Sonoma County Retaurants: Chloe’s
So, a new place for lunch in Santa Rosa. Right now this is not a place for people who don’t live or work in the Santa Rosa area unless you are traveling in Wine Country during the week, but we can only hope that it will grow out of its limited time slots and move to a bigger place because the food is really very good.
The name is Chloe’s French Café and it is not easy to find because it is in an office building. In fact, if a friend of mine hadn’t heard through the grapevine and a little press that this was a small restaurant quite a bit above average, the only people who would have ever heard of it would have been the people who work in the building. I have to give some directions because almost all of us had a hard time finding the place, but even with my directions, you have to know how to navigate your way around Santa Rosa. You can take the Mendocino exit off 101 (either S or N) to Hopper. If you’re coming north, that means you have to cross over the freeway and head north toward Kohl’s. If you’re coming south, that means you turn right when you get off the freeway. Then you turn RIGHT on Airway, which is the first stop light (just like you would be going to Kohl’s) and keep going behind Kohl’s to the Landmark Office Building. This is all on the west side of 101. Entrance to Chloe’s is off the main entrance of the office building (you need to go inside the main lobby to find it).
This is a US version of a small French café and one of the owners is actually French. There is wine available for lunch (by the bottle and by the glass) which automatically puts it a cut above the usual business office greasy spoon. Then the lunch offerings are nicely varied. They include a variety of salads, including one with homemade Duck Confit, to cold sandwiches with a French touch to grilled sandwiches like Saucisson (French sausage, ham and melted cheese), Croque Madame (grilled ham and cheese with an egg on top) and Croque Monsieur (grilled ham and cheese without the egg). They also have daily entrée specials. On the day we visited, there were serving a very lightly breaded sliced pork with couscous and carmelized carrots. Yum!
It is a shame that this is only a lunch place and only open Monday through Friday. It has a very, very tiny space inside for tables and a much larger space outdoors (tables with umbrellas for the sun), which works fine for the day, but would not serve for dinner except in summer. My hope is that the owners refine their work here and then find another venue to expand into a bigger restaurant that includes dinner since what we have tasted so far is really excellent.
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