Knife, fork and swoon
Beguiling food and drink at new Dish Bistro & Bar
By Dan O'Heron 04/14/2010
It was still Lent, but not being a saint I was unable to give up what I was eating at Old Pasadena’s new Dish Bistro & Bar.
Beginning with a gourmet’s gorging of hearts of romaine, tucked inside a lacy filigree of a grana padano cheese-like cookie, then crunching down a plate of roasted pistachios, and savoring an onion soup gratinee, I firmly resolved that, at this restaurant, gluttony was to be a cardinal virtue and not a deadly sin.
As subsequent dishes were leaping toward immortality, the possibility of me going to hell was all but forgotten. I entered hungry and thirsty but left replenished, totally satisfied but questioning. How do they do it? How do they take ingredients available to other fine dining restaurants and make them taste so much better?
As my appetite increased with each new dish, I paused between bites to wonder if I was becoming a partial person — someone who is not all there — or if one too many mulberry mojitos dazzled me into thinking that something tasting even better would come with another course?
On a second trip, grave and solemn as a judge, I’d learn that more than anything it was the stylistic innovation of Executive Chef Job Carder that had prompted my pangs of conscience. In combining and recombining a lavish blend of contrasting flavors and concurrent waves of tastes from mild to wild, his technique seemed not so much learned as alchemic.
Commenting on how common roasted pistachios were made so enchanting, Carder explained the small feat in elaborate detail. He rubs the nutmeat with French sea salt, dusts it with ground chili and powders it with smoked, sweet paprika before tossing vigorously over a high open flame for 15 minutes.
And the onion soup? “Most restaurants use an ordinary red wine. I use Madeira,” Carder said of this excellent cooking wine that sweetens just a little. Most chefs caramelize onions quickly until the first show of color. “I go on until they are extremely dark and every bit of natural flavor is released,” he said. Then he tops it with sweet, nutty Gruyere cheese.
While admitting to imaginative cookery, Carder concedes that much of his talent was acquired by imitation, training, rule and recipe. It was developed by stints as a chef in Healdsburg (the Tuscany of Sonoma County); at the Patina Group, under Joachim Splichal; La Scala in Beverly Hills; Café Bizou in Santa Monica, where at 24 he was the youngest executive chef in Southern California; and at a Mammoth Mountain ski resort, where he oversaw 98 employees and generated $11.6 million in sales.
“And I can’t forget the inspiration that came from my grandfather, the starter of the original Norm’s Diner,” said Carder. Can Carder do steak and eggs? “Only for my two children,” he said with a smile.
Carder noted that the experience at Mammoth Mountain gave him implacable confidence about making the right decisions on food and personnel in a tough environment. “At 10,000 feet, the air is so thin that water never boils,” he said. It was under Joachim at Patina, said Carder, “that I learned how to treat a product; how to filet a fish.”
At Manzanita restaurant in Healdsburg, he said he learned about wines and how to create an ultra-seasonal menu from local organic and wild produce and farm-fresh meats. Freshness is flavor, he said. And, he added, “I’ve continued at Dish to maintain relationships with Sonoma farmers and fisherman and am fostering those connections here.”
In all, "I want to know where my foods come from and how they got to me. From butchering to dessert, I want to do what’s best for our guests.”
Dish owner David Johnson, who spent some 30 years in sales, management and auto industry ownership, said he discovered Carder at Manzanita by accident. “I was visiting my nephew — the same fellow who made those mulberry mojitos you like so well — and was thinking about opening a sports bar.
“But once I tasted Carder’s lamb ragout [available now at Dish for $20], I knew I had to have this guy to open a real restaurant — a neighborhood place with great food, classic martinis and old-fashioned charm.”
Excuse me, but I think you’ll find that Dish is not only a great neighborhood place to drop in on, but before long it will become an iconic restaurant destination.
With a menu that toggles between French, Mediterranean and Californian, and one that accommodates both snacking and fine dining, the prices aren’t very high ($6 to $21 from small plates to large), but they can mount up quickly, as one dandy dish makes you want another.
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