Turn off Highway101 at Los Alamos and you're headed toward a very good place to eat, Cafe Quackenbush.
Open for breakfast and lunch, the cafe is an art gallery, so you sit surrounded by paintings and craft items.
The counter where you order and a few tables are in one room. The main part of the gallery is in another room that is also equpped with tables for dining. Or you can eat outdoors and enjoy the quiet, pleasant ambience of the town.
To show how informal the cafe is, you may see chef/owner Jesper Johansson rush by as he waits on tables, then rush back to the kitchen.
He'd made a wonderful soup the day I stopped in, jalapeno sweet corn with lime and cilantro.
Half of the corn had been roasted to deepen the flavor. Johansson had put in leeks and other aromatic vegetables along with a touch of jalapeno. Made without meat stock, the soup was pleasantly limey. Cilantro leaves floated on top.
I ordered only a cup. That was a mistake. A bowl would have been a wiser choice.
Cafe Quackenbush, 458 Bell St., Los Alamos, CA 93440. Tel: (805) 344-5181.
The next stop was Paso Robles, where the heat was intense. Hot soup on a hot day? Of course. It's considered an antidote.
The place I had it was Panolivo Family Bistro, which is run by a French couple, Beatrice and Didier Cop. Beatrice is the chef, and the food is prepared with French attention to detail.
The soup of the day was tomato-fennel, made with locally-grown tomatoes. Like the soup at Cafe Quackenbush, it was vegetarian, relying only on the fresh full flavor of the vegetables, which included carrots, celery and garlic.
A house-baked French roll came on the side, and I asked for a glass of a local wine, Clayhouse Adobe White, a fruity, off dry blend of seven varietals.
In the hot weather, that was enough for lunch. But I am still thinking about the dessert I left behind, a two-chocolate (white and dark) bread pudding, which demands a return trip.
Or should I have the Super Decadent Chocolate Trio, which includes a double chocolate brownie, chocolate truffle ice cream and dark chocolate sauce? Or maybe both?
Panolivo Family Bistro, 1344 Park St., Paso Robles, CA 93446. Tel: (805) 239-3366.
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