque to present himself as a superstar chef; his food waxes eloquently of his talent.

Pastore’s is this area’s new, cutting-edge restaurant, one that is invigorating SLO’s fine dining scene. Hale, a grand host, can accommodate the fussiest diner.

But don’t let that dining room image fool you into thinking Hale’s not minding the kitchen. Hale is exacting about the quality of everything on his menu. Each dish placed in front of you tastes as delicious as it did when he created it, whether it’s Hale or his sous chef mastering the stove.

Housed on quiet 10th Street in one of the rustic cottages of the Village Mall, not many people passing by would guess there’s a world-class menu offered inside. Of course, it’s doubtful Hale imagined opening his monument to fine dining in Los Osos. When Hale started planning to build a landmark restaurant over a year ago, he looked first at two locations in Arroyo Grande, preferring the city’s close proximity to the wine trails. But nothing came to fruition.

Discovering Pastore’s Trattoria was on the market, Hale visited it and liked what he saw. When the place exchanged hands in mid-October, he quickly remodeled and opened one week later. Pastore’s regular customers were happy to find few changes. And that was Hale’s plan.

Regulars saw the menu still featured favorite Pastore’s dishes like spaghetti and Caesar salad (improved by Hale’s fresh recipes). Hale describes the menu as "Cal-Italia" for its past life as a trattoria, but his daily specials are sure to lure foodies for miles around. Here, they’ll find the trendy dishes they love: items like halibut cheeks, perfectly crisp outside and moist within, served with earthy porcini and butternut squash ravioli in a fragrant herb broth. There are always seasonal, homey dishes like boneless beef short ribs braised in sangiovese, with Cipollini onions and autumn vegetables. These dishes are so intense and satisfying they border on soul food.

What’s even more amazing about this wonderful restaurant is the menu and wine list, both priced downright cheap considering the fine bill of fare. For those who relish the entertainment and adventure of dining out, Hale’s "wine tasting menu" combines the menu du jour, consisting of four or five courses of the daily specials, paired with the best local wine for each dish.

But make no mistake, Hale’s cooking style is costly, as a visit to a gourmet food store would attest. But high tariffs for high drawer ingredients are not important to Hale–he insists on keeping prices for the food and wine affordable. That’s a boon for SLO if he attracts the amount of daily business he needs not only to keep prices down, but to keep the restaurant alive.

Here, "the" question needs to be posed: In this coastal oasis where steakhouses reign, are we sophisticated enough in taste to keep Pastore’s in business?

Rising restaurant tide

Hale insists SLO diners are food savvy and that there’s a huge appetite for fine dining here. His steadily growing reservation list bears witness. And now that Pastore’s customers, particularly its new clientele, have discovered how good it is, they’re spreading the news. But Hale is also up against more competition from fine restaurants that recently opened in SLO. Just five years ago, only a handful of quality chefs had opened restaurants in this area. Locals who love fine dining showed their appreciation by keeping those establishments’ reservation books full. Not surprisingly, wine aficionados who came to visit our wineries found them, too.

The success of those trailblazing chefs started a new restaurant boom, seemingly overnight. Particularly in Paso Robles, only five years ago when Bistro Laurent opened, its only competition was Busi’s. Today, five fine dining establishments hug Paso’s town square, and locals are bragging about each of them. They provide all the pizzazz formerly found only in restaurants in cities like San Francisco, Monterey and New Orleans, destinations where chefs specializing in French, Italian or Spanish cuisine are renowned for their authentic dishes.

Pastore’s ranks among the best of them. Without a grandiose atmosphere, it still manages to be cozy and romantic. Despite his small kitchen, Hale prepares amazingly creative foods, with nothing pre-prepared or tinned. This gastronome, who has worked in fine restaurants around the world, believes what’s most important here is the availability of fresh ingredients. Thanks to the cornucopia of high quality foods from farms in SLO, our region grabbed Hale’s early attention despite its perceived backwater image.

He patiently explains size doesn’t matter. "I’ve never been handed a silk purse," he says. "I’ve had to build everything up, but you put more into it when you have a goal in mind."

And Hale has big goals, like planning a larger-capacity restaurant in another SLO County city.

Failure of formula food

With Hale expecting the success of two restaurants here, it’s inconceivable that only five years ago people complained about the lack of fine dining in these parts. "We have plenty of great wineries here," we lamented, "but no great restaurants."

Sadly, too many restaurants were that bad–quantity was more important than quality. At places locals frequented, even salads were little more than iceberg lettuce and anemic tomatoes. At the beloved barbecue joints– better coined the Rawhide Bar & Grill–inferior quality tri-tip was akin to chewing saddle leather, no less tough soaked by that ubiquitous side of runny pintos. Other places offered what people in the restaurant industry call formula foods, the same old dishes that don’t taste all that bad, but don’t taste all that good, either.

Thankfully, better restaurants opened, but we asked, "Why are most of them Italian?" At least their menus utilized somewhat "exotic" ingredients, like fresh herbs, Reggiano Parmigiano, porcini mushrooms and–amazingly–fresh pasta. But most lacked the business savvy to market their restaurants.

Help came from local foodies who were becoming excited about dining out. They shared their finds with friends, advising them to try a new place or go back to an old restaurant that had improved. Still, we discovered many dining rooms were best not visited on the chef’s night off–the food just didn’t taste as good–inconceivable in a restaurant like Spago in LA, Emeril’s in New Orleans or Chez Panisse in Berkeley. With the new competition, local restaurants had better improve food and service or forget about being part of SLO’s burgeoning food scene.

Who wouldn’t love the SLO life?

Many talented chefs have moved into the area, then abruptly returned to the major cities from whence they came. We foodies were bewildered, and wondered, "Who wouldn’t love living here?" Local experts, however, know what exactly attracts chefs to SLO and why some don’t last.

Hale says the problem wasn’t SLO, it was the cook. Chefs with merely a little talent can quickly earn celebrity, but once they achieve those lofty ethers, they become spoiled. They no longer want to work as hard. And who could blame them?

Cooks spend gruelingly-long hours on their feet with no break, not to mention that they gotta be able to stand the heat or get outta the kitchen. But chefs who stay in the major cities merely oversee their kitchen. In San Francisco or New York, chefs even get free help from the culinary academies just by providing a spot in the kitchen for the cooking school’s interns.

Here, a chef better be willing to put the apron back on because he or she will quickly discover that good assistants are hard to find. In the city, culinary school graduates are keenly aware there’s a long list of talented cooks eager to replace them. Not so in SLO, where good assistants push the envelope, coming in late, calling in sick, knowing they cannot be easily replaced.

Chefs, desperate for good help, put up with it to keep that cook around. "You’ve got to have a lot of energy or you’ll never last here," Hale admits from his experiences helping other chefs in some of SLO’s restaurants.

Scott Lewis, food and beverage manager at the Inn in Morro Bay, says one reason chefs don’t last here is that they’re not busy enough. The weekends are packed, but come the slow weeknight with only 20 customers–if that many–and the SLO’s luminance dims. "We need an increase of people from Los Angeles and San Francisco who dine out regularly," Lewis admits. "The demographics here are family-oriented. To succeed, you have to cater to everyone, from the person who only wants to spend $5 to the person who wants to spend $50."

Lewis says that nine months ago, asking a chef to move to the Central Coast was "like asking him to move to no man’s land; five months later the floodgates opened." Chefs, particularly those in corporate settings, want something better.

"Chefs want freedom and creativity," Lewis says, "but there’s a price you pay. In the city, you can get anything you want for your restaurant, and if they’re talented they become famous. But here, we have the beauty of our surroundings and everything is grown here, but without the glamour."

Lewis adds that business is improving rapidly at local hotels and restaurants since the September tragedy. "This area has become a drive-in destination for San Francisco and LA–that wasn’t always the case."

Tasty road to fame

As our regional culinary reputation grows, we’ll see an influx of good chefs in SLO. Still, few chefs anywhere can boast a reputation as extraordinary as Hale, whose resume reads like the Who’s Who of great restaurants.

Born and raised in the Midwest, he spent his summers on his grandfather’s farm and later put himself through college by working at restaurants in Kansas City, St. Louis and New Orleans. It was in the Big Easy that Hale learned his Creole and Cajun chops in fabled restaurants like Brennan’s and Commander’s Palace.

Hale became enchanted with the restaurant world and, although he graduated as a biochemist in 1981 from Tulane University, he realized he wanted to devote his life to cooking. He landed his first big position as executive chef at Brennan’s of Houston in 1985, and was featured on the PBS TV series Great Chefs of the West. Then Hale became executive chef at Stephen Pyle’s’ highly touted southwestern restaurant, Baby Routh, in Dallas.

In 1990, Hale moved to Kansas City as executive chef at the American Restaurant, where Food & Wine Magazine named him a "Rising Star Chef." That year, he earned a nod from the James Beard Foundation, which nominated him ‘Best Chef in the Midwest." Next, Hale moved to South Africa to head the kitchens at a high profile resort, the Cascades Hotel. In the West Indies, Hale immersed himself in the cooking of the Caribbean at the prestigious Jumby Bay Resort. While there, the owner of the Ojai Valley Inn invited Hale to become chef at his resort.

Arriving in Santa Barbara County, Hale vividly remembers how impressed he was by the array of locally produced foods. There, the Beard Foundation lauded Hale again in 1996. Hale’s cooking style was coined by Wine Spectator magazine’s food writer John Mariani as "California Coastal Harvest." Mariani described Hale’s flair with food as "an amalgam of his cooking experiences." Those accolades captured the attention of magazines and newspapers, from Bon Appetit and Gourmet to Esquire and the Los Angeles Times.

Hale could build a destination restaurant anywhere, but he’s inspired to make it happen in SLO. "I was blown away by what was available in food locally," he says. "There are so many natural resources, from wine to food, here. Good cooking has to do with procuring the freshest local ingredients, and choosing the best they have to offer."

The real boom is coming

It’s not just this world traveler’s long resume that’s impressive. It’s Hale’s exceptional taste and ability to produce cuisine, both complex and simple, that’s consistently great. Hale shows respect for the seasons and for ingredients, yet cooks with uncommon restraint. Rather than overwork a dish, creating a clash of flavors, he keeps it simple to express the essence of the ingredients.

"I like the flavors to speak for themselves," Hale explains. "My philosophy has always been to cook what’s there and in season. Here, the seasons are long and there’s plenty available all year."

Early in his career, Hale recognized the importance of working with farmers. Now he’s taking that idea up more than a few notches. Hale is collaborating with farmers, wineries, the Paso Robles cooking school and Pure & Simple Bakery in a win-win situation that guarantees the success of all upscale restaurants that are dependent on procuring quality ingredients.

"When you work with farmers, you really respect what’s it’s all about," he says. "You have to capture the attention of cooks by showing them that it’s important to work with farmers to see the quality and diversity. Then you teach them what’s in season and how to use it."

California may be the land of plenty, but Hale says SLO is wide open for entrepreneurs. The wines and produce grown in the county are of top quality, but prime food specialty purveyors are still lacking local providers of artisanal cheeses and free range poultry. "There’s all the opportunity in the world to do that here," Hale says enthusiastically. "We have to have the best possible products available to us."

Hale is so sure SLO’s destiny is to become a wine and food destination, he’s already working on his next restaurant, one with the working name of Bistro Rex. It will feature an all-American menu, "a blending of American cuisine" from his experiences cooking in restaurants across the country.

"Our only draw at this point is the wine industry," says Hale of the region, admitting that SLO isn’t a food destination like Napa Valley yet. "But it will happen all at once. Another five years, and you’ll have that kind of boom here. It’s just around the corner." Æ