Family-Style Dinners On The Central Coast
Story by Dakota Kim
Photography by Travis Farrell
It’s a refrain recited ad nauseam by servers across America: “All the dishes will be coursed family-style, served when they’re ready and shared by the table.” Family-style dining, wherein dishes are shared by all diners, possesses its beauties: a shared gustatory and cultural experience, along with the ability to taste far more dishes than you ever could, or would, on your own.
But not every diner loves to share it all. Some are picky, while others would prefer to heartily feast on their own individual entrée without divvying portions. Aye, there’s the rub: Shared plates can trend small, or guests are confused about how many plates to order. How many appetizers, pastas and entrees should be ordered for a party of four? Without proper guidance, the calculus can be confounding — we’re left either still hungry too late in the meal, or with too many leftovers on the table.
What’s old is new: A refreshing new vanguard of chefs and owners in SLO County is returning to shareable cuisine and training front-of-house staff to guide diners through the experience of family-style dining. Turns out that family-style dining is often easier on the wallet, too, since each diner won’t need to order their own individual appetizer, entree, and dessert. In a tough economic climate, these restaurants also emphasize the experiential worth of dining out, reflecting quality time spent with loved ones over high-caliber food.
“Family-style dining is an opportunity to connect on something common, despite living in a world where everything can feel so disconnected and everyone seems to be in their own little silos,” says Etto Managing Partner and Chef Marc LeDuc. “We put away the cell phones and our differences and have a conversation.”
In a county so abundant with farms and ranches, it seems natural to meet hearty appetites with larger plates. After a decade of tiny shareable plates at high-end modernist restaurants, we may be heralding a new era of large-format dining that makes family-style dining easy and plentiful. At restaurants Etto and EMRE, located just a short drive from one another in Paso Robles, certain entrees can be shared amongst two to four people, in a warm and friendly environment evocative of Sunday supper at grandma’s home. With SLO County’s proud history of Italian American immigrant communities and the collective dining culture perpetuated by local families like the Nerellis, Pesentis and Dusis, who dry-farmed the land and planted vines that live on today, it’s no surprise that the vanguard of chefs and owners serving this shareable cuisine are Italian, Mediterranean and Middle Eastern.
Family-style dining runs deep in these chefs’ ancestries. Italian American Chef Casey McMinn helms the kitchen at EMRE, the Ava Hotel’s calming, airy Mediterranean fine-dining spot by Chef Julien Asseo. Open since November of last year, it’s inspired by the family-style dining cultures of Greece, Spain and North Africa. Casey grew up in the kitchen as his mom and nonna rolled out endless sheets of ravioli. Later, he cooked for his fellow firefighters and paramedics at firehouses, and sought to replicate that feeling of closeness. Family-style dining, the chef says, isn’t defined solely by the size of the plates, but by the warmth of the food, the service and the setting.
“There are plenty of fine-dining upscale restaurants where I felt the food was good, but [the experience] felt really cold,” Casey says. “When you sit down together as a family or with friends, you want that warm experience of everyone sitting at a table near a fire, grabbing a bit of this and a bit of that.”
EMRE’s generous yet refined cuisine translates well to sharing, combining larger Mediterranean and Middle Eastern trends. “Creating this kind of family dining is so exciting for me,” Casey says. “It’s the next step in family-style dining, making you feel at home but in a more upscale style. Julien’s experience of travels in the Mediterranean fit in with Paso’s environment and the weather here and what we’re able to get and provide.”
EMRE focuses on sourcing whole animals and larger cuts of meat from California farms and producers like Windrose Farm, Seed and a Bucket Farms and Jidori. One supersized entree elicits gasps when it lands on tables: Casey’s massive wood-fired souvlaki pierced with saber-like skewers. There’s something primal about these huge hunks of Jidori chicken, Iberico pork and Wagyu beef fresh from the fire, their moisture seared in by the blistering heat of red and white oak layered over binchotan charcoal. The skewers are especially resplendent over a base of sangak, a wholesome Persian flatbread that’s baked in long sheets and cut into manageable pieces. This filling feast is accompanied by tzatziki, zhoug, sumac pickles and sangak. It’s hard to feel pretentious while scooping juicy chunks of meat, sauce and pickles into a fistful of sangak.
Family-style dining is sensual. Casey, known for his soulful cooking from State Bird Provisions in San Francisco and The Hatch Rotisserie & Bar here on the Central Coast, describes the experience of eating sangak and souvlaki as “unctuous and carnal.” Eaten by hand, there’s no intermediary flatware between the food and your mouth. Ripping a piece of flatbread and eating it with your hands as surrounding diners do the same, he says, invokes the senses of touch and texture, and brings a homey vibe into the dining room. “We wanted to make sure people were very comfortable and what’s more comfortable than having fun while you’re at the dinner table, eating with your hands,” Casey says. But there’s a deeper reason to his logic, as a chef first. “Not only are a fork and knife not as fun, but you taste too much metal instead of spice and food,” he says. “It’s something I consciously think about when I cook and thought about when we came up with this menu.”
For a group of four, Casey recommends starting with the hummus and crudo. “The fish we’re getting in is insane, from the hamachi to the whitefish,” he says. Next, order the Windrose Farm beet salad, the kofta and carrots, the beef and pork souvlaki, the crispy potatoes, and either the whole branzino and an order of pasta, or a souvlaki and a tagine. Finish with the olive oil cake and a couple scoops of pistachio gelato or hibiscus strawberry sorbet.
Italian family traditions are abundant at Etto, Brian and Stephanie Terrizi’s market, pasta factory and pasta bar, where Marc focuses on re-creating the Old World’s cozy, convivial environment. Marc’s grandmother was born in Umbria, and he grew up emulating her culture and cooking, visiting Umbria and Perugia as a child.
“At Etto, we like to do everything family-style, sharing between family and friends, the way Italians do at home or at neighborhood restaurants,” Marc says. “I always wanted to go back to that feeling I had as a kid of sharing big Italian meals — to re-create the experience of eating from big bowls of rigatoni with tomato sauce, then picking up the bowl and passing it to the next person.”
Etto’s foundation was built for sharing. The kitchen prepares entrees to share, pre-slicing the bistecca alla Florentina and the roasted Jidori chicken, providing a soup ladle and bowls for splitting a steaming crock of cioppino. The menu was created with large-format volume in mind: The cioppino comes in a small size for four people, or a large size for six to eight diners, while the Jidori chicken is available as a half or whole. Choose small or large sizes for seasonal veggies; insalata with arugula, radicchio and Castelvetrano olives; the rotating seasonal soup; and the popular eggplant parmesan. For a table of four, Marc suggests sharing a salad and appetizer, with a pasta for each diner, and two to four entrees to share.
Marc says sharing also offers an added health benefit. “In Italy, everyone would get their own pasta and then share a steak, because they don’t eat as protein-heavy as we do here.”
Etto’s Director of Marketing and E-commerce Gina DeGirolamo, whose mother was born in Sicily and whose father is Italian American, concurs that Italian-style dining actually fosters moderation compared to American portions. “Our portions of pasta are very generous, but not oversized,” Gina says.
Spending time, making eye contact and making conversation is part of the Etto experience. When Gina brings guests to Etto, she knows her order: two appetizers, two pastas, the bistecca, and either the cioppino or the eggplant parmesan, over at least a couple hours. “My father always said, ‘We’re dining; we’re not eating,’” Gina says.
Sure, a quick lunch can be had or diners can stick to their own dishes, but she invites guests to take their time and dine family-style. “With family-style dining, the table isn’t too crowded and everyone gets to taste all the many dishes,” she says. “It’s a way more traditional experience, like what I grew up with, and it even feels more upscale — plus, financially it works out really well.”
Cost has become a sticking point for many diners in recent years. “We want to keep the price point with what we see in Europe, where local families can come in and eat,” Marc says. “Families can come in and have a nice dinner, or visitors can have a luxurious dinner, but we want to hit those checkmarks of affordability while sharing this deep love of food.”
For Marc, family-style dining brings back the warmth and emotion of childhood. “For me personally, to see people at Etto dining together is to be in touch with my heritage. Seeing families and friends eating and talking over a plate of pasta gets me very nostalgic, like I’m back at Nonna’s.”
