The concept of farm to fork is not a new one, and perhaps even cliche, but with me it doesn't get old because I enjoy supporting places that buy primarily local and make most of their foods from scratch.
Calistro California Bistro up in North Scottsdale is one of those places, and I was intrigued to try out the place because one, being from California I wanted to see just how "California" they were and two they had some organic dishes on the lunch menu and you know me, I see the word "organic" and I gotta try it out...I'm a push-over that way. I found the place when I did a search on Yelp for "healthy restaurants" in North Scottsdale.
I meet friend @josephranseth there as he's visiting from Canada. I walk into Calistro and right away I love the decor. My inner architect comes out. The place is wide open, modern, and airy. One design feature I thought was really cool was how they took the bar wall and backed each of those little cubicles where you see the bottles of alcohol with a frosted glass so that on the other side of the wall which creates the hallway to the bathrooms, you see a cool reflection of the colorful bottles.
Here's the front of the bar wall...
....and here's one of the cubicles on the back. Cool huh?
Okay, now onto the food. As I mentioned before, Calistro buys virtually all its food from local farms and food vendors, and they make about 90% of their items in-house. Something like sandwich rolls they'll get from a vendor. For appetizer, Joseph gets the Falafel bites. I tried one and they were soft and not too spicy. When I say spicy, I don't mean spicy hot, I mean spicy in that sometimes falafels can have too much spice used in them. I liked these bites.
I got the Beet Salad which came with organic beets, fresh orange, fennel pollen, and a farmer's cheese which was a goat/cow mix. I didn't get the cheese, and actually I thought the salad was better without it.
For main course, Joseph got the Calistro Tacos which came with tuna, tomato salad, vegetable slaw, pickled shallots, and white corn tortillas. He ate every single taco so I'm assuming that meant yummy.
I got a side of the chicken meatballs. I know that's not really a main course, and between the salad and meatballs it was kind of a chick meal, but that's okay. That just means there is more room for dessert and we'll get to that divineness in a second.
Here's the chicken meatballs made with chicken breast, prosciutto, and organic tomato sauce. I nixed the parmesan. Normally, I like prosciutto but for some reason it wasn't jiving with the chicken in this meatball. But it wasn't bad, I still ate all the meatballs and shared with Joseph.
But now, let's talk about dessert - a dairy-free rice pudding made with coconut, a seasonal fruit which on my day was pear, pistachio and Saigon cinnamon. First, I totally squeal in delight because seeing "dairy-free" on any dessert menu you almost never see. Typically for dessert, if I get any, is sorbet because that's basically the only thing most places will make without dairy or eggs.
To sum up this rice pudding in 3 letters: OMG!
From now on, I think instead of giving something 5 stars, I'll give it an OMG! which means not just good but something that makes Stephanie's palate sing with glee, and Calistro's rice pudding made me blissfully happy. I recently gave Essence Bakery's macarons an OMG!
The people at Calistro were very nice and the service was excellent. Their menu is ripe with choices for those who are health conscious or have the food allergies like yours truly. I'll definitely go back to try dinner because the dinner menu looks good...and there's more rice pudding!
Note: all photos taken with an iPhone 3GS
