Cafe Torre
Posted by Max Dunn Sun, 16 Jul 2006 00:09:00 GMT
It is not often that Suzanne and I get to eat out. Last night, however, both kids were over with friends so we decided to have an evening together. Out of the blue, Cafe Torre popped into my head (maybe because I knew they have a good wine list) so we dropped off the kids and headed over there. Unfortunately, the experience was far from stellar.
Cafe Torre is a small Italian/Californian/Mediterranean restaurant on Stevens Creek Blvd in Cupertino. We arrived before 7pm and the place was less than half full. Leading us to the back, we sat at a table for two with a wall bench for one seat. I took the bench because I don’t like to look at a wall, but that was a mistake. I have a bad back, and if the chair doesn’t offer some lumbar support, it will start aching. Usually I can overcome a bad seat by sitting on one leg, but even that didn’t work in this seat. As the night wore on, I kept switching legs and squirming but finally gave up, wadded up a napkin and jammed it behind my lower back, which helped a little.
The waiter was good at serving us, but not very good with English: we could hardly understand him. We had to have him repeat the special several times before we realized it was Petrale Sole. Then we tried to explain to him that my wife and I cannot eat wheat, and that was very difficult. He kept saying “Yoo meen floor” until we finally realized he was saying “flour”. I have worked with people all over the world with heavy accents and can usually understand them okay. But this was a real struggle and after asking him to repeat things two or three times and still not knowing what he was saying, it got a little embarrassing so we just nodded our heads and pretended we understood.
The wine list was very good. They had a lot of international wines, which I know nothing about, but the American wines they had were an interesting mix including a Zinfandel from Roshambo (Ro-sham-bo, get it, the hand game?) and a Pinot Noir from Savannah-Chanelle (which didn’t taste like lip stick, but that is another story). We also really enjoyed the appetizer plate which had cheese, two hunkin’ big shrimp that were more like mini-lobsters, sauteed bell peppers, smoked salmon, prosciutto and mini-pickles with dijon mustard. Unfortunately, the rest of the dinner was pretty much a disaster.
Suzanne ordered the most expensive thing on the menu, New York steak, with the instructions to cook it medium rare, but more on the rare side. She really likes her steak rare, but knowing how most restaurants under cook anyways, she thought these instructions would be safe. When it came, though, she cut into it, and it was a bit more than medium rare. She was on the verge of sending it back, but after we had several bites and determined it was really cooked more than she liked, we had eaten enough that it was a little embarrassing to ask for another, and we didn’t want to wait. So I ended up eating about most of it, but it really didn’t taste all that good either.
I ordered the Petrale Sole. The fillets were a little small, but that was okay. But the sauce was definitely—well it definitely wasn’t really anything. So it ended up tasting like we bought it at Safeway, slapped it in a pan for a few minutes, and served it up. Suzanne ended up eating it.
The dishes both came with rice, green beans, and some other vegetable that I forget. I am not a big vegetable eater, but usually at nice restaurants they do a good job with vegetables and I enjoy them. But not this time. Suzanne kidded me “Aren’t you going to eat your vegetables?” and I realized that I wasn’t. The rice was also boring: just a step up above Uncle Ben’s. They should go buy a burrito at Chipotle to learn how to make really tasty rice. (Suzanne just informed me that she thought the rice was the tastiest part of the dish, which says a lot about the rest of the food!)
Walking out, we did see that the place was full and that the mussel dish, as well as several pasta dishes, all looked much better than ours. So maybe we got Cafe Torre’s consolation prize dishes and they do a better job with the pasta dishes, but since we can’t eat them, that doesn’t help us. Given that, and the bad back support with their seating, we won’t be going back, even with their interesting wine list. Well, okay, maybe we will try their wine bar, but we definitely won’t be eating there again.