Dan Pitt’s Opinionated Compendium of Downtown Palo Alto Restaurants
© Copyright 2018 Dan Pitt
Dan Pitt’s Opinionated Compendium of Downtown Palo Alto Restaurants
© Copyright 2018 Dan Pitt
Way too much travel this fall kept me from updating this site as things happened but I am happy how to bring you lots of news about downtown dining, most of it good.
Let’s start with the flaky part. Two bakeries have opened, one more of a cafe, the other a true patisserie. Tuts Bakery & Cafe opened at 535 Bryant (where that sorry excuse for a French restaurant Bon Vivant sat for too long). You can buy loaves of bread and pastries, all made in-house, for consumption there or at home. The menu of breakfast items, salads, soups, and sandwiches pays homage to France, other Mediterranean cuisines, and California’s own stylistic and provenançal (I just made up that word, but it fits, considering how much we want to know where our food comes from, especially when applied to recipes from the South of France) tendencies.
Over on Lytton at Cowper, where Fran’s Market for years sold almost nothing but was always busy (and where we always bought ice and occasionally accidental surprises like a bottle of Lava Cap Petite Sirah – God knows how that got there), we are pleased to welcome the patisserie Mademoiselle Colette. If you have visited the other location on Santa Cruz Avenue (to which a French colleague introduced me and which has a more extensive savory menu) you will know what truly scrumptious pastry is like. My family does not typically indulge in this sort of thing but Mademoiselle’s pastries are irresistable. Douce France in Town & Country is always nice but lacks the magnetism of Mademoiselle Colette. Even the décor and ambiance radiate class and Frenchness. You have to go.
Sunday, December 31, 2017
New Year’s update part 1: two flaky openings