San Diego Unseen: An Urban Portrait
Chicken Pesto Pasta: good, but not as good as Pantry’s crab cakes
- Photo by Jenny Montgomery
Pantry has an ample wine list and a fashionably casual feel. Walking in evokes an Alice Waters kind of chic, with a tiny bar on the right and rustic wire baskets filled with potatoes and onions on the shelves lining the walls to the left.
The main dining area is an enclosed porch, warmly lit with the glow of candles and space heaters. One wall of the long, narrow room is made of French doors that allow patrons to spill onto the large patio at warmer times.
Pantry’s menu is simple and recognizable: no clever twists or cheeky ingredients. Of course, this means the menu varies from welldone classics to dishes that are certainly good, but uninspiring. I suppose it’s like anyone’s Pantry: Sometimes you can pull together an inspiring new meal with staple ingredients, and other times you manage to cobble together some pasta.
The appetizers are clean and tasty versions of everyone’s favorite classics: bruschetta, potstickers and a great crab cake, to name a few. The crab meat is soft and shredded, as opposed to whole and chunky, but the chef uses a delicate binding that keeps the cake from being too dry. With a light crusting of panko and a creamy and slightly spicy sauce, it’s perfect. I wish more restaurants understood that you don’t have to do much to crab to make a really good cake. Pantry gets it.
The crab cake comes with a simple side salad—a teetering pile of julienned jicama, carrots and peppers, along with diced tomatoes, all perched upon some greens. The whole thing is barely dressed in something lemony, and that’s all it needs to take it from rabbit food to refreshing.
I tucked into a plush flat-iron steak, cooked to a deep, rosy medium. The steak, potatoes and veggies were all topped by a classic wholegrain mustard béarnaise, a flavor combination that, when done as competently as Pantry does it, never gets old to my taste buds.
Mr. City Eat loves his pesto, so he opted for the Chicken Pesto Pasta. We both agreed that it tasted like pasta. With pesto. And some chicken. It was fine, but not so memorable that I would go out of my way to order it again.
The menu also offers entrée salads with steak or Cobb fixings, as well as the ubiquitous-in-winter beet salad. Wraps, sandwiches and even some pulled-pork barbecue round out the family-friendly fare. Well, family-friendly assuming your kids prefer a Kobe burger to something from Red Robin.
We ended our evening with a brownie sundae, and as stuffed with steak as I was, the brownie was possibly the best one I’ve ever eaten. Too often restaurants make a brownie so dense, fudgy and flourless that you might as well be eating a truffle. A brownie is a brownie; respect the gluten. I’d go back just for the brownie and a glass of wine.
Pantry is a quiet bistro, and its classy, unobtrusive service and welcoming menu are worth the trip into Rancho Santa Fe. Make a covenant with yourself, hop into the Civic and check it out.
Write to jennym@sdcitybeat.com and editor@sdcitybeat.com.
