Overflowing In The
Conejo

The Mediterraneo

For many years, The Conejo seemed to be a culinary wasteland; at least according to Zagat’s, the somewhat suspect "popularity" poll and most of the other SoCal restaurant rater-reviewers. Until recently, only one local restaurant qualified for a Zagat’s listing.

The L.A. Times  otherwise extremely competent, Irene Virbila still treks to Orange County. Yet she is rarely seen in our County in spite of the very fine long term restaurants in this area.  

OC is still and may always be an accumulation of fast food spots interspersed with over-hyped and overpriced tourist joints that depend on views of the water rather than  fine food. The two very best restaurants in OC closed recently for lack of business. What can that tell you about the palate of that region? After their departure, the food is mostly downhill with the possible exception of that one very expensive hotel dining room in Laguna NIguel supposedly under the direction of San Francisco-Las Vegas  Super Chef MIchael Mina.

The Daily News’ (geriatric leaning)  Larry Lipson appears glued to a chair in Van Nuys and often seems to operate via remote control. Elmer Dills (actually geriatric) wrote a positive review of a top notch Camarillo Chinese restaurant (justifiably) a year ago. That was about it for his forays into the Wild West. Period.

Even the veteran reviewer for our county regional paper seems to blithely concentrate on the deadly 3 Cs, Calorie-Carb, Cholesterol laden, coffee shops, sandwich shops, pastry shops or breakfast joints in exotic places like Port Hueneme or Santa Paula (Santa Paula?). She almost never ventures over the “dreaded” Conejo grade where most of the “serious” dining restaurants are located.   

But, things have really changed rather dramatically in the 21^st century; The Westlake, Thousand Oaks, Newbury Park and Agoura area statistics must have recently exploded on some sort of a national demographics and average family income report.  Herds of big name hotels and dining establishments have checked in  the last few years.

Now, Zagat’s finally high rates 6 (count ‘em- 6) Conejo restaurants in its current  Los Angeles area paperback but still  missing are at least three or four  sophisticated Euro style spots and two very authentic sushi bars;  all of whom rival the notoriously hyped  LA Westsiders and surpass almost everything in the San Fernando Valley.  

This expansion of upscale local dining opportunities obviously created a competitive dilemma and challenge for the  hospitality management team from The Westlake Inn facility of which the adjacent Le Café was, and Bogey’s is, a part.

However, John Notter, the principal owner-manager of the entire Westlake enterprise is one of the pioneer landowners and developers of Westlake itself  and its unique imposing island community since the 60s.  Thus he understands and is attracted to excellence and risk taking.

Notter had already spent big bucks on a facelift for the venerable and very luxurious Westlake Inn itself. So he decided “Why stop now?” Let’s face it; his enterprise has a tremendous built-in edge over all these recent competitors. He has land, tax and building costs that go back 40 years. Those were the days.

This had made it a slam dunk for the Westlake based "home team" to provide superior quality and value at all levels. Over the years, they have consistently shown that they know how to successfully play this game.

So after completing the work at The Inn, they embarked upon a complete physical and culinary fast break attack on the beleaguered former Le Café. First they changed the name to Mediterraneo. But they clearly needed much more of a niche than just that. As you well know, The Conejo now has as many Euro, Seafood, Fusion, Italian, Chinese, Mexican,  Sushi-Japanese  dispensers as the area can tolerate and at different environment levels. 

The first step was a complete redo of the physical premises which had remained unchanged for many years. Le Café seemed never sure of whether it had a café or a white table cloth ambience. The front room had the look of a coffee shop. The central room had a more upscale look but with no real identity. The very pleasant open rear patio was a popular lunch choice with the inception of spring and great for romantic summer dinners often enhanced by live smooth jazz.  But it was deadly and often unused in the fall and winter.  

Frankly Noted - Gossip Around The Conejo

Very, Very Big News

As noted above, for the first time since that  popularity contest called Zagat's has been published,  6 of the 12 very worthy Conejo restaurants have finally been recognized with listings in the Los Angeles Edition.  There are still at least 6 to go.   Ask me.

In the present case, local credit is due to the management skills of the owners combined with talented chefs. There is Tuscany, justifiably, rated as one of the best in all California within  the crowded and highly competitive Italian category. Owner Tomasso Barletta of Bari  and Executive Chef Maurizio Ronzoni from Lake Como deserve kudos for that.

Then there is Leila's,  unbelievably, perhaps,  rated equal (???)  to Spago's for California Cuisine. Give credit to the very capable and amiable owner Peyman Afshar for that, and for keeping the manic but brilliant chef Richie De Mane happy, super creative and healthy. Just watching Richie in the small open kitchen is worth the price of admission.

There is the super cool owner- manager Tom Sweet partnering with veteran Chef Nick Blinoff to offer consistently satisfying Mediterranean cuisine at the very attractive Mandevilla.

Cafe 14, also serving sophisticated  California Fusion  in Agoura has now made the list with the kitchen manned by a very competent espoused owner chef  team of Claudine and Neil Kramer.  See our review on this personable pair in our "Second Chances Feature."

If you just did the math, you only came up with 4 rather than six. But remember that the recently arrived Mastro's and Brent's had previous accreditation.

Openings and Closings!!!