![]() I ordered the Coconut & Macadamia Encrusted Ahi Tuna Fillet. This is accompanied by two little dishes, one containing crumbled blue cheese – like, the cheap, overpoweringly salty kind you get at Costco – and the other with a really vinegary, brown “dressing” which completely overwhelmed anything else in the salad, and made the entire thing taste like salty turpentine, sort of. To these are added what look like either roasted potatoes or home fries, also from lunch, also chopped up. What you actually get is a pile of greens, into which have been dumped what looks like fajitas from lunch, which have been chopped up. ![]() Served on a bed of fresh greens & garnished with roasted potatoes & asparagus. My companion ordered the Louisiana Steak Salad, which the menu described as follows: “Thinly sliced Angus Skirt Steak sautéed with onions & peppers in a Cajun vinaigrette. We started with half-a-dozen raw oysters. What this place specializes in is doctoring and dressing up very mediocre food so you, they hope, don’t notice that in fact, it’s not actually very good. I have had better food at TGI Friday’s, or even at Denny’s, for one-third the price. That, in a few sentences, is the experience at the Paradise Beach Grille. I made mousses, pates, galantines and every other thing I could think of to turn the scrapings into something our aged but wealthy clientele would gum down without complaint. I turned leftover steaks into, say, Salade de Boeuf en Vinaigrette, transformed dead pasta and veggies into festive pasta salad, made elaborated aspic’d and decorated trays out of sliced leftover roast. I have to say, I did pretty well, using every dirty trick I learned at CIA. I’d begin each morning at seven thirty, pushing a little cart with wobbly casters down the line, where the cooks would hurl hunks of roast pork, end cuts, crocks of cooked beans, overcooked pasta, blanched vegetables and remnants of sauces at me. In that role, his job was to recycle– to turn uneaten food from a previous meal into the ingredients for the next one. The experience reminded me of a passage from Antony Bourdain’s classic book Kitchen Confidential, where he describes being a chef at the Rainbow Room in New York. To sum it all up, as we were leaving, I looked at my companion, and said “I’ve had better food at airports.” Without missing a beat, she replied: “I’ve had better food on airplanes.” We were both right. The food is where the feeling of being cheated really comes from. Dinner for two, including drinks and dessert, came to around $100, which meant that including tip, the total bill for this puppet show came to over $120. In addition to being harassed by drunks and overworked, our server also seemed kind of rattled – one of her first acts was to spill the tray carrying our drinks all over the floor, and all over us. There was one server for the entire back room, plus part of the main room, who had to thread her way through the drunken throngs (some of whom were semi-groping her every time she passed) to get to us. This seemed to be because the restaurant had not booked or hired enough staff. The service was slow, and kind of challenging. Despite the bright sun, the blue sky, and the proximity of the ocean, being around these two groups was depressing. The second was senior citizens dressed in resort wear, sitting at the bar and quietly getting drunk. The first was loudly dressed, overweight middle-aged Californians in Hawaiian shirts and shorts, busily and noisily standing around and getting drunk. This may have affected things, but the place was filled with two kinds of patrons. Dinner, Sunday-Thursday 5:00 pm-9:00 pm and Friday-Saturday 5:00pm-10:00pmįirst of all, we had dinner on the Third of July, the evening before a big American holiday.Lunch, Monday – Sunday, 11:30 am – 3:30 pm.Accordingly, it makes sense to park in one of the metered lots above the town, and walk down into the town itself.Īddress: 215 Esplanade, Capitola, CA 95010 Although the location is really nice, parking is a major pain in the neck, particularly during the tourist season. ![]() The Paradise Beach Grille is right in the middle of downtown Capitola, on the beach and within sight of the Venetian homes and the wharf. The agony begins when you get beyond the view, and the setting, and actually dine at this place. We sat in the rear of the dining area, with open windows facing the beach, and the ocean. The location is great, and the décor is nice.
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