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The Corkscrew Café, Carmel Valley, California, USA
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Great little restaurant, frontier ambience.
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Peter and Linda D'Aprix 2000-6
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The Carmel Valley has a new member to the quality dining experience. Opened in April, 2000, the Georis family, Walter with his wife Sylvia and brother Gastone Georis, owners of the Georis Winery, opened a delightful restaurant filled with the atmosphere of rustic south of the border but with cuisine that owes its heritage to Italy and France with plenty of California thrown in.
Chef Wendy Little who we had met on another story when she was chef at Santa Barbara's San Ysidro Ranch some 15 or so years ago, opened as chef in 2000, but has moved on. Her successors are just fine producing a cleaner, simpler but no less delicious menu with an emphasis on really fresh ingredients both from their own kitchen beds and from the organic Earthbound Farms at the mouth of the valley, just a five minute drive away.
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Private Garden Exterior Dining with fountain and raised Lilly Pond as well as vegetables in raised beds
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Carrot Ginger Soup
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The Large interior dining area
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© 2000 photos Peter D'Aprix
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The three dining rooms offer either small intimate dining or in the large, entry room, a more open space. The two exterior garden terrace dining areas are filled with stone planters, raised beds and a lilly pond with the relaxing sounds of water splashing from the fountain. A perfect ambiance to enjoy the simple sensual pleasures if eating good food in nature.
Located cheek-by-jowl with the family winery, Georis Winery, that specializes in red wines only, both the winery and the restaurant are filled with old wooded artifacts from Mexico and further south. Doors, wall panels, tables, chairs, gates...you name it, they are built right into the rustic stuccoed and terra cotta colored wall washes. While you are waiting between courses, you can wander around the gardens of the winery, watch the koi swimming in the ponds, sit in the shade of a cork tree, do a quick tasting or browse the Provençal Pottery for sale in their store. Now you can enjoy a special "tasting" set up where you are supplied with a paper wine organizer, a circle for each of 6 glasses with the name of each wine written in for you. You can order a cheese and cracker plate to clear the palate and enjoy yourself browsing from glass to glass with entertaining young people extolling the vitures and charater of each of the wines as you indulge. You can have this offered in the Restaurant as well as a prelude to your meal.
Which brings us back to the restaurant. For starters, the Green Bean Salad with beets, almonds and Roquefort cheese was superb with a light herb vinaigrette dressing. The Tuscan Bread and Tomato Salad was rustic and tasty with heirloom tomatoes rich in taste and cucumber, sweet onion and buffalo mozzarella. You will also find steamed cockles clams & chorizo in a white wine and garlic broth, Duck & Pistachio paté served with cornichon, pickled onions and grilled bread is an interesting twist. The Proscuitto di Parma with melons and figs is a superb summer and fall choice.
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South of the Border Interior Design Theme.
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Green Bean and Beet Salad with Almonds and Roquefort Cheese.
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 Small End of Dining Room
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Tuscan Bread Soup with cucumber, heirloom tomatoes and motsarella
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Main courses include Eggplant Cannelloni filled with garden greens, Portabella mushrooms and Ricotta cheese, Oven Fried Free Range Chicken served with Succotash and crispy potatoes, Grilled Pork Chop with soft Polenta, Seared and Peppered Niman Ranch Top Sirloin with Parmesan Bread, garlic butter and heirloom tomatoes. This last, while each element taken separately was excellent, when taken together made a strange group. Chef was not fazed when I asked for my steak without the pepper corns and it was truly superb, done really rare as requested. But more heirloom tomatoes as good as they were and no other vegetables or carbs except the garlic bread made an unbalanced meal, at least to our way of thinking.
Desserts are varied and interesting. Starting light with a well balanced mango sorbet with tropical fruit gazpacho was a success as was the chocolate-hazelnut cake with caramel ice cream and orange creme anglaise. The peach-berry crips with lavender ice cream made me feel I was back in Provence. Vanilla bean creme brulee with fresh berries and the summer berries with pound cake and rose ice cream both worked well to. Cheese was represented in the last dessert choice as an aged goat cheese with honey and seasoned walnuts.
The wines from Georis Winery are well worth trying. I had a 1996 Cabernet Sauvignon that to my taste was superior to a Far Niente I had had the night before.
This is well worth the drive down the valley and an excellent addition to the valleys' restaurants that will be especially appreciated by guests at the various hotels and resorts in the valley who want a change of taste within a short drive. But it is worth a trip for it's own merit.
The Corkscrew Café
55 W. Carmel Valley Road
Carmel, California 93924
tel: 1-831-659-8888
fax: 1-831-659-1054
E-mail:georiswine@redshift.com
Web Site UR:: http://www.corkscrewcafe.com/home.html
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