CD17: Forbes Mill Steakhouse

We took mom out for dinner on the 4th to celebrate the closing of escrow on her old house in Whittier. At first I thought I'd just take her to the Black Angus. Mom's a meat eater, mind you, and has been secretly griping to me since she moved in that she's been dying for a good steak. But this seemed like an occasion that deserved something a bit nicer than the Angus. So we chose to go to Forbes Mill Steakhouse in Los Gatos. Some friends of ours tried it and said that it was spectacular. We wondered though. The building used to house a Good Earth and then a pizza parlor. Neither did too well. So we avoiding trying it for quite some time, figuring it was yet another fly by night establishment come to town. So it seemed like a perfect opportunity to try out Forbes.

From the outside it's rather unimpressive. Remember, it used to be a Good Earth. If you stripped off the name, you might even think it was a Sizzler restaurant. But the inside is entirely a different matter. On the inside it's dimly lit, cast with amber lighting throughout, with beautiful plush surroundings. Beautifully done and quite a contrast from it's street presence. We were seated promptly, but noticed that for a Thursday night that most of the tables were full. There wasn't much room for walk ins. I spied quite a few business dinners going on around us and a few social ones, such as ours. Despite my ideas on their exterior, business was doing quite well here at Forbes.

Our waiter came and took our drinks and appetizer order. J and I are on antibiotics and so we had to pass on drinking wine, I had a cup of herbal tea (boring) but we ordered mom a $15 flight of pinots so that we could taste a few different wines. All of the wines were spectacular. For starters we had a calamari appetizer. There was nothing wrong with their calamari, but there was also nothing distinctive about their calamari. I mean, how do you do anything spectacular with calamari? Or oysters? Like the chef can really take credit for the oysters being good or bad. They are what they are when they're pulled out of the ocean. We should have ordered something that really made a demand on the chef's abilities, but we ordered something simple for mom's sake. You know?

For dinner, mom ordered the 6oz fillet mignon (not the Kobe, but the Prime) with a side baked potato, J, normally a vegetarian, ordered a 16oz ribeye, and I ordered the sea scallops with a lemon risotto which our waiter had recommended as being a heartier dish than the seabass that was encrusted in crabmeat. Get this mom insisted on having her very expensive fillet cooked well done. Sheer blasphemy if you ask me. She's one of those old timers that has a problem with seeing the blood of the animal that she's eating. "Mom, maybe you should considering being a vegetarian if you don't like the idea that you're eating an animal?" Had it been my steak, it would have been medium rare. I used to be one of those people that would say, only in casual company, with respect to how I wanted my meat cooked, "Knock off the horns..." and, well, maybe you know the rest of that one.

J's ribeye had been marinated in blackened seasonings. I stole a bit. Delicious. I also stole a bit of mom's fillet. It was very good but compared to J's ribeye, it just okay. I think it was more to do with mom's insistence on it being cooked WELL DONE than anything. I think she ruined a perfectly good fillet. But she can have anything she wants. The waiter was truthful when he said my dish would be "hearty". On a white rectangular plate were perched four jumbo sized prawns atop a bed or risotto. On top of the scallops was a confit of shrimp and something else which I wish I had written down. They were spectacular but I could only eat about half of my meal. It really was THAT RICH. Figuring that the ribeye would reheat better than my scallops, J ate the rest of my scallops and we packed up the rest of his ribeye to take home.

We passed on dessert. It had the usual options, creme brulee, cheesecake, gelato or sorbet, chocolte torte, etc, and while I was quite sated with my meal, nothing really convinced J or I to find room. The dessert menu was appropriate for a steakhouse, but I guess we tend to lean towards things a bit more exotic if we opt to do dessert.

And before I forget to mention this: the service at Forbes was outstanding. Our waiter was there when we needed him, and absent otherwise. We'll definitely return, but next time I think we will order a more challenging appetizer and will likely, once again, skip the dessert and head for Dolce Spazio for some world class gelato afterwards.