Since I haven’t been doing much of my own cooking lately, I thought I’d do a little restaruant review here.  Last night, we went out to dinner with some friends to Cafe Gibraltar in El Granada, which is a little bit north of Half Moon Bay.

On a side note, you’ll notice how cloudy and gray it was.  Yep, it was cold and cloudy in August.  It made me think that most people probably trek to the San Francisco area in the summer months thinking it will be warm and sunny.  Actually, the best time to visit San Francisco/Half Moon Bay area (in my opinion), is March and April and mid-September, October and early November.

Now back to my review.

As I said, Cafe Gibraltar is located just a little bit north of Half Moon Bay.  From the outside, it looks like a small cafe.  The inside, though, is decorated with pretty fabrics and in the back booths, you get to sit on pillows to eat.  It takes a minute to get comfortable, but I found it pretty close to how we eat at home (sitting on the floor around the coffee table).

The menu is pretty big with lots of vegetarian and vegan-optional selections.  Matt ordered the Orzo Perlato Khoriatiko (the risotto dish) and I had the Manti.  Emma had a cheese pizza.

While I’m on the subject of her pizza, I have to gripe for a moment about the one incident during our dinner that really bugged me.  She was sitting in between us.  My husband ordered a vegetarian dish; I ordered a vegan dish and we specifically said “cheese pizza.”  When her pizza came, it had pepperoni on it.  I figured there were probably two pizzas that were made– one cheese, one pepperoni– and they had brought us the wrong one.  We notified our server and he whisked it back to the kitchen and apologized profusely.  Then he brought it back and it was obviously the same pizza just reheated and with most of the pepperoni picked off.  There were still some pieces on there, so we sent it back again.  Our server said “they’ll make a brand new one from scratch.”  Ummm… isn’t that what should have been done in the first place?  If picking off the pepperoni were an acceptable solution, I would have done that myself.

This really annoys me for several reasons:  (1) I hate wasting food like that.  They could have left the pepperoni pizza at the table and our omni dining companions could have eaten it.  (2) Let’s say I had a nut allergy and I order something that’s not supposed to have nuts on it.  It comes to the table with nuts on it and I send it back for a new one.  In that instance, they probably would have made a new dish right away because of my allergy.  A little meat won’t kill me or even set off an allergic reaction, but why is it not given the same level of sensitivity as an allergy?  Anyway, it just rubbed me the wrong way.  While they were making her a new pizza, they brought us a complimentary bowl of their special (vegan) soup du jour.  It was alright.

I don’t have a picture of Matt’s dish, but he ate it all which means he liked it.

Here’s a picture of my dish, the Manti: House made dumplings filled with garlic, onion, chickpeas, local Pastorino Farms Swiss chard, herloo, faro verde, roasted eggplant and ground nuts, simmered in an aromatic vegetable broth, topped with a yogurt garlic sauce and finished with a drizzle of sizzling spiced sumac butter.  Since I ordered mine vegan, it didn’t have the yogurt garlic sauce or the butter.

It was really good and even had whole artichoke hearts in it.  You could definitely taste the nuts in the dumplings.  I enjoyed it enough to eat the entire thing.

Having said that, I would go back to this restaruant, but only at someone else’s suggestion.  I don’t know that I was impressed enough to make a special trip there myself, but (minus the pizza incident) I did really enjoy the experience.

Cafe Gibraltar
425 Ave. Alhambra
El Granada, CA
(650) 560-9039