California Dreamin'

Oh, hey. Hi. Yeah, it's been awhile. Been busy, y'know, with work and stuff.  Yeah, I know I said I'd write often and keep in touch and all that...what can I say other than I'll try to make it up to you and I'll be better from now on? What's that? You've heard that before? Yeah, it's true. I have said it before, but I REEAAALLY mean it this time. Cross my heart and hope to die.

(bats eyelashes innocently with hands behind back, fingers crossed.)

Anyway...let's get back to our regularly scheduled programming, shall we?

Last week Mark and I finally made to this restaurant in San Anselmo we've been trying to get to for awhile called Dream Farm. (Yes, I agree, it's kind of an airy fairy name for an eating establishment, but this IS Marin County we're talking about.) Dream Farm started out as the French-inspired Fork, founded by chef Scott Howard (now of downtown Berkeley's Five) and sommelier James Low in 2001. (Jon Kosorek of Jon's Street Eats also took a turn as chef there in what is described in the press as a "revolving door" of them.)  In keeping with the economic times, Low and current partner Oliver Knill down-scaled Fork last year into a casual comfort food joint, and I, for one, am glad they did.

Although the most expensive item on the menu is the $19.95 Angus New York Steak (with most entrees landing between $12 and $16),  Dream Farm has the look and feel of a more upscale eatery, with a sophisticated color palette and candlelit tables. It's the kind of place that would be great for a first date: classy but not pretentious, and it won't set you back a ton if your date turns out to be a dud. And a big bonus for me: you can actually carry on a conversation without having to shout. One of the things I hate about most decent restaurants these days - they're so freakin' noisy you almost just want to send your dining companion text messages instead trying to talk above the din.

We sampled two of the starters, the Sweet Pea Soup with Carrot Creme Fraiche ($5.95) and the Organic Baby Lettuces with Pt. Reyes Blue Cheese, Cashews, Blood Oranges and Vinaigrette ($7.95).  The Sweet Pea Soup was superb - it basically tasted like pureed sweet peas. (I know, what a shock.) To my palate, the soup tasted like spring: fresh and green. I'm not exactly sure what it was about the salad, but something just made me want to keep it eating it - and I am not a huge salad person normally. The blood orange was fantastic - juicy and tangy, and the perfect counterpoint to the vinaigrette.

For entrees, I got the Organic Chicken and Dumplings with Sweet Peas and Carrots ($12.95) and Mark got the Vegetarian Lasagna with Bellwether Farms Ricotta, Mushrooms and Spinach ($13.95). Now, Mark and I have made some excellent veggie lasagnas but this one beat ours, hands down. The veggies were sliced extremely thin and the bites just melted in your mouth. They were the real star of the dish while the sauce didn't play much of a role - which is the opposite of how we tend to make lasagna. The chicken and dumplings was all about the gravy - yummy, salt, chickeny goodness. And they give you a spoon so you can get it all. The chicken was actually a bit on the dry side and the carrots were cooked to varying degrees - one tender and one tough - so the dish wasn't perfect. But hey, you could probably coat old car tires in that gravy and it would taste pretty good.

For dessert, it came down to the Lemon Panna Cotta with Huckleberry and Tuille or the Rectangular Georgia Pecan Pie with Whipped Cream (all desserts $5.95). We decided to go with the pecan pie since you can get panna cotta just about anywhere and and if you're going to have something as southern as chicken and dumplings for dinner, you should get a southern dessert too. The thing I don't usually like about pecan pie is that it's too sweet - too much corn syrup, not enough pecan. That was not the case here. It was more like a pecan tart, with a thick pie crust on the bottom and just enough sugary stuff to hold the pecans together.

We may have taken awhile to get to Dream Farm, we'll definitely be back. It would be appropriate for just about any situation - first date, one hundred and first date, family night with the kids, casual dinner with friends or a nice place to take out-of-town visitors. If we lived closer, I could see it being our default spot for a Friday night dinner out. For now, I'll just have to dream about them opening one on our side of the bay.

The deets: Dream Farm, 198 Sir Francis Drake Blvd, San Anselmo. On the web at www.dreamfarmmarin.com. Phone: 415-453-9898. Open seven days week for dinner, 5:30 to 9:30 p.m.