Photograph by George Sakkestad
Ibo Ibrahim Guney, owner of La Maison du Cafe, adds a sauce to an entree.
By Anne Gelhaus
While a typical lunch crowd at La Maison du Cafe is made up of mostly business people, patrons of this intimate restaurant are generally not in a hurry to make a deal over a meal.
Indeed, the temptation is to stretch the lunch hour out to at least 90 minutes while sipping one of La Maison's wines of the month and listening to a guitarist strumming standards from his perch on a plant-covered balcony. Servers add to this unhurried atmosphere by allowing customers to linger over their lunches rather than whisking their plates away the minute they set their forks down.
Some servers have been on staff since the restaurant first opened 13 years ago in the Vasona Station shopping center. These employees predate the current owner, Ibo Ibrahim Guney, who bought the business nine years ago.
Guney and his staff are on a first-name basis with their regular customers, and vice versa. Even those who are dining alone are made to feel comfortable and at home.
Most of the dishes on La Maison's menu are prepared with cream and/or butter, and most of the salads contain bacon, cheese and other rich ingredients.
Each day, chef Noe Villa Valdez prepares a special salad and two special soups, one cream-based and one broth-based with beans. French onion soup is a standard menu item, as are meat-and-cheese-filled croissants. Valdez's lunch and dinner menus feature a variety of pastas and seafoods, as well as meat-based dishes, such as veal scallops sautéed in Madeira cream with proscuitto, pistachios and mushrooms.
La Maison's extensive Sunday brunch menu is heavy on the hollandaise, which covers Valdez's eggs Benedict, poached salmon and filet mignon medallions topped with poached eggs. Brunch includes soup or salad and champagne.
La Maison du Cafe, 14103-C Winchester Blvd., Los Gatos. 378-CAFE. Hours: Mon.-Fri., 11 a.m.-2 p.m.; Sat., noon-2 p.m.; Tue.-Sat., 5:30-10 p.m.; Sun., 10 a.m.-2 p.m.
This article appeared in the Los Gatos Weekly-Times, February 21, 1996.
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