NightOut.com Spring 2013
Walking through Victoria Plaza, you’re bound to notice an inviting and boutiquey gem of a restaurant called Scarlett Begonia. The young establishment has recently added dinner to their popular breakfast and lunch offerings, and taking a gander at the current dinner menu—it changes regularly—the listing of highly original and meticulous dishes piqued my interest. As I sat down for an interview with owner Crista Fooks last week, our conversation began with an in depth description of the process by which they prepare their coffee. After listing the steps—cleaning machines neurotically, using reverse osmosis water and the best possible milk, spinning the milk properly with latte art, and performing numerous taste tests—she says “then we’re done with just the coffee.” Over the next half hour, Crista and Chef Joel Huff painted me a vivid picture of the of the young restaurant’s formula for creating a unique, thoughtful, and thorough restaurant experience. From ‘just’ a cup of coffee to a plate of raw oysters adorned with fifteen unique components, the Scarlett Begonia team holds itself to a high standard and it seems to be paying off.
Crista originally attended culinary school (where she met Joel Huff—the head Chef) with intentions of becoming a chef. However, after some time working in a kitchen, she realized the front of the house was a better fit for her. She describes it as “planning a new party every day, always with new people, new surprises, and new things happening.” Despite her departure from the kitchen, she consistently infuses her work at Scarlett Begonia with foodie expertise. “We put a lot of aggressive culinary experience into everything here,” Crista states. “You get a kind of molecular aspect to the dining experience.” Her key to satisfaction is providing customers with a new and exciting experience; if someone tries a dish and says whoa, what is that?! (with a positive inflection of course), she’s succeeded.
To impress patrons with unique and innovative flavors, Scarlett Begonia embraces the concept of farm-to-table cuisine. This is not, as Crista explains, simply buying produce at the farmers market and cooking it up; it requires the transformation of an ingredient before it reaches the table. “Anyone can roast a carrot; they’re delicious and wonderful. But when you turn a carrot into something spectacular, that’s real farm-to-table. It’s taking the produce and seeing what it could be.”
Joel Huff is just the man to trust with that transformation—a chef out of Ventura County with twenty-five years of professional experience, including time spent in the kitchens of Michelin-starred restaurants throughout the US. His European training and Californian upbringing have given him a special knack for recognizing the potential of local, seasonal ingredients, and as he was in Miami working with produce coming from Oxnard, he knew it was time to go home to the ingredients rather than letting them come to him over two thousand miles away. Crista’s need for a chef was the perfect invitation for him to return, and he’s been at Scarlett Begonia for almost a year now.
Having so much local produce available, Joel is constantly channeling the creativity that drew him into the profession in the first place. “Ingredients inspire me to cook” he says, “I start with ingredients before I come out with an idea.” As seasons and choice ingredients change, so does the dinner menu at Scarlett Begonia. “We evolve the dishes constantly; it’s always something different. Scarlett Begonia allows me to be creative more often, and I try not to put out the same dish more than once.” Entering into spring and summer, Joel’s job gets easier and more exciting with the greater abundance and variation of produce, but creating new dishes on such a frequent basis is still a challenge keeping him on his toes. The menu is always changing—keeping me and their other patrons coming back for a new experience again and again.
When asked about the future of her restaurant, Crista speaks with a slightly nervous excitement. “Will it look like this in a year? No. I don’t know what it’s going to look like but it’s going to be cool.” In the past year, the place has transformed into much more than was originally imagined, and they have an enormous amount of work to do in such a limited space. To address this problem of space, we can expect an interior remodel and the transfer of their growing bakery to an off-site location in the near future. Adding a dinner menu has also been a huge endeavor to take on, and not an easy one by the sound of it. Luckily for us, Crista and Joel aren’t concerned with making it too easy for themselves, and their dedication to maintaining the unique, thoughtful, and thorough character of Scarlett Begonia is unwavering.
Crista winds down our conversation in an optimistic yet realistic tone: “There are a lot of hands in the pot in a restaurant, and even though we all have the ultimate end goal of having lots of customers that love our food, we all have different things that we want…But that’s the compromise of having a restaurant: figuring out how everyone can get their job done without sacrificing the end goal. That’s our big challenge and it’s coming along! Owning a restaurant, you’re constantly wondering if you’re still going to be popular in the morning. Will they come? And they still do. Will they like it? And they still do. So we just want to keep that up.”
If you go…
As I mentioned above, the dinner menu is always changing so find something new that excites you and give it a shot! Scarlett Begonia also provides the perfect romantic atmosphere for a date night, and on a clear evening you can enjoy your meal under the stars on the outdoor patio.