Inside Arden
page 32
Elegant new dinner spot opens in grand style
Sacramento moved a step closer toward the major leagues with the summer opening of the
Supper Club. Husband-wife team Matt and Yvette Woolston created a unique and elegant dining venue out of a Del Paso Boulevard restaurant site that two previous occupants couldn't make work. And even after only a few months of hosting Saturday-evening, six-course prix fixe dinners, they appear to have developed a winning formula.When the Supper Club first opened, the local media compared it to The Kitchen, the always-filled-to-capacity, exhibition-style restaurant open several nights a week. But the Supper Club is very different. The chefs at both restaurants use extraordinary fresh regional and local ingredients of the highest quality. But the comparison stops there. While The Kitchen provides dynamic entertainment in the form of demonstration cooking, the Supper Club experience is low key, sultry and gentle, with an added punch of individuality.
This venture is the couple's first restaurant. Both have impressive, although not necessarily high-pro-file, backgrounds. Matt served as executive chef for David Berkley Fine Wines & Specialty Foods for the past12 years, while Yvette worked behind the scenes in catering for Berkley.
The couple, who have been together for nearly 20 years, have young three sons. (One can only imagine their children's taste buds.) They appear to be a perfect team: Matt is enthusiastic, energetic yet focused, while Yvette is cordial, welcoming and gracious. The North Sacramento restaurant is located in the contemporary complex called The Building on the Boulevard. The Supper Club faces the street, but you enter from a covered central courtyard. Once inside, you are whisked away to something much more akin to a New York loft than any dining spot in Sacramento. The cavernous, industrial-style space is brought down to scale and warmed up by a black ceiling and rich tobacco brown walls. Most notable are the significantly over scaled traditional fabric lamp shades hanging from the ceiling. Polished concrete floors further the high-tech look. Crisp white tablecloths add polish, and the contemporary, and comfortable, mandarin-orange molded-plastic chairs bring visual punch and a feeling of playfulness to the interior. The dinner begins at 6:30 p.m. after about a half hour of mingling with Yvette and other guests, about 30 the evening I went. The welcoming reception includes a glass of wine and several interesting and unusual appetizers served on platters circulated by the staff.
Once the guests are seated, chef Matt announces and explains the menu of the evening, which changes monthly but tends to take cues from Mediterranean and California influences. He also introduces wine steward Bill Gilbert, a not-at-all snooty expert who explained the wine served with each course. Throughout the evening, we were amazed with his knowledge and especially with his myth-debunking commentary.
As the business grows, the Woolstons hope to open on other evenings in addition to Saturdays.
The September menu featured seasonal ingredients and began with delicate spring rolls in rice paper with shredded duck, cabbage and mushrooms, served with a ginger mango dipping sauce. The wine pairing was a sweet Viognier. Then Woolston surprised us with something that wasn't on the menu: a martini glass of melon soup, livened with mint and a gorgeous blood-orange puree. The salad course featured a ying yang blend of spicy arugula and crisp Belgian endive, dotted with black mission figs, Shaft blue cheese and walnut dressing. The salad was paired with a crisp 2001 Cakebread Sauvignon Blanc that helped fuse the unusual pairing of ingredients in the salad.
The main courses-there were three-is where I wish I would have been able to show more restraint in my consumption of the generous portions. The first was a magnificent bluenose bass, crusted with cumin. It arrived with a tomato and roasted chili salsa paired with a sweet white corn cake. The plate was beautifully drizzled with cilantro pumpkin oil. The next dish was a tasty tenderloin of pork, flavored with a four-olive tapenade and sided with huge, rich spagna beans. The final main course was a plate with three cuts of rare New Zealand lamb: a rack, a slice of sirloin and a T-bone, served with braised onions and grilled eggplant. The fish was served with a 2000 MacRostie Chardonnay, the pork with a 2001 Saintsbury Garnet Pinot Noir and the lamb with an excellent 1999 Simi Cabernet.
The only selection of the night was the dessert course. We got to choose between a plate of cheese, savory nuts and fruit, and a magnificent four-berry pine nut tart with citrus sabayon, drizzled with a caramel sauce flavored with blood orange. I wouldn't have missed the tart for anything-it was a fabulous combination of ingredients masterfully presented. The wine paired with the tart was a sweet Michele Chiarlo Nivole Moscato, but I skipped it as I couldn't risk diluting the taste of the tart.
If there was one theme that flowed throughout the entire evening-aside from the concise and flawless cooking served by a thoughtful staff-it would be generosity. The portions were generous, and so were the service and the wine steward's advice, which was full of intelligent comment, and yet relaxed and fun. Even Yvette was generous with her time and spirit, visiting the guests at each table throughout the evening. When the dinner ended at around 10:30, she said her goodbyes as if we were guests leaving her home after a dinner party.
The price for this refined culinary experience was a fairly modest $75 per person, excluding wine, $105 with the wine pairings (an experience I highly recommend). As the business grows, the Woolstons hope to open on other evenings in addition to Saturdays. The Supper Club is an exciting venue for special events and is already booked solid through the end of the year. It also offers cooking classes each month that are already on my list of fun things to do in 2003.
The Supper Club is at 1616 Del Paso Boulevard in North Sacramento's Uptown Arts District. To make a reservation or get information about their cooking classes, call 920-2885.
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December 2002 33 Inside Arden