Fresh Start

It's hard to get organized when customers are lining up by the droves. No doubt she will smooth things out, but early on, Fresh has been the victim of its own success.

To wit: on a first visit, arriving after 5 p.m. when the dinner hour begins, our party was given the lunch menu without being told it was the lunch menu. And the waiter failed to tell us of the nightly specials. On a second visit, the same waiter produced a dinner menu, but when entrees were ordered from it, the kitchen replied that those entrees were no longer being served. The menu, it turned out, was from a previous day. And so the right dinner menu finally arrived. No mention was made of nightly specials, so I asked another waiter if there were any. “Oh yes,” she said, and described a special appetizer and seafood entrée.

But despite these glitches, there's a good reason why business has been so brisk. Here's how Hemenway herself describes Fresh: “French-inspired marketplace serving gourmet-on-the-go, family-friendly, affordable, delicious, freshly prepared meals and snacks, and selling necessities related to the pleasures of dining. Think gourmet food court meets French marketplace.”

The center of the market is a small dining area and wine and beer bar with nine stools. Big band-era music plays on the sound system. Behind the dining area is a wood-fired pizza oven. Arrayed around the perimeter of the large room are cold cases for beverages, prepared pastas and salads, meats like rotisserie chicken (still pink at the bone and needing a blast of heat when you get it home), Italian specialties like calzones and lasagnas, cheeses, fresh produce, and a frozen-food locker with ice cream, gelato, bread dough, pizza dough and more items coming all the time.

It recapitulates on a small scale what the new Whole Foods in Coddingtown is doing on a grand scale, with an eat-in lunchroom, wine and beer bar, and all sorts of fresh and prepared foods — except that Hemenway makes sure her food is a lot better than the prepared meals at Whole Foods.

For example, salad lovers now have a reliable spot for terrific lunch salads. Pear and Figs ($8.95 ½) consists of crispy thin slices of Asian pear and rich, ripe black mission figs set on a bed of perfect organic greens seeded with toasted candied walnuts and crumbles of Pt. Reyes blue cheese, all dressed in a pretty looking and tasty raspberry vinaigrette. Or choose a plate of the Chinese Chicken Salad ($9.50 ½). The chicken nestles among chopped romaine lettuce with radishes, tomatoes and toasted peanuts. It's topped with rice noodles and given just enough toasted sesame oil dressing to impart flavor without rendering the salad oily.

On the other hand, there's at least one item that should be banished from the menu forever, and that is the Stuffed Nieman Ranch Sirloin Burger ($12 ) on Panini with roasted red potatoes and a small lettuce-onion-pickle-tomato salad on the side. The meat was fine — and you can order a plain burger (which is the way to go), but here the meat patty was stuffed with herbed cream cheese that oozed out of the patty in a lava flow of fat with each bite.

Hemenway is in the process of finding out what sells and what doesn't, and the menu is changing frequently — daily, in many cases — as a result. That keeps the experience fresh for the customers as well as the cooks. One thing that will remain constant is pizza from the brick oven. On both visits, a Margarita Pizza ($10.50 small, $16 large ) was ordered. The first one was evidently not rotated, as one half was soggy from the fresh tomatoes giving up their juice and the other half was somewhat burnt. I figured this was an anomaly, and sure enough, on the second visit, the pie was perfectly cooked. The fresh tomatoes were de-juiced before being put on the delicate mozzarella cheese, and shreds of cinnamon-y basil finished the pie nicely.

Red wine makes a delicious accompaniment to good pizza, and at Fresh you have interesting choices. There are five wines at $5 a glass, which is a five-ounce pour. The $6 a glass wine is 2008 DeLoach “Heritage Reserve” Pinot Noir from a small barrel perched behind the bar. Six wines are offered at $7 a glass, and five at $8, five at $9, and five at $10 a glass. All these are carefully chosen, excellent wines, including a 2007 ripasso for $5. Corkage is $10 a bottle if you bring it in, and $5 a bottle if you buy it there.

The food is not the white-tablecloth type of fare that Hemenway used to cook at her restaurants in Montgomery Village. It's simpler — soup, sandwiches, salads and some tantalizing entrees. Brothy Black Bean Soup with Bacon ($5.95 ) was as good as it sounds, and a hearty way to start a meal with the flavors of cumin, onion, tomatoes, beans, and a dollop of crème fraiche. One of those tantalizing entrees was Grilled Prawns and Crab over Ribbon Pasta ($14.50 ) given a light tomato cream sauce and corn salsa. Three fat prawns were joined by a large amount of picked crabmeat.

Wood-Fired Pork Tenderloin ($9.50 ½) and thin slices of fennel were served on a baguette. Peppery arugula (it gets that way at this time of year), roasted red potatoes, and a stake skewering an olive and a piece of pickle, then stuck into the baguette, finished the plate.

If any dish should be loaded, it's a Reuben Sandwich ($11 ) crammed with so much pastrami it's impossible to bite. This one had a goodly amount of pastrami, an inadequate amount of sauerkraut (although, in its favor, the kraut was organic), cheese and grilled onions on seeded rye. Good, not great.

Hemenway invites you to saunter over to the dessert pastries and pick one out, whereupon it will be served to you back at your table. We chose two. Linzer Torte ($3.50 ) has an almond-nutty, cinnamon-and-clove-y crust and a sweet red raspberry filling. Just the thing with a meal-ending cup of strong coffee, just like in the cafes of Eastern Europe. The name of the Chocolate Impossible Cake ($5.95 ) was a mystery until it was tasted. How is it possible for so much chocolate flavor to be packed into a simple bite of devil's food cake with plenty of chocolate buttercream icing? It's impossible — but true.

Jeff Cox writes a weekly restaurant review column for the Sonoma Living section. You can reach him at jeffcox@sonic.net.