Review: DeSchmire Restaurant

Crab cakes at DeSchmire (Jeff Kan Lee/PD)

Just about everybody’s hometown has a restaurant like DeSchmire in Petaluma. It’s not particularly well-known except by locals who’ve been going there for decades. It’s unpretentious except for occasional interludes when it tries to go a little more upscale, but soon falls back into the comfortable charm that has kept it going all these years. And the food is consistently and surprisingly good, mostly because the owner is the executive chef and he or she has a passion for good cooking.

PHOTO GALLERY

Like much of the rest of the restaurant industry in these poor economic times, DeSchmire (pronounced “duh shmeer”) had empty tables on a recent night. Yet the quality of the French-influenced fare remains as high as ever. That’s because Executive Chef and owner Dan Eastman has the passion to please his customers, and Chef de Cuisine Marc Wohlfeil makes that happen.

A place like DeSchmire depends on the locals — the community — at all times, but especially in the lean times. Tourists will head to restaurants with more buzz, but it’s always the little places, the mom-and-pop eateries, that they write home about if they’re lucky enough to stumble into one. DeSchmire is just such a place.

Mussels

Consider the Mussels ($7 ****). I’d write home about them, too, if I wasn’t already home. They’re grown locally at Scott Zahl’s Tomales Cove Mussel Company, located a few miles south of Marshall at Marconi Cove and, the staff said, they were delivered to the restaurant one hour before they were served to me. These mussels are plump, tan-brown, very fresh-tasting, sweet and wonderfully tender. I thought back to the Prince Edward Island mussels served in most local restaurants — small, firm and a little chewy, with a slightly bitter aftertaste. These were nothing like that. The mussels are de-bearded just before cooking, steamed so their juices run down into the boiling water pan. The liquid is fortified with white wine and butter, and a big bowl of steaming hot mussels is delivered to you with a little fork for plucking these beauties from their shells. Make sure you have plenty of bread for sopping up that delicious broth.