Cool new restaurant trends

While it’s true that diners are unlikely ever to get tired of eating out, restaurants these days are working harder to keep patrons coming back by adding more fun and flair to the feast.

In Wine Country, several high-end restaurants create free-wheeling drama with tableside carts for caviar and cheese, desserts and coffee. It’s dinner and a show right there; no need to rush off to a theater.

“The high end has to do more than it used to do,” to keep patrons coming, said restaurant consultant Clark Wolf of Guerneville. “It’s about higher, more visible service.”

Meanwhile, more restaurants in the everyday dining price range are creating homey experiences, with comforting foods, cozy communal tables and affordable wines poured from carafes into stemless glassware.

“Because we have less money to spend, we want more from every bite,” Wolf said. “We also like to feel like we’re supporting a good, local restaurant person, and the community as well.”

Here’s a taste of some of the trends spotted in dining rooms across the North Bay, from white-tablecloth establishments to casual pizzerias.

Tableside service — considered the epitome of fine dining in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s — went underground in the early 1980s, thanks to nouvelle cuisine and its artistically composed dishes, plated by chefs rather than servers.

During the ’80s and ’90s, tableside service was regarded as a kitschy gimmick, hidden away in a few dusty, declasse corners of New York or Las Vegas.

A few years ago, however, the buzz began about a resurgence of tableside flourishes, with carved Chateaubriands and flaming Bananas Foster popping up on high-profile menus like Emeril’s Delmonico in New Orleans.

Following this trend, Jesse Mallgren of Madrona Manor in Healdsburg started experimenting a few years ago with a recipe for tableside ice cream sundaes, created through the molecular magic of liquid nitrogen.

“The texture is really amazing,” Mallgren said. “The ice crystals are very small and very, very smooth, like creme brulee.”

Last October, Mallgren perfected his recipe and maitre d’ Joseph Bain rolled out his new ice cream sundae cart, custom-made for serving the iconic American dessert.

Next to the table, Bain and his staff create the ice cream by pouring the custard base (cream, egg yolks and vanilla) into a copper bowl, topping it with liquid nitrogen, and stirring. The nitrogen is so cold — more than 320 degrees below zero — that it turns the custard base into dense, velvety ice cream in just 30 seconds.

During this process, a mysterious cloud of condensation floats upward, lending the mood of a David Copperfield magic show. Topped with Valrhona chocolate sauce, candied almonds and a cherry, the sundae has quickly become one of the most popular desserts on the menu.

“Other tables see it, and they wonder what’s going on . . . then every table wants to try it,” Mallgren said. “The show is neat, but what’s really great is that it does produce a better product.”

The French-born Bain also offers tableside interaction with his custom cheese cart, giving diners a taste of six luxurious cheeses from around the globe in a cheese plate garnished with nuts and dates.

Meanwhile, at Cyrus in Healdsburg, legendary maitre d’ Nick Peyton and his staff have always been known for their tableside service, which includes synchronized pouring of soup and sauces. They also offer a unique champagne and caviar cart as well as a cheese cart stocked by Peyton.

More recently, Cyrus has added a mignardise cart, serving small chocolates, lollipops and other confections as after-dinner treats.

Peyton, who trained during the heyday of tableside service, views these “extra” services as integral to the complete Cyrus experience.

“All the little touches that we do . . . provide a little bit of theater and excitement,” he said. “And it’s an opportunity to cement a relationship with a guest.”

With the caviar cart, for example, a guest can watch the caviar being weighed out with gold bars, then enjoy it atop some creme fraiche potato cakes, with a crisp sparkler.

“It’s fun, and people can enjoy it fairly inexpensively,” Peyton said. “You can get a half ounce of paddlefish caviar for $20, with all the pomp and circumstance.”

Back in the day when tableside service was de rigueur at high-end eateries, Peyton said, servers routinely made 40 percent of the menu at the table, including dishes like shrimp scampi. That was fun, because servers got to be the stars of the show, but Peyton doesn’t see those days coming back.

“Tableside has a higher labor cost in the front of the house,” he said. “And no one is trained to do it anymore.”

The communal table is a trend that has popped up all over the Bay Area, from the cozy Della Fattoria Downtown in Petaluma to the ultra-chic Bar Bambino in San Francisco’s Mission District.

Kathleen Weber of Della Fattoria loves her 12-foot-long communal table because of the friendships and conversations it has engendered.

“I think it’s kind of anchoring,” she said. “I have a real strong belief that there’s a lot of connection missing today. There’s a lot of emptiness . . . and I don’t think that’s what humans are all about.”

Communal tables not only provide connection to others but to the roots of the dining experience.

“All restaurants began with a communal table,” said Ari Rosen, chef/owner of Scopa in Healdsburg. “You’d sit down next to someone else who was traveling.”

Rosen put a six-seat community table outdoors, in front of his Plaza-side restaurant, as a symbol of “feasting and rejoicing.”

“It’s a symbol of the celebration of food and wine and friends and community,” he said. “At the end of harvest, wineries would get together and have a big feast.”

The simple plank table with benches has quickly become the hottest table in the restaurant. Rosen has noticed that the table opens people up, with total strangers sharing food, desserts and wine along with conversation.

“There’s something about sitting down at that old bench that brings you to another place,” he said. “It’s like a Renaissance feast.”

To complement the restaurant’s simple, rustic fare, Rosen serves half-bottles of wine in carafes. That’s a trend he’s seeing in other Italian restaurants as well, to encourage conviviality.

“It brings it back to the old school, with big tables, family and raucous laughter,” he said. “People are starting to realize that everything has its time and place.”

At Rosso Pizzeria in Santa Rosa, partners John Franchetti and Kevin Cronin serve wine in two sizes of carafes in order to provide more tasting choices.

They keep their pricing structure for wine at retail plus 10 or 15 percent — way below the usual restaurant mark-up of 100 to 200 percent — to reinforce their belief that wine and food go together.

“I’ve always felt that wine shouldn’t be priced 10 times what a plate of food costs,” said Cronin. “The idea is to take it off its pedestal.”

From Mario Batali’s Pizzeria Mozza in Santa Monica to Michael Chiarello’s new restaurant — opening soon in Yountville — Cronin said that wine prices appear to be coming down, with many wine lists maxing out at $50 a bottle.

And that’s good news for both wine lovers and restaurants, he said.

“We sell more wine because we price it less.”

You can reach Staff Writer Diane Peterson at 521-5287 or diane.peterson@pressdemocrat.com.