Much-anticipated Café Vivant brings heritage chicken to Menlo Park
With such a diversity of restaurants along the Peninsula, it’s no easy feat to do something truly unique and innovative. But a Menlo Park restaurant that opened just yesterday has seemed to accomplish the impossible.
The concept? Chicken and wine. But not just any chicken: heritage breed chickens, which are selectively bred to grow slowly and develop more complex flavors. The preparation? Similar to how omakase chefs use ingredients carefully to bring out the true flavors of the fish. To have enough heritage chickens for the restaurant, Café Vivant even has its own Pescadero farm, where it also grows produce.
I made a reservation on opening night to see if this “consciousness altering” chicken would ruin all other chicken for me. More on that in “What I’m Eating” below.
Stay tasty,
Adrienne
New Menlo Park restaurant Café Vivant celebrates heritage chicken and wine
It’s all about chicken and wine at Menlo Park’s newest restaurant, Café Vivant.
A Vietnamese sandwich shop opens, food insecurity poised to worsen along the Peninsula and new boba shops
- New banh mi shop SaiGon BreadFast has opened in Mountain View, baking its bread fresh in house daily.
- A new public art installation that aims to bring attention to food insecurity is available to view in Redwood City through Sunday.
- Alhambra Irish House in Redwood City is supposedly haunted – take a look at its history and potential paranormal activity.
- About 168,000 residents in Santa Clara and San Mateo counties are expected to lose CalFresh benefits next month due to the federal government shutdown.
- Palo Alto’s Roost & Roast has reopened in a new expanded space at Town & Country Village near Horsefeather and Sushi House.
- Valley Goat is hosting a Ghoul & The Goat Celebration on Halloween from 7 p.m. to midnight. The ticketed event includes live music, a photobooth, cocktails and light bites. For more Peninsula Halloween events, click here.
- Kung Fu Tea, a boba franchise, recently expanded to Redwood City. Meanwhile, Molly Tea is in the process of opening in a former Kung Fu Tea location in downtown Palo Alto as well as soft opening in San Mateo Friday and in Cupertino Nov. 7.
- In an effort to protect whales, California officials are delaying the state’s commercial Dungeness crab season, which otherwise would have started Nov. 15.
- 808 Zone in Foster City is temporarily closed until spring to revamp its menu and renovate its space, according to a recent Instagram post.
- Charminar Indian Restaurant & Catering held its grand opening in Sunnyvale on Friday.
- Tong Sui’s Cupertino location is closed until further notice after a fire damaged the building, according to a recent Instagram post.
- Rustic Oyster House and Grill in Los Altos is hosting its third annual Champagne tasting Saturday at 6 p.m.
Heritage chicken at Café Vivant
Last night was a lot of firsts for me: first time eating a $19 chicken nugget, a $116 chicken and desserts that truly blew my mind.
Café Vivant is a small, intimate restaurant with an ambiance very reminiscent of Yeobo, Darling in Menlo Park and Horsefeather in Palo Alto – simple and understated, with all neutral tones and lots of wood. I was seated on the banquette and did feel quite close to my next-door diners, but this seems to be more and more commonplace among new restaurants.
The menu is divided into bites ($12-$38), appetizers ($18-$42) entrees ($32-$58) and heritage chicken ($96-$128). The wine list is extremely lengthy, listing more than 3,000 options.
To start, I ordered the heritage chicken nuggets, topped with Keluga caviar and dill creme fraiche (two pieces for $38). The texture of the nugget itself was very juicy and felt denser and richer than traditional chicken nuggets. The breading was crispy and light, letting the natural flavor of the chicken shine through. The caviar added a punch of salinity that enhanced the chicken flavor instead of overpowering it, and the dill creme fraiche added a touch of acidity and brightness to an otherwise rich bite.
I did wish the heritage chicken nuggets were priced separately from the Keluga caviar, with the option to add Keluga caviar to a lower-priced chicken nugget. This would make heritage chicken more accessible to diners cost-wise.
For my entree, I opted for the 125 day-raised Pescadero Black chicken ($116), which is presented whole before being taken back into the kitchen to cut into pieces and served again to eat (the feet with talons stay on the platter.) The dish comes with foraged mushrooms, roasted farm vegetables, lemon thyme jus and flaky sea salt. Out of the three chickens on the menu, I selected the Pescadero Black because it’s raised on Café Vivant’s farm and is the darkest and richest of the current options.
The chicken was extremely difficult to cut with the tableware provided, and it had a very dense texture compared to regular chicken. The texture of the thigh meat took some getting used to, as it was more chewy and rubbery than regular chicken. I preferred the breast meat, which was ultra juicy and tender. In terms of flavor, it is very chickeny chicken.
Something to keep in mind about the heritage chicken is the price on the menu ($48-$64) is per person, and you are required to pay for two people regardless of whether two people are eating the chicken or not. You also can’t order half a chicken. So if you’re a solo diner who just wants to try heritage chicken, the base price you’re paying is $96.
I would have liked to see a heritage chicken tasting, where all three chickens are available to sample so guests can taste the breed-to-breed variety without having to spend $340 to try all three.
While chicken is supposed to be the star of the show at Café Vivant, I thought the dessert actually outshined it. What executive pastry chef Almira Lukmanova is creating at Café Vivant is unlike any desserts I’ve tried thus far along the Peninsula. Each dessert tells a comprehensive story, masterfully combining flavors and textures that you think shouldn’t go together but they do. I would go to Café Vivant just for the dessert – and I think you should too.
The Camembert cheesecake isn’t your typical slice of cheesecake – the dish in its entirety resembles a bird’’ nest with two eggs ($15). The base of the nest is a tart calamansi curd covered with crispy strands of dough. On top, two eggs made from salty and cheesy Camembert cheesecake are filled with a yolk made of pineapple-pumpkin compote. Also in the nest is a quenelle of hay ice cream, made by steeping hay into the crème anglaise before churning it. The dish was creamy and crunchy, as well as sweet, salty and sour. If you want an experimental dessert, this is the one you should go for.
If you’re looking for a crowd-pleaser – something that is more familiar and has deliciously decadent flavors – I’d definitely recommend the chocolate mousse ($15). I typically am not a fan of chocolate mousse – I often find them cloyingly sweet, lacking in deep chocolate flavor and with too foamy of a texture. This chocolate mousse, however, was something I didn’t want to stop eating. Shaped like a cylinder and coated in dark chocolate, the mousse is served with honeycomb cake, caramelized sunflower seed brittle, mochi and grape-fig leaf sorbet. The sorbet was mind-blowing, the perfect acidic, herbal contrast to the decadent dark chocolate mousse. Like the cheesecake, this dish had every flavor and textural component (even chewy!) I could want in a dessert.
Is heritage chicken so good it ruins all other chicken for you? No. Does heritage chicken taste different from regular chicken? Yes. Is it worth spending $100+ to try it? No. Are the $15 desserts worth trying? Yes. If there’s one takeaway from my experience, it’s this: Do not skip the dessert.
To watch my review, follow @peninsulafoodist on Instagram.
Café Vivant, 720 Santa Cruz Ave., Menlo Park; 650-557-2244, Instagram: @cafevivant. Open Tuesday to Thursday from 5-9 p.m., Friday and Saturday from 5-9:30 p.m.
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