| Café Bella 3100 Lakeville Hwy. Petaluma (707) 763-0535
Comfort food |
When my friend Suzie and I arrived at Café Bella, it had been opened a mere two weeks. Proprietor Mahmoud Dabbas, the former owner of Essa’s, closed that establishment to focus on his new endeavor. Dabbas, who is originally from Jordan, came to the United States 20 years ago and literally worked his way up from being a busser in San Francisco to now owning his second restaurant. “Our focus is to provide comfort food that’s made with fresh, local [many of them organic] ingredients,” he says.
Located in the new Adobe Creek Center, the 4,000-square-foot building has a buttery yellow exterior and interior, with a large bar along one side and windows all along its outer walls. It has high, open-beamed ceilings with fans, blond wood furniture and tables and booths throughout. The bar and dining areas are combined, which helps provide an open feeling. Suzie and I were there for dinner, but Café Bella is open for any meal of the day (breakfast and lunch classics abound); it even has a kids’ menu and a bar menu.
For our first course, we ordered spiced tiger prawns. Six large prawns were served with a sweet chili sauce (it had a nice kick) and mint-cucumber couscous. We enjoyed them with something we both needed after a long day—martinis!
Next came the soup of the day, which was a ginger-carrot-apple purée with crème fraîche and garnished with croutons. Served in a dainty cup, it was absolutely delicious. Following that, we went for the butter lettuce salad. It came with creamy Pt. Reyes blue cheese dressing, apple slices, honey walnuts and balsamic red onions (they were marinated but still had a crunch).
For an entrée, Suzie ordered the roast Sonoma duck confit, after proclaiming that she can “hardly resist a confit when it’s on the menu.” Served with a perfectly crisp skin, it came with a sweet, lovely pear-cranberry chutney, braised greens and roasted yams. It was excellent. I ordered the filet mignon, which came topped with a generous amount of blue cheese butter, a port reduction sauce, buttery garlic mashed potatoes and braised greens. Both dishes were beautifully presented, and both went well with the 2002 Kunde “Century Vines” Zinfandel that our server, Joao (he says to pronounce it, “Joe with a wow”), suggested.
We had to take a break before dessert, and that’s when Mahmoud showed us around the well-appointed kitchen and we got to meet the chef and see the beer brewing equipment (two flavors so far: “Bella Brunette” and “Bella Blond”).
When we sat back down, we ordered the summer fruit crisp, which had strawberries, raspberries, pears, blueberries, apples and hazelnuts. Served a la mode, it was hot, fresh and very enjoyable. We also tried the chocolate pot de crème, which came with crème anglaise and a butter cookie—a rich and decadent finish.
