Flavor Bistro in Santa Rosa, CA – update, lunch
Review date: May 2012
(previous review appended below)

We met our friend Laura for lunch in downtown Santa Rosa, where she works. Our first visit to Flavor in December 2011 was for dinner. The lunch menu pares it down a little, but essentially remains the same for both.

As is usual in the Wine Country, May has good weather but it tends to be windy. Today was no exception, so although it was sunny we skipped sitting outside and took a table indoors. They had the French doors to their patio open, however, so we had the fresh air without the direct sun and wind. 

Laura opted for the Mexican Ranch Eggs, which is two fried eggs atop corn tortillas, in a pool of stewed black beans and queso fresco cheese, with ranchero sauce. It was simple comfort food, just what she wanted after a stressful morning.

Carlos and I started with salads. We like that Flavor offers two sizes of all salads and pastas, a nice touch that more restaurateurs should offer. He chose the Caesar, which was a bit 'wet' but tasty. Even as a half-size, this is a generous single serving, so he shared some with Laura.

I chose the spinach salad, asking for the dressing on the side. I find Flavor's balsamic rather heavy, so this way I could keep it to a minimum. The serving was smaller than the Caesar (more what a single serving should be, IOW). Bacon bits, sliced Bartlett pear wedges, and a small dollop of caramelized onion underneath a same-sized dollop of soft fresh goat cheese, topped the baby spinach leaves. It's a good salad, nothing exceptional but I enjoyed it.

Carlos picked the combo pizza, which is a generously sized single-serving pizza, thin-crusted and although oven baked, with a good crust. It wasn't overdosed with pizza sauce, which he appreciated, and the meats are tasty without being too salty. There's onions and sauteed mushrooms, with just enough cheese to keep it all together. Although it's supposedly an individual pizza, he couldn't finish it all. If you got a small sized salad and shared half a pizza, it would probably be enough for lunch for most people.

I ordered the duck ravioli, which sounded interesting. The filling is finely chopped cooked duck, in a thicker ravioli dough. The Gorgonzola-walnut sauce has a touch of tomato paste and is rather salty, but the fresh spinach and bland duck filling smooth those edges out. A full serving, again, is enough for two people to easily share if they also order soup or salad.

Laura loves Flavor's chocolate torte. On our first visit Carlos and I mistakenly ordered the chocolate tart, which was cold out of the refrigerator and thus didn't impress us. The torte is a dense, chewy, flour batter cake – a cross between a brownie and a giant thick super-chocolate cookie – and served with a spoonful of whipped heavy cream atop a pool of crème anglaise. It's a better dessert than the tart, but very rich. All of us were too full to finish the last few bites.

Carlos had the orange mocha, while I had a decaf cappuccino that was masquerading as a latte. They were good, not great, which pretty much describes Flavor. It's that steady, reliable restaurant you pick because it's a good value and everybody can find something they like. It doesn't reach the heights, but it stays well above the depths, which makes it easy to like them. Reliability is sometimes not given enough credit by professional reviewers; when you are paying for a meal out of your own pocket, getting a good burger every time can be much more appealing than spending twice the amount for a meal you may or may not like. 

Flavor's waitstaff is cheerful and enthusiastic, but you need to be careful to make sure they understand you. At first the waitress thought Carlos said "Irish mocha" instead of "orange mocha", so she told us the bar wasn't open yet. I also had to catch her a few times as she had a tendency to rush away before we had all ordered our individual choices.

Still, this is a good choice in downtown Santa Rosa, especially on a nice day. It borders the tiny historic Railroad Square, it's relatively easy to street-park downtown, the food is good and the price is reasonable. The menu has a lot of choices, making it easy to take friends here, because everyone will be able to find something to eat that sounds good.

Three people: Two starters, three entrees, three beverages, with tip was just over $108.

Flavor Bistro
96 Old Courthouse Square, Santa Rosa, CA 
http://flavorbistro.com/menu_lunch.php
Review date: December 2011

We got together with our good friends Laura and Steve, who had discovered a new bistro in Santa Rosa that they wanted to share with us. 

As the four of us didn't share plates, I'll report only on what Carlos and I ate. We started with the crab cake, which is a single large, lightly crusted Dungeness crabcake. There's only a modest amount of filler used, which is good, and it's bound together with mayonnaise and livened with a bit of chopped red pepper. It's served with a drizzled sauce of creamy pesto. It's a good appetizer, not especially exciting or unusual in flavor or presentation.

Carlos ordered the lamb kebabs with polenta cake. The polenta cake was large – do we see a theme here? - very nicely fried in a crusty round. Carlos thought it was a bit rich from the mascarpone cheese used to lighten the texture of the yellow cornmeal. The lamb was a generous serving, heavily seasoned with fresh rosemary and nicely cooked to his specified medium-rare. But he found the creamy sauce, based on cumin, sweet peppers and harissa, far too salty for his taste. As Carlos genuinely likes salt, that wasn't a good sign.

I ordered the flat-iron steak, which was a modest-sized but satisfying portion of sliced beef that had a little too much fresh rosemary and balsamic vinegar used for seasoning. The 'Italian fries' are limp battered French fries sprinkled with Parmesan, garlic, and parsley. It was good but again, not particularly high quality nor conceptually exciting.

We ended with the chocolate torte, which turned out to be a thin layer of almost solid, refrigerator-cold chocolate decadence over a shortbread crust. Neither one of us thought much of it. The decaf coffee was decent, though, and Flavor serves it in a 2-cup French press so it's almost strong enough for us.

Laura, who works nearby and has tried most of the restaurants in the downtown area, calls Flavor the best so far, and we certainly thought it was better than Syrah. We love the Sonoma County area for its beauty, but despite Healdsburg's gourmet reputation we would only give four stars to the three smaller, out-of-the-way restaurants from our previous trips: Depot Hotel/Sonoma, Willow Wood Cafe/Graton, and K&L Bistro/Sebastopol. But there's many more restaurants yet to try!

Overall, Flavor was average, a solid 3/5 stars. Like Petite Syrah, a bistro nearby that we tried on our first trip through the area in May 2010, we think it's somewhat overrated by Yelpers who are too often impressed by anything that isn't Applebee's or Chili's. The North Bay counties are starting to attract more restaurateurs' attention than in the past, but the skill and sophistication that are easily found in Napa, Monterey, and San Francisco are still a bit elusive here in Santa Rosa.

Our friends picked up the check, so we have no prices. From the menu they didn't appear out of line compared to their competition.