By Kevin Wilkerson, PubClub.com
Attention food lovers!
You have GOT to try the new menu items at Mendocino Farms. I just did and they are phenomenal.
They are a Chicken & Hummas Crunch Wrap and a Winter Citrus & Goat Cheese Salad, added to its winter menu. The crunchy wrap – chicken, hummus, pita chips, Kumato tomatoes, cucumber, jalapeño, pickled red onions, sprouts, romaine, baby spinach, Lebanese garlic sauce and mint labneh in a flour tortilla – sure lives up to its name because you can not only feel the crunch when you bite into it but you can hear it as well. The rest of the food sensation of eating it is a symphony of flavors from the first bite to the last.
The salad – chicken, marinated goat cheese, fresh navel oranges, hot citrus honey, honey roasted almonds, pickled red onions, shaved fennel, mixed greens, kale, romaine with farmhouse vinaigrette – will likely have you saying what I did after my first bite: “this is really good.” And, unlike many salads in a lot of restaurants, it has plenty of chicken, meaning you aren’t picking around the greens to find a piece here and there. It is also as beautiful as Mendocino itself.
And don’t forget the sides. Many customers like the place almost as much for its sides as they do for its sandwiches and salads. For one, the Basil Pesto Shells are outstanding.
Mendocino Farms is known throughout the business world as a solid and reliable place to deliver high-quality foods for meetings and catering for events. It also serves as a sit-down restaurant or a to-go place for individuals, families or groups, all ordered in advance through its website or app.
“Mendocino Farms is our go-to place for catering,” said Lynne Arciero, owner of REV Studios, a video and photography studio in La Jolla, CA. “The quality food is outstanding and the catering presentation is beautiful. I appreciate the seasonal menu items that give us more variety for our clients. I tried the Winter Citrus & Goat Cheese Salad and it was delicious. I’m sure our clients will enjoy it as much as I did.”
This was my first time to Mendocino Farms and upon entering, I stood almost in front of the menu board for about 10 minutes looking at all the great-sounding choices. The menu isn’t that large but it sure is intriguing: “Not So Fried” Chicken sandwich, Peruvian Steak, Chimichurri Steak & Bacon, Chicken Parm Dip, Chicken Pestro Caprese and so forth.
I was at that “port of indecision” that us Jimmy Buffett Parrotheads know so too well until I snapped to and realized that I since couldn’t try everything at once, I was destined to come back a few times.
I also had the Peruvian Steak and oh, my, don’t rush through eating it because it’s something you want to slowly savor. So now I’m ready to make my way through the rest of the Mendicino Farms menu. And I’ll be going back again for those new items, especially that fantastic salad.
And I’m not alone. We went on a Thursday night and bags of to-go orders were lined up on a counter with people dashing in to pick up their food as if on an assembly line. There were also serveral people inside seated at the tables. I was impressed with the volume of business it was doing because I had always thought of Mendicino Farms as being for business lunches in the office rather than a sought-after place for off-duty diners in its store.
Most of the Mendocino Farms locations are in California – the Bay Area, Los Angeles, Orange County, San Diego and Sacramento – tho they are also in Seattle, Dallas/Fort Worth and Houston.
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