Sweet Reviews a Restaurant in a Grocery Store; Bauer Updates Maverick; Homeroom Gets Bargain Bite Treatment
FreshPhoto: Thomas Levinson/Chron
In the middle of the Fresh marketplace in Santa Rosa is a six-month-old restaurant called Fresh by Lisa Hemenway (5755 Mountain Hawk Way), that according to Carey Sweet "is no quick heat-'n'-serve deal." They serve breakfast, lunch, and dinner, with items from a wood-burning oven taking center stage, including thin-crust pizzas and "a pleasant-if-dry teriyaki-glazed chicken breast." Most notable is the meatloaf: "The hearty slab yields lazily to a stab of the fork, rewarding diners with robust seasoning and a bit of crunchy crust." All told: two stars. [Chron]
Michael Bauer revisits Maverick under the recent helm of chef Matt Brimer, and finds that things are "more complex" on the revised menu. He takes special note of a California striped bass dish, with two filets propped on chanterelles with carrot puree, baby carrots, ginger, fava leaves and uni emulsion, calling it "a complex dish that belies the restaurant's casual service and surroundings." Also, he likes some of the new starters, and says the desserts "look like they could have come from the kitchen at Masa's." The star tally: two and a half. [Chron]
Stacy Finz does a mini-review of Homeroom in Oakland for the Bargain Bite column, noting that there are now "lines out the door for dinner" but lunch is a little calmer. She doesn't offer much in the way of opinion, but she notes they do "mac and cheese every which way, except from a box" and that the Mac the Goat dish, with "Cypress Grove chèvre, green onions, and crisp breadcrumbs drizzled with oil, might appease the more discriminating palate." [Chron]
