Restaurant Review: Resto Gastro Bistro

For fancy lunchtime feasting, business folks wander into Resto Gastro Bistro, with its floor-to-ceiling windows and spindly chandeliers hanging overhead. The restaurant, covered in rustic touches, looks like a rich lady’s blue-and-gray-hued private dining room, which seems to be the go-to design for far too many restaurants these days. My friend walked in wearing a cupcake shirt and immediately felt out of place. Then she stuffed her face with a lobster corn dog and forgot all her worries. She said the ground hot dog consistency reminded her of dim sum dumplings. The deep-fried lobster meat, encased in a super fluffy but greasy waffle batter, came with house-made barbecue chips that were stiff and over-peppered. It was like biting into a stack of sandpaper. The rest of the menu is chef DJ Quintanilla’s French- and Asian-influenced spin on modern American favorites (crab cakes, grilled chicken sandwich, Chinese hack salad). Hospitality fairy and owner Linda Mazzei came to our table and poured the consomme over our pan-seared lemon sole, blanketing the heirloom tomatoes, garbanzo beans, three polenta croquettes, micro celery, piquillo peppers, and roasted hearts of palm with a transparent fish stock. It needed more salt, but I’d order the fish again.