High Dining

Tickets for skybox seats in any sports arena admit you to lofty
spots with great views, upscale atmosphere and hefty price tags. Food
served in these posh seats is plentiful and usually of four-star
quality.

Dining at the Skybox restaurant in the Catalina foothills will get
you those great views, some of that upscale atmosphere and, considering
the neighborhood, a bill that is reasonable. The food came in
good-sized portions but, and please forgive the sports metaphor,
execution wise it batted about .500 (a great but improbable thing in
baseball; maybe not so much at a restaurant).

On two visits (one a busy Friday evening in the dining room, the
other a very quiet Friday lunch hour in the bar) we enjoyed some of the
dishes and were disappointed by some of the others.

At Skybox the whole sports theme is thankfully underplayed. There
are plenty of big-screen TVs tuned to a variety of sporting events, but
they certainly don’t dominate the place. In fact, the area—a
small dining room and a bar—is decked out in earth-toned faux
flagstone walls and columns, nicely framed sports photos and pretty
nice views of the valley thanks to one side that is all
floor-to-ceiling windows. There’s a small balcony with tables. Music
doesn’t interfere with conversation. All in all, it’s tastefully
done.

Beer choices are plentiful and there is a serviceable wine list, so
Friday night found the bar filled with up-and-coming young business
folks and, in the dining room, couples of a certain age who no doubt
live in the upscale neighboring homes. The servers, for the most part,
were young, cute, friendly and female.

The appetizer listings (which are $2 off during happy hour) include
the usual suspects but most have a little different twist to them.

The Sante Fe spring rolls ($7.95, $5.95) are crispy wrappers filled
with a savory mix of chicken, corn relish, jalapeños, black
beans, green chili and pepper jack cheese. The heat and spice were
tempered with two dipping sauces: flavored oil and a ranch dressing.
Another good starter choice was the smokehouse shrimp ($9.95, $7.95).
Six jumbo shrimp are stuffed with some more of that pepper jack cheese,
wrapped in apple wood bacon then broiled. The dipping sauce with these
tasty morsels (and they are really more than morsels as it takes two or
three bites to eat one) is a bright orange Creole sauce, which wasn’t
really necessary with all the different flavors and textures happening
with the shrimp.

One appetizer, which we had at lunch in the bar, that didn’t work
was the spicy calamari ($7.95). A light crumb crust covered the rather
ordinary calamari. But the odd part about the dish was the side, as it
is called on the menu. In the middle of the plate sat a bowl with a
half cup of chili orange marmalade. Even though the presentation was
not so pretty and the chili flavor wasn’t apparent, neither were deal
breakers. And while the thick sweet marmalade is too much for delicate
calamari, one could opt out of that. It was the huge portion of
marmalade that made no sense. Maybe marmalade is cheap and plentiful,
but that big of a portion seems like a waste of good money.

Entrées run the gamut of salads, soups, pastas, sandwiches
and burgers. Also, between 4 and 10 p.m., there is a specialty menu
with all manner of steaks, a couple of seafood choices and chicken and
pork dishes.

Like the appetizers, some items worked while others struggled. At
dinner, a club sandwich ($8.50) was overflowing with savory roasted
turkey, bacon, smoked ham, Havarti cheese, lettuce, tomatoes and
sweet-peppered mayo. With a choice of breads (white, wheat or grilled
sourdough) and a choice of sides (French fries, steak fries, cottage
cheese, side salad or fresh fruit), this is a most satisfying meal. At
lunch, though, the peppered bacon cheddar burger ($8.95) was merely
OK.

A well-prepared specialty item is the End Zone Mushroom Steak
($15.95). Beef tips are tenderly cooked in a mushroom-rich, perfectly
savory sauce. This is a nice homey dish. We opted for the wild rice
pilaf and mixed veggies as our sides. Both are lightly seasoned so you
can actually taste the food. The pilaf has plenty of slivered almonds
that really add to the dish. They were almost better than the
entrée.

And then there was the crab Louie salad. This is a retro salad, a
very popular item way back when. I served plenty of them long ago at
the old Ports O’ Call restaurant. The joy of that dish is, of course,
the plentiful chunks of crabmeat, served up plainly over a bed of
lettuce with Louie dressing (mayo, heavy cream, chili sauce,
Worcestershire sauce, green pepper, green onion and lemon juice). So I
didn’t understand this version at all. Instead of plain crabmeat, there
was a huge scoop of bland crab salad loaded down with mayonnaise. The
lettuce was there—in this case hearts of romaine—as was a
side of dressing. But I was disappointed.

We had two desserts. At dinner we ordered the Tuaca crème
brûlée ($5.25): tasty, yes, but nothing special. At lunch
we ordered Tiramisu di Monique ($6.95) with Chantilly cream that had
been flavored with raspberry (my favorite fruit), Champagne vanilla
mousse and ladyfingers. Call me a traditionalist, but I prefer the
chocolate and hazelnut flavors that comprise true tiramisu. Others
would probably find the dessert just fine.

This article appears in Oct 22-28, 2009.