Title: Rendezvous Inn & Restaurant (dinner)
Author: GCS

NOTE:  Rendezvous is currently up for sale. Owner/chef Kim Badenhop's future plans are unknown.

Rendezvous, update dinner October 2010
(previous review appended below)

We enjoyed our first dinner at Rendezvous in early May 2010, suffering on extremely hard chairs for over 2-1/2 hours but getting a wonderful meal.

Once again, dinner took the same amount of time, the portions are just as large as before, and although our backs suffered, our tastebuds were ecstatic.

They were offering a lobster tasting menu – four courses for a mere $52 – so there was no question what Carlos was going to order. I chose three starters, knowing their portion size is so generous it would be more than enough food.

The amuse-bouche was a smooth salmon-dill mousse in perfectly sized triangles, neither too large nor too small. It sat on a bed of terrifically potent aioli on crispy toast triangles. It was a luscious two-bites that left you wanting more, just as a good amuse-bouche should.

Carlos' first course was a lobster mousseline, a small molded cup given intensity with the roe. It had a rich, earthy flavor and a slightly rough texture. A salty, flavorful gelee of lobster broth was in tiny dice on top.

Then he got the lobster chowder, which was flavored with a sweet wine and a nice undertone of chile heat – subtle but definitely present. I got the potato leek soup, which was a good soup if not a great one. I like this soup, but even at its best it doesn't rise above 'good' to me. It is, however, satisfying when the weather is rather chilly, which it has been in Mendocino since we got here.

Carlos' third course was the 'knuckle sammich', one of the odder dish names we've encountered. It was a small triple-decker of toasted Portugese sweet bread, which is similar to challah but without the extra egg yolks. It was spread with a lobster tomalley mayonnaise, along with ripe avocado slices and sliced poached lobster meat. The mayonnaise gave it the extra 'oomph' needed to avoid the bread overwhelming the delicate shellfish flavor.

His final course was the tail and claw meat in a Hollandaise sauce over a summer squash custard, with slices of zucchini and a heap of tiny black lentils. The custard was wonderful, the lobster meat barely cooked by poaching it in butter, and only the dissonance of the lentils prevented this from being a perfect dish. Even under the hand of a master, we just don't care for beans and fish on the same plate, and can hardly wait for this fad to pass forever into oblivion.

My final starter was the sweetbreads served two ways. My suspicions that this would be more than sufficient as an entree were correct; the soup bowl contained four good-sized pieces. Two were batter-fried and two were braised. The fried sweetbreads had a cream sauce with local golden chanterelles, while the braised sweetbreads had a reduction of the au jus.

The one thing that kept this dish from perfection was the super-hot plates. Very few kitchens can manage to serve food on hot plates without having the food overcook as it sits, and Rendezvous doesn't always pull this off. They were successful with the lobster, but not the sweetbreads. The batter-fried ones were noticeably firmer than they should have been. The braised were much better, probably because of the lack of coating and braising juices.

We ordered one dessert to share, the pistachio souffle with chocolate sauce. It was a little too sweet, having a good splash of pistachio liqueur in it. 

Rendezvous isn't a perfect restaurant, but it does remind us of Andre's Bouchee even though it doesn't reach the same ethereal heights. There is enthusiasm and spirit in the kitchen, and the generosity of the portions is sometimes overwhelming. Like Bouchee, they engage the diner's interest, and you want to come back to try other dishes on the menu because everything sounds interesting.

One four-course tasting menu, three starters, two beverages,  with tip came to $133, a bargain for a well-prepared lobster tasting.

Rendezvous Inn & Restaurant (dinner)
647 N. Main, Ft Bragg
www.rendezvousinn.com 
Review date:  May 2010

It's been decades since we visited Mendocino, but we have fond memories of an area much less hardcore tourist-y, as Napa and Sonoma are becoming. We were pleased to discover this is still true, with Mendocino still tiny (although there's a lot of homes outside the town, of course) and Ft. Bragg takes up the slack by offering the big supermarket/drug stores everyone, even tourists, need. The weather up here in May is very changeable, even more so than the Bay Area, and the Polarfleece has gotten a real workout. But there's been some beautiful days as well, and some great hikes along the coastal cliffs. We're staying at the Agate Cove Inn just a mile from the center of Mendocino, and absolutely love these individual and private cabins, complete with gas fireplaces in every unit and a delicious breakfast in the mornings.

Rendezvous Inn got some rave reviews on Yelp, so we made a reservation for our first dinner at this Ft. Bragg restaurant/inn, 9 miles north of Mendocino. Chef Kim Badenhop has a fascinating resume that started at Merrill Lynch on Wall St. and led him through an apprenticeship with Georges Blanc in France. From there he eventually ended up at the original Cafe Beaujolais for a couple of years. 

Two years ago he took over Rendezvous to do country French cooking. Located in an old Victorian with magnificent redwood paneling in the dining room, Rendezvous has a pleasant old-fashioned air and the night we were there, a serious shortage of staff. One person was handling everything - reception, seating, wine, busing, waiting - it was a good thing they weren't terribly busy, LOL. This guy was really working hard for his living! We mentally adjusted our attitudes towards a long, leisurely meal, which is what we got. 

Fortunately, it was also a really, really good meal. First they brought an amuse-bouche of a single scallop in curry sauce. The scallop was lightly browned but barely cooked, sprinkled with truffled sea salt and sitting in a small pool of delicate curry cream sauce. Delicious!

Carlos got the escargot in puff pastry, with morels and asparagus in a brown butter-garlic-caper sauce. It was buttery and garlicky and delectable, a nice change from the usual escargot dish where they sit in a pool of garlic butter and little else.

I ordered the salad with smoked goat cheese, toasted walnuts, and a mustard vinaigrette that was much more subtle than expected. The smoked goat cheese from Laura Chenel had a sharper flavor that I enjoyed, having had quite a lot of delicate goat cheeses lately.

We split the lamb confit ravioli, which was a simple stuffing of shredded confit lamb in folded-over wonton wrappers, which create two-bite ravioli. It was lightly drizzled with a roasted red pepper sauce, over finely diced eggplant. This one was a little too spare, but after a few bites I really started to enjoy it.

Carlos ordered the paupiettes of petrale sole, wrapped around sole, rock shrimp and roasted garlic, served in a brown butter sauce with more garlic(!) and capers. Servings are generous here - instead of two nice sized rolls, he received three. Nutty faro pilaf along with a mix of white and orange cauliflower florets were nice sides that were repeated on my entree.

I got the Muscovy duck breast in a sauce of white balsamic vinegar, honey and dried cherries.  As most people know, I'm not a great fan of fruit and meat, not so much because I don't like the combination as because so many times, it seems to be an excuse to make a sickeningly sweet sauce better suited to dessert than an entree. The duck breast was sauteed to crisp the skin and render the fat, then sliced to fan out on the plate. The sauce was...excellent. Sweet, but not overly so, with the balsamic and duck juices (and may be a touch of reduced duck stock?) giving it the necessary depth of meaty flavor to balance its sweetness.

By this time we had spent close to two hours at Rendezvous, because this one waiter had a great sense of timing but after all, could only do so much with his two hands. The food was so good we resigned ourselves to more sitting, and ordered dessert and coffee.  Their coffee is specially blended for them by a local roaster, and it's indeed very good in both regular and decaf versions - smooth, full-bodied, low acidity. 

Carlos has become disenchanted with molten chocolate cakes  (read: budino, by any other name) but this one promised port-marinated cherries. He loves chocolate and cherries. whether it's in candy or a cake, so he tried it here. It was a wonderful, very soft thin cake barely holding its shape, enclosing a generous amount of yummy sweet cherries. An  intense but not overpowering dark chocolate glaze added the final touch. Only a good amount of whipped cream was lacking to make it into the authentic  Black Forest torte that he dreams of finding again someday. With the coffee it was a great finish.

My dessert was an oddity, a sweet potato tartlet with Pt Reye bleu cheese ice cream. It was too large and not quite balanced. I couldn't finish it because the ice cream made it too rich and heavy. After a few spoonfuls my tastebuds were in overload so I finished my decaf and we called it a night.

Three starters, two entrees, one dessert, two beverages, with a generous tip (our waiter/host/sommelier definitely deserved it for his friendly service and ability to keep everyone from getting too impatient) came to $156. It was worth every shekel, and Rendezvous ties with Bottega and Estate (Carlos is starting to dream of those chicken livers again) as our favorites so far. 

Rendezvous states on their menu they will do a suckling pig dinner for ten or more. Carlos and I are trying to figure out how we can persuade eight of our friends and family to schlepp all the way up here, so we could try what could be the best carnivore dinner since some of his wargaming friends got together with us for a whole roast lamb at a local Moroccan restaurant!