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| - When I heard that Andrea Volpi was opening Local Bistro, I had high hopes for the restaurant and was even more excited that it is located so close to our home. Chef Volpi took over the kitchen at Taggia at the FireSky Resort following Claudio Uriuoli's departure just months after we were married there. We'd always found the food at Taggia to be excellent and expected Local Bistro to be on par with what we knew of Chef Volpi's prior cooking. While we did have a reasonably good dinner at Local Bistro on one occasion, our subsequent visits have not proven as favorable.
The first time we dined at Local Bistro, I ordered the risotto primavera and my husband had the tagliatelle with wild mushrooms. Both dishes were delicious and the fresh pasta in my husband's entree was excellent. We were pleased with the meal and looked forward to coming back. Several months later, we were with a group of people for Sunday brunch and our opinion made a 180 degree shift after the food and drinks that we were served. They offered bottomless bloody marys and mimosas for $10 (now $12) and started out with a couple of bloody marys, which we requested to be made extra spicy. The first round was decent, not the best I've ever had, but worthy enough to warrant ordering another. The second one, however, tasted entirely different and had no spice whatsoever. At that point, I switched to a mimosa which was a nothing more than a champagne glass full of orange juice with next to no champagne, and thus, no effervescence. As for the food, I ordered the calzone which was filled with scrambled eggs, chorizo, and fontina with a side of marinara sauce and my husband ordered the egg panini, which was described as scrambled eggs, fontina, and herb butter on homemade focaccia. When our food arrived, my calzone was lackluster at best, having some less than exciting scrambled eggs and sausage encased in a thick and dry calzone crust. The side of marinara was the only thing that made any of it edible. My husband's "panini" turned out to be some scrambled eggs (not even well seasoned scrambled eggs) sandwiched between two incredibly thick slices of focaccia bread. There was no sign of the sandwich having actually been pressed into a panini style and the overwhelming flavor and texture was nothing more than that of the gargantuan bread overload. I knew that he was hungry when we got there and could tell that he was so dissatisfied with his meal that I offered to switch plates with him halfway through. I only made it through a few bites of the bread before I gave up and singed that sandwich off as being unworthy of the effort that it would take my jaws to chew it.
We stopped in again for an appetizer at the bar and ordered the "trio house dip" which was described on the menu as piquillo romanesco, garden pesto, tapenade, and grilled flat bread. None of the three dips had any positive qualities to them whatsoever. In fact, I would rather have simply walked across the parking lot to the Fry's grocery store, purchased some store-bought hummus and eaten that instead. The tapenade contained such an excessive amount of salt that no other flavors were discernible and the piquillo romanesco was nothing more than a flavorless red goo covered in olive oil. The pesto was the best (and I use that term loosely here) of the three and was still so heavily seeped in oil that most of it slid off the flatbread. The flatbread itself had a strange, carbon-like flavor, on the order of what I could only imagine a flatbread would taste like if I used it to clean the charred remnants from the grating of my gas grill prior to firing it up for the next meal.
The wine list is nothing remarkable and for a place that bills itself as an Italian bistro, it is strangely populated by California wines with few if any Italian selections available. Also worth noting is that during one visit, while seated at the bar, we noticed one of the young, male bartenders having a bit of difficulty in mixing their specialty martinis. I'm guessing that he was fairly inexperienced because he never managed to make a drink that was more than 2/3 full. One drink was no more than half full and he bent down and observed the level, then set it on the bar for the server to take to a table. The drink was returned moments later due to its low level and he remedied the problem by adding more soda to the glass. While it was a comical situation to watch, given the fact that drinks are on the order of $10, I can't imagine that someone would be satisfied with a weak, soda water martini when they've ordered something that is supposed to be a "specialty drink". Overall, I think we may venture in for a glass of wine or perhaps a pasta dish, but I think we'll stick to safe selections and not wander too far off the beaten culinary path at Local Bistro as our past experiences seem to indicate the likelihood of wandering into the jungle and falling into a culinary lion's pit there.
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