Doce Lunas
8910 Sonoma Highway, Kenwood (north of the town of Sonoma)
http://www.docelunasrestaurant.com/index2.html
Review Date: March 2011

We were referred to this restaurant over a year ago, but couldn't fit it in the first two times we came up to the Wine Country. There's just so many restaurants here now, and we still have many to try (Redd, Mustards Grill, Oenotri, and the French Laundry, among them). But this time, the timing and location worked, so I called directly for a reservation – they aren't on OpenTable, which is my usual stand-by.

It's in a commercial building with a small parking lot. Our GPS got confused because the addresses in Kenwood are not divided with odd-even on different sides. #8910 is next to the gas station, and directly across the road from #8900 and #8854. If this had been summer when traffic quadruples on this two-lane road, we would never have been able to make the left-hand turn necessary, LOL.

Doce Lunas is a very friendly and very old-fashioned restaurant. It's a little faded but scrupulously clean, with a décor that's so retro it's fashionable again – every table has different flea-market china salt and pepper shakers. One table had a pair of shoes, for example, while ours had a pair of sea turtles (the one holding pepper had a black shell, instead of a green shell).

Quite a few people came in after we did – we have noticed that people eat a lot later in the Wine Country. Out of 14 people we were tied for the youngest in the crowd. This is very much representative of where their market is. This is a small town, and the waitstaff and owner spent as much time chatting with the customers about Kenwood politics, old school alumni, and their pet dogs, as they did serving food and clearing plates. 

It's a world away from the zillions of tour buses crowding Sonoma Square and the fancy hip bistros fighting for the tourist dollars in Sonoma, Napa and Healdsburg. If you didn't know this place was here, you'd never see it. In fact we passed right by it on our first trip on the way to see Ledson Castle/Winery, and never realized it.

There were some interesting specials, so Carlos took advantage of a Veal Cordon Bleu and I chose the mahi mahi. We started off with an order of onion rings, which were tender batter-fried rounds served with a sweet chili sauce instead of ketchup, a change we heartily approved of.

Carlos' Cordon Bleu, a classic which he seldom sees and has always enjoyed, came in an iron skillet with some very good accompaniments. They included a small heap of braised red cabbage, thick carrot batons, a potato gratin, and some spaghetti squash which had been nicely perfumed with a delicate touch of rosemary and marjoram. This lifted the squash out of the ordinary, and is something very few chefs bother to do with this bland vegetable. Scalloped potatoes cushioned the veal from the skillet’s fierce heat.

Also included was a small heap of something crispy Carlos had trouble identifying. They were, in fact, reconstituted dried rice noodles which were fried crisp. Very much a texture food, they were surprisingly good with the veal, which was tasty but marred by a couple of flaws. 

The first was that the Gruyere was very mild. The second was that the ham was either so thin as to be invisible or so tasteless as to be unnoticeable. The third and most serious was that they had breaded the veal scallop with panko. Veal Cordon Bleu uses regular bread crumbs and flour, and the panko merely got soggy instead of staying light and crispy.

Nonetheless, Carlos liked it and thought that the sides went very well with the veal Cordon Bleu, which is not always the case. 

My mahi-mahi was a nicely crusted piece, marinated in soy sauce and ginger and then brushed with a sweet chili glaze, served with rice and the carrots/spaghetti squash as accompaniments. The rice was formed into a molded S-wave that divided the fish from the veggies, a lovely touch. The sauce, basically a housemade unthickened teriyaki, was a little too salty for my taste. But I don't use much, if any, Japanese soya any longer so I always find even a little of it to be over the top in salt content. With the rice and veggies, it was fine.

Doce Lunas is famous among locals for the Sticky Toffee Pudding, one of the more egregarious sugar-heavy British desserts that has swept across the Atlantic to gladden the hearts of US dentists everywhere. I'll allow that the British understand the veal chop, melted cheese toasts, and steak & kidney pie, but that's as far as I’m willing to stretch my approval of their cuisine. Their idea of desserts matches the Japanese, which is intended to cram as much sugar into solid form as possible. It's not mine, so we were happy to pass on the sticky pudding (which is not an American pudding but a steamed cake) and try the apple pie a la mode instead.

It's a generous slice, more wide than tall, clearly home- or housemade with a lattice crust. There's a scoop of rock-hard vanilla ice cream on one side which tastes like Strauss brand, local but not artisanal, and a big pouf of Rediwhip on the other. The apples are good but they use sweet apples, not tart ones. The crust is thick, heavy with butter instead of flaky with lard, and generously sprinkled with cinnamon sugar. One either likes or dislikes cinnamon sugar, and unfortunately I'm not a fan of it, preferring allspice, nutmeg, and cardamon instead. It was a good country dessert, but nothing exceptional.

Doce Lunas is best thought of in those terms. It is an old-fashioned, honest restaurant offering good basic food with a few twists, in an area that is geographically close to the fancy-schmancy Sonoma/Napa bistros. But in reality Doce Lunas is a world away, caught in a 1970's time-warp with a menu created by people who traveled to Hawaii and Europe, decided what they liked to eat, and came home to serve those foods to their friends.

They pay attention to how they do things, and that's something many fancier chefs often lose sight of (see our follow-up review on Barndiva for an example of that). It is, like La Salette or Girl & The Fig, a charmer, albeit a more old-fashioned one. 

We, the public, so often aim at the four- and five-star restaurants, sometimes we forget that there are lots of times when a solid, reliable, old-fashioned two-star restaurant works just fine. Carlos' mom would love this place, for example; the food was exactly the way she likes it, and their prices combine with the portions to make it a very good value.

There's a good reason to pay attention to what your local consumers want and not try to beat them into accepting something that doesn't work for their lifestyle and expectations. Doce Lunas fits just fine into where it is and who it serves. They aren't out to impress the critics or make a tourist gasp in amazement. 

And that's a good thing, not a bad thing. It’s not our style, but we understand perfectly why people like to come here. If we are in the area and hungry, we’d be happy to come back, especially for that good-looking burger that was ordered by the table next to us.

One starters, two entrees, three beverages, with tip was a modest $71.