Café Piccolo

Written by: Eric Wiener
Photographed by: Matt Fukushima

Café Piccolo offers little foreshadowing of the magnetic charm hidden away inside their nostalgically quixotic space.

A dim, rust-colored and tightly quartered dining room opens up into the main section of the restaurant: a half-open glass covered patio. Potted plants sit beneath slow twirling ceiling fans and burgundy umbrellas strung with white lights. Creamy yellow-gold table clothes and napkins match plush maroon drapes and a white picket fence covered with ivy and purple morning glory flowers sprouting as if summer were eternal.

Brick floors and fire pits make way into a fully open patio, where trees and awnings provide shade, heaters offer warmth, and a few tables claim direct sunlight. Trickling fountains create a perimeter of white noise ambiance with the faint Italian serenades and quiet conversation of others. The world’s pace slows, becoming utterly hypnotic.

Café Piccolo’s menu is functionally simplistic. Choose between poultry, veal, seafood, or vegetarian, and expect pasta, white wine, and garlic to be involved in some meaningful fashion. Lunch and dinner entrees all arrive with soup or their house salad, a twist on the romaine based Caesar with cabbage and a creamy mustard, egg, and garlic dressing in a similar shade to their linen. Olives and tomatoes reside portioned to the side, while sprinkled parmesan dusts across the salad.

Ask what to order and they’ll bring you the Veal Florentine, a thinly floured and sautéed veal cutlet layered with fresh spinach and mozzarella, tossed with olive oil, white wine, butter, and garlic. Tender, but strong enough to hold up with the accompanying linguine, it’s precisely what you want from veal. Red and yellow bell peppers, onions, and green beans are sautéed in soy sauce, making for an odd side; but complete a florid culinary design worthy of the rest of Café Piccolo’s interior.

Shrimp and scallop linguine steals the spotlight with a lemon saffron caper sauce and freshly shaved parmesan. The creamy and velvety sauce envelops the linguine, offering into a slippery, smooth texture. Browned scallops stand tall among the pasta, forgiving beneath their firmer exteriors. As you’d expect, the matching wines split Italian and Californian selections in a simple way that stays in accordance with Café Piccolo’s relaxed mood.

If there were ever any doubt as to the Italian dominance of the hedonistic dessert, Café Piccolo’s espresso truffle settles the argument. Espresso ice cream has been dipped in chocolate, and left to harden into a brittle truffle membrane around the chilled scoop. Whipped cream and chocolate and caramel sauces combine with the already present coffee and chocolate, while the fluffy, milky textures accompany cold, sweet sensations.

Within the restaurant’s lone walkway, an armoire dually functions as décor and a depository for olive oil, pepper mills, bottles of balsamic, and extra plates. Around the bend, little statues peak out from beneath awnings the way they might in anyone’s garden. Time hardly seems to exist in these quarters – appearing as vast and immeasurable as the charm.

Café Piccolo
3222 East Broadway
562.438.1316
http://www.cafepiccolo.com

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Suba Sushi and Tapas Lounge

By Eric Wiener

Innovation within the restaurant business seems to have an ever increasing degree of difficulty. Concepts built around health consciousness and local produce have gone from trendy to dominant across Southern California, as Asian fusion once did. And haphazardly mixing varieties of ethnic dishes most often results in gastronomical disaster.

With this in mind, Suba walks a fine line integrating Japanese and Spanish cuisines with a measurable dose of New York City influence. The Suba concept and Executive Chef David Santiago Sr. both originated in New York, where he worked as a consultant at the original location. Having negotiated the dual culinary styles from his Puerto Rican and Italian heritages, Chef Santiago is a natural fit and perfect choice to manage such an unfamiliar blend.

This melting pot of influences explains how twice fried plantains get paired with spicy sautéed shrimp, and cool avocado, tomato, and lime in tostones rellenos tapas; and why wild octopus is boiled in Spanish herbs and spices, before being salted, grilled, and finally tossed in a homemade tomato sauce from his own mother’s recipe.

Tapas plates of assorted Spanish olives marry homemade sangria and another platter of Machego, Cabrales, and Mahon cheeses, until a literally flaming “Light My Fire” sushi roll comes rushing out to disrupt the brief moment of harmony. Spicy tuna, cream cheese, and tempura jalapeno await within the blazing ring of fire. Caramelized onions slither over blood sausage, crisp and slightly charred on the exterior, in a timeless dish found in some shape or form around the world.

Loud, fast-paced electronic music follows Spanish guitar and bossa nova, furthering the atmosphere already present among the friendly backlit bar, bamboo backdrops, and Japanese caricature art. Equal quantities of energy pulse from the environment and each bright, animated dish.

Baked wild Atlantic salmon and unagi sauce cover a California roll to form their Baby Shiraz roll, christened after an actual baby named Shiraz. Ceviche De Camaron explodes with coconut milk, seared and shredded shrimp, red onion, garlic, tomato, cilantro, olive oil, and blood oranges. Concentrating on the fruitiness, it’s seemingly destined to go with their equally tropical white sangria.

Though Chef Santiago and his partner, Sushi Chef Shane Hollinger, have only had Suba up and running for four months, they’ve already committed to transitioning into a more spacious location on Atlantic Ave, where custom built sushi and olive bars await. The rapid crowds speak to the imperfect, exciting art taking place at Suba every day and night.

“Food is my passion. It’s what I live for,” Chef Santiago said in quite convincing fashion. He strikes you as the type of man who could spend half his day discussing a sandwich, someone unequivocally disappointed every time he goes to eat at a stranger’s establishment. “I can’t build houses,” he added, “but I can make a beautiful mess in the kitchen.”

Ironically, that’s a fairly accurate description of what goes on at Suba. It is startling, disharmonized cuisine that’s strangely gorgeous – and sybaritically alluring.

Steaming, lusciously moist empanadas constructed by Alex Garcia, their Tapas Chef, represent Suba well. Likewise, dense, clumpy paella features Bomba rice flown in from Spain, along with free range chicken, chorizo, mussels, clams, squid, shrimp, and a small blend of roasted peppers, English peas, and onions. Dry-cured Spanish ham proudly sits on display for feather-like slices across Tapas plates. A tower of sweet and spicy ahi poke opposes stacked jalapenos, crisscrossed alongside plump caramelized onions.

Suba’s menu and style go far beyond categorization. Dining there feels like being on a dervish of a roller coaster: so much fun that when it’s over, you immediately want to get back in line.

Suba Sushi & Tapas Lounge
3550 Long Beach Blvd
562.595.1959
http://www.subasushi.com

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Belmont Brewing Company

By Eric Wiener

Reclining beneath an umbrella on the outdoor patio, inches from the sand and a few dozen feet from the crashing waves, the afternoon crowd gazed off at the downtown Long Beach skyline, acknowledging what was already in the air: summer has officially begun.

“We’re truly a summer hot spot,” Manager Ben Patterson bragged, “with this view.” He spread his arms wide to encompass the princely beach and high rise contours in the distance. “And with this patio,” he continued, “you really can’t go wrong.”

So it goes at Belmont Brewing Company. Sunshine and their infamous strawberry blonde ale, a bronze medal winner in the world beer championships, set the tone among the happy crowd. Light while still maintaining fullness, only a slight strawberry essence infuses this golden, dry brew. Batches of their pale ale and top sail beers accompany the ahi tartare and shrimp and Hawaiian style poke in droves.

Imported and held to traditional island standards, the poke soaks plush yellowfin cubes in a blended, vinegar-based wasabi and soy dipping sauce with a few classic Polynesian spices. Crisp wontons wait to be scooped into the salty, acetose tuna; and a shredded, pickled cabbage and carrot salad evens out the competing textures. It’s about as beach-ready a dish as there ever was.

The ahi tartare and shrimp rely more on a lime-based, citrus, soy, and ginger dressing that provides a smoother and creamier feel. Also served with wontons, it’s got a tropical resort quality – bringing to mind vacationers drinking Corona’s by the water.

One of the tribal secrets at Belmont Brewing Company is to ask for the bread (available upon request according to the menu’s fine print). A loaf of warm and sweet sourdough with honey butter, it has a brittle, crumbly crust and doughy, forgiving middle that’s unnaturally addictive. Similarly, the menu hides some generic choices behind their most beloved entrees like the blackened scallop arugula salad with strawberries, mandarin oranges, candied walnuts, and bleu cheese.

Another favorite, the parmesan crusted pacific sole has notable basil and oregano scents hovering among its accompanying bed of steamed spinach and sautéed shrimp. Roasted string beans, tomatoes, artichokes, red potatoes, and carrots scatter across the plate’s remainder, while lively, robust colors radiate from the entire array.

California coast jambalaya never attempts to recreate the real Louisiana dish, rather, staking claim to its own, west coast merits. Grilled filet mignon replaces chicken, chili-marinated prawns fill in for mini shrimp and crawfish, and California jambalaya rice comes close to its Cajun brethren. Sautéed red, green, and orange peppers drape over the rice with melted cheese, onions, and only mild Creole spices. The Belmont version allows a few higher quality ingredients to take the lead, rather than fierce Cajun spices in a cast-iron pot.

“We even went for a name that differentiated it from the purist version,” Mr. Patterson said.

A simple apple tart pairs thinly sliced granny smith apples with a puffed pastry. Carmel, cinnamon and melting vanilla ice cream stick to the fundamentals, much like the rest of the restaurant, and satisfy even the most sunburnt of patrons.

Belmont Brewing Company’s patio offers a slightly removed, sunny and sandy view. A partial canopy of umbrellas and heaters balance the temperature at all times. Glass half-walls cut the wind down to a constant gentle breeze. Bright azure and xanthous flowers grow from interior window boxes, while beer and wine glasses are replenished from the bar just a few feet inside. The owners and managers know their strengths – and so they let everything else drift away, far off into the adjacent sea.

Belmont Brewing Company
25 39th Place
Long Beach, CA 90803
562.433.3891
http://www.belmontbrewing.com

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