Stark's Steakhouse
521 Adams St., Santa Rosa, CA
http://www.starkrestaurants.com/menus/steak_lunchdinner.pdf 
Review date: August 2012

Sometimes serendipity strikes....and sometimes it doesn't. Recently we've arrived at the doors of several restaurants, only to find we must go somewhere else because they're not open. Le Bedaine's vacation caused us to walk across the street to Cugini's/Berkeley. We ended up at White Lotus Thai when Nizza La Bella wasn't serving dinner for another half-hour.

And so it happened with our intended lunch at Cafe Europe, a German restaurant in Santa Rosa. I had made the reservation via email to the restaurant for a Thursday, but at the last minute needed to switch it to a Tuesday instead. 

Here's where OpenTable would have been worth a lot – to us, anyway. As it turned out, I missed the fact they're closed on Tuesday for lunch although they do open for dinner. The Yelp hours are wrong (although the website is correct). I tried calling but they're closed on Monday and the phone number doesn't take voicemails. I sent an email but only received an auto confirmation of receipt, not an acknowledgement of the requested change. 

The advantage of OpenTable is that it would have immediately told me it could not make the change and I should pick another date/time. Without that real-time knowledge, Carlos and I drove into the northeastern section of Santa Rosa, parked in the modest strip mall and walked up to the door, only to read the sign that said, "Closed for lunch but will open for dinner."

Okay, my bad. Fortunately I always travel with a few print-outs of other restaurants I was considering that didn't make the final cut. Stark's was one of these, and it was only 15 minutes away. This was perfect as by this time we were starving, not having had breakfast and it was now past the noon hour.

Santa Rosa's Railroad Square looks like almost every other small-depot, gentrified historical neighborhood left intact that we've seen in the Bay Area. Stark's is in a classic old stucco-and-beam building which is eerily similar in design and feel to Teske's German/San Jose, the latter also located near rail tracks, albeit light rail in Teske's case. Unlike Teske's, Stark's has a small private parking lot, which is useful since the area borders the main downtown district, making for tight daytime street parking.

There's another striking difference between the Santa Rosa and the San Jose historical districts, BTW. In San Jose, the downtown area where the original depot stood, is now filled with high-rises populated by high-tech affluence. In Santa Rosa, the biggest presence in the Railroad Square area is the massive Western Feed Store right across from the restaurant, complete with crowing roosters. Instead of San Jose's office buildings, bales of alfalfa hay and runs of baby rabbits and chickens are sitting side-by-side with the bags of Iams and Eukanuba pet food, reminding us that Sonoma is still mostly farm country.

Inside Stark's the reception desk divides two dining rooms, and ours had a good-sized bar with well-spaced, generously sized tables. Half of them were four-person tables, where we were seated as they weren't very busy. All the tables have comfortable upholstered seating, which was appreciated after two hours of driving. 

Service in steakhouses is always prompt and efficient, something that bistro restaurants (even really expensive ones) should learn to copy. They don't rush you – not at these prices – but they usually have a good sense of timing. Even when there aren't many patrons, they don't leave you alone for long periods of time, looking around for someone to refill your water glass or bring you the dessert menu. We have often observed that sometimes when restaurants aren't busy, the waitstaff starts becoming careless about checking the dining room regularly.

Stark's menu is standard as steakhouses go. Everything is a la carte, with all the usual dishes and appetizers. Carlos wanted a steak (surprise, surprise....not!) and I talked him into the 28-day dry aged bone-in rib-eye. It's a considerable upcharge, but I rarely get the chance to compare various brands of aged beef, so I wanted a few bites of it.

I chose the Tamarind BBQ wild shrimp, figuring that would be a smaller dish and allow us to share the steak. This worked out well, with six large shrimp on the iron platter, cushioned from the heat by a nest of shredded daikon. The BBQ sauce was fruity with a nice hit of chile, not overly spicy and without tomatoes, so it was perfect. There were small dabs of what was called pesto on the shrimp but was really just a basil emulsion. I was happy that it had been made without cheese or garlic, both of which would have pushed strong competing flavors onto a dish that was fine the way it was.

This was especially true because I'd chosen the cauliflower gratin as a side dish. We so rarely go to steakhouses, I'd forgotten that the sides fall into the 'as fat-laden as possible' category. The cauliflower was cooked but not to the soggy-falling-apart stage, then enveloped in a super-rich cream sauce loaded with a mix of cheeses. It was as close to eating a stick of butter as one can get. 

Delicious, yes; and no doubt Paula Deen would have thought it barely rich enough. For us green-salad Californians, however, the modest 10-oz gratin could have been divided up into thirds or even fourths. On his part Carlos had ordered a side of onions rings, which instead of being overly rich were cut overly thick, meaning they were on the undercooked side by the time the batter was nicely browned. The onions were slightly soft, but hadn't developed the sweetness that would have developed from the more usual 1/2" cut instead of Stark's over-the-top 2"-wide slices.

We ordered the roasted bone marrow on top of the steak, and received one of the long vertical-cut marrow bones. These long narrow marrow cuts are always cheaper than the cross-cut marrow from the femur of a mature cow, and never as satisfactory. There is a stringiness to narrow-bone marrow that I find annoying. Starks did a nice job, however, thankfully leaving off the gratuitous breadcrumbs which have marred the last three versions of bone marrow we've ordered. 

The sauce for the steak was a red-wine sauce, which was an odd blending of what tasted like beef stock base with leftover red wine that had turned to vinegar. The steak was a decent 1-1/2" thick and leaned towards the rare side. Carlos confessed he couldn't tell the difference between an aged and non-aged steak, so for him it's a waste of money to pay the upcharge.

I can tell the difference, but I didn't find Stark's beef especially remarkable. It reminded me of Five Dot Ranch's aged range-fed beef, but not quite as good. Neither one is as good as the remarkable wet-aged rib-eye we got the first time we went to Fleming's/Concord, which sadly was never repeated on subsequent visits. 

Dry aging is usually superior to wet aging, but it ultimately depends on what you're starting with. There's a big difference between beef finished on grain, especially corn, and 100% grass-fed beef. We are fans of the former, but it's not often found, especially in CA. It has always been more expensive even without any aging at all, and with the price of corn soaring, such beef, regardless of cattle breed, is almost an endangered species.

Anyone younger than 55 would view Starks as slightly stuffy. And the "big portions at high prices" philosophy restricts it to the very high-end, 'special occasion' night out. When the economy was going gangbusters, that's fine. But in a sideways, uncertain economy, it's not a niche you want to be stuck in. 

Still, it was a good meal, and we loved the Muzak, especially after the irritating Japanese pop rock/US hip-hop we'd been subjected to at Shimizu Sushi the evening before. Instead we got Don McLean's "American Pie" – long version, no less! - along with the Beatles and Elton John. This was because all the diners were our age, old enough to be parents to the wait and kitchen staff, LOL.

The Muzak itself, much as we enjoyed it, demonstrates the weakness in this restaurant's concept. Stark's leans a little too much towards the House of Prime Rib traditionalism, when it should be edging more towards Willi's/Healdsburg-Santa Rosa and Mustards Grill/Napa (Starks is owned by the same people that own both the Willi's seafood-small plates restaurants). Setting aside the eternal debate over whose wines are better, the fact remains that most Sonoma residents don't have the big paychecks and tourist dollars that Napa and San Francisco see. 

We love beef. Carlos and I eat more beef than almost anyone else we know. Yet even we don't eat steak more than once a week. Consumer tastes have changed, but steakhouse menus read like the year is still 1959. The quality of beef is so poor these days, even at the higher price levels, that it needs all the help it can get – but steakhouses are doing a better job at sabotaging their own concept instead of bringing in a much-needed wider age range of diners.

It's sad to see the decline in quality and execution, coupled with a lack of imagination, lose out on an entire new generation of diners. The rise of fusion-inspired burger trends – did any of us know what sliders were ten years ago? - shows that people will still eat beef, and even pay premium prices to do so. 

Why not make it fun and accessible, and infuse some creativity into steakhouse menus? There's no reason why we can't appreciate some innovation and still satisfy a hearty red-meat appetite. At first Carlos didn't understand what I was referring to, until we started bouncing ideas off one another. Why are there no small plates? How about a trio of petite filets with three different interesting sauces to try? It wouldn't even need to be true filet; I've had sous vide beef shoulder that was melt-in-your-mouth tender and richly flavored, as so many less expensive beef cuts are. Why can't there be an American version of the Vietnamese 7-Beef banquet menu? Korean restaurants are doing a terrible job on their gal bi (BBQ beef cross-cut ribs) these days – surely a steakhouse could do a better job!

We probably wouldn't return to Starks unless we were with a group that was strictly meat-and-potatoes. The food is just too heavy and the menu too limited. Ironically, if they'd take a cue from the food trucks, which use cheaper cuts but marinate them for better flavor, as well as maybe updating the sides, the younger, enthusiastic crowds that pile into Willi's would have less hesitation about coming here. 

Stark's is good, but not good enough to justify paying elevated prices in this area for an overload of cholesterol-laden food. It's a private joke between Carlos and me, that we usually find the tastiest steaks at non-steakhouse restaurants. But that's been our experience, from the hanger steak at Cafe la Haye/Sonoma to the petite sirloin at Crogan's/Oakland, and even the unexpectedly tasty steak slices that can be added to the green salad at Nizza La Bella/Berkeley.

We finished with cappuccinos. Carlos thought both the regular and decaf roasts had a hazelnut flavor to them. The foam was good, but the regular was incredibly weak. The decaf was better.

Two people, lunch: two entrees, two sides, three beverages with tip, was $102.