One night in October 2005, Donalee Goodbrod and her partner, Kirsten Griffin, decided to celebrate Halloween by making a mummy for Griffin's two***image1*** daughters. They propped the mummy up on a chair, posed it at a table and pretended the undead customer was dining at an imaginary restaurant they called Café Café. Nearly two years later, the two have opened up an Italian restaurant of the same name. Real live humans are welcome and mummies are forbidden (except maybe on Halloween).
Goodbrod and Griffin, partners in life and work, might be familiar to those of you who have been following Santa Fe's restaurant scene for the past decade. Goodbrod was the driving force behind the Paramount nightclub, where she created her signature Paramount Pizza. After suffering a stroke, Goodbrod closed the nightclub in 2005. A long period of recovery followed and now she says she's feeling great, "but I don't stay up until 4 am anymore, either!"
Over the past decade and a half, Griffin has cooked in the kitchens at Geronimo, the Galisteo Inn, Vista Clara Ranch and Tulips, the restaurant she opened with her ex-husband, Steven Jarrett. A graduate of the Austin Culinary Academy, Griffin spent most of her career in Santa Fe cooking food much fancier than pizza (and doing it as Kirsten Jarrett). In fact, Griffin says, "I never was a pizza fan but I love Donalee's pizza. And I've got 10 pounds that show it!"
Before Goodbrod's stroke, the pair had been talking about taking part of the nightclub (Bar B) and turning it into a restaurant. "Even after that we kept dreaming," Griffin says. They looked at several different spaces and considered multiple variations on the theme of pizza and Italian food before settling on the space formerly occupied by the Santa Fe Chile Company at 500 Sandoval St. "When this space became available," she explains, "we created our vision around it, which is wise to do. You can't just open anything anywhere anymore."
The two share responsibilities in the kitchen, but the pizza is Goodbrod's territory. She says she is using the same recipe she developed at Paramount. SFR staffers tasted several take-out pizzas last week and the response was…well…lots of chewing and "mmmm! mmm!" We liked it. The crust was thin and crispy enough to withstand being picked up, folded and eaten while hovering over a conference table. Goodbrod says she's proud of the way the crust holds up without getting soggy.
Several SFR staffers commented on the sauce, describing it as tangy and zippy. I thought it was relatively light and mildly flavored. "It shouldn't be overpowering," Goodbrod explains. "The sauce should be complementary to whatever you put on the pizza. The crust has flavor and you should be able to taste some of that. If you put basil on it you should taste that." Mission accomplished.
***image2***There are five specialty pizzas on the menu (margarita, meatball, spinach, chicken pesto and four cheese) ranging in size from 8 to 16 inches and in price from $9.50 to $18.75. At similar prices, Café Café also allows a make-your-own option with toppings such as artichoke hearts, green chile, pineapple and roasted garlic.
Aside from house salad and Caesar salads, Café Café serves an Italian Cobb salad laden with salami, prosciutto and provolone. The Ultimate Caprese adds grilled eggplant and toasted pine nuts to the traditional mozzarella, tomato and basil combo. Other options include a goat cheese, spinach and arugula salad and a grilled fish salad vaguely reminiscent of a Mediterranean salade Niçoise.
The sandwich menu includes grilled vegetable and chicken sandwiches as well as cold sub sandwiches on house-baked rolls. There are also three burgers, something Griffin says she was initially hesitant to offer. "Somebody asked 'Are you going to have a burger on the menu?' and I said 'No!'" Eventually, they decided to do three "interesting" burgers.
The Caprese Burger comes with sliced tomatoes, fresh basil, fresh mozzarella melted on the patty and creamy balsamic mustard aioli. The Caesar burger includes Caesar dressing and Parmesan; the Tuscan burger comes with Fontina cheese and grilled prosciutto. All are made with ground beef seasoned and shaped into patties in-house.
Café Café is now serving lunch but it is scheduled to open for dinner on Sept. 19. Goodbrod and Griffin say they applied for a beer and wine license in May and hope that it will come through in the next week or so. If it doesn't, Goodbrod says they will open without beer and wine, then celebrate with a big "grand opening" when the license comes through. "We're ready to cook and bring dinner into the world," Griffin says.
Café Café
500 Sandoval St.
466-1391
Open 11 am-4 pm Monday-Saturday
(dinner beginning Sept. 19)
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