Putah Creek Cafe

I move into my apartment in Berkeley on Friday so I am trying to enjoy as much good home cooking and tasty local restaurant food as I can in these last few days.  I'd say so far I'm succeeding.  This week, my grandma not only brought over three types of baked goods on separate days including peanut butter chocolate bars and fresh out of the oven banana muffins, but she also took my mom and me out to a delicious dinner in Winters.  Note to self: remember to be as awesome as your grandma when you have grandchildren.  We had been planning on getting tapas at Ficelle since I have never been (everyone tells me it's pretty great), but as the owners were gone that night, we decided to head across the street to Putah Creek Cafe.

Filming for the Food Network show, Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives, is currently in progress this month at the restaurant, which is exciting since Winters is our small, but charming, neighboring town.  Hearing this news only made me anticipate the meal even more.  Putah Creek Cafe is located right across the street from the Buckhorn and is under the same ownership.  In the outside seating area, you can watch pizzas going in and out of a wood fire oven.  Inside, the atmosphere is comfortable and there are wooden tables with fresh flowers and large windows, allowing for a nice view of downtown Winters.  

The three of us decided to split 3 sides and a vegetarian pizza.  Since I don't have a menu and can't locate one online, I'll just post some pictures and describe the dishes as I remember them.  

We ended up with a fresh and tasty tomato and mozzarella salad,  

Corn pancakes with lox,

and delicious, crab cakes!

Then our pizza came out of the oven, topped with caramelized onions, peppers, artichoke hearts, and more.

Even though we were all pretty full, we couldn't leave without trying one of the enticing baked items in the glass case up front.  After mulling over the menu for a few minutes we decided to split a piece of chocolate cake.  When it turned up, we realized we should have ordered a few extra people along with our extra napkins, since the one slice was more like a quarter of a cake.  The cake was moist and especially chocolatey, the latter being a feature that immediately earns high marks from both my grandma and myself.  I'm glad I got her dessert taste bud genes.  Leftovers were brought home to a hungry Ryo and we left satisfied and happy!  

Since Putah Creek Cafe is very popular for breakfast, I'd definitely like to return sometime during the morning hours.  It'll probably have to wait until the next time I'm home from school.

P.S.  As you may have noticed, this post has more pictures than writing.  That's because I realized I won't have Ryo photographing all of my culinary adventures when I'm at school and therefore decided to finally purchase a DSLR camera of my own.  I ordered a Nikon D3000 and have been trying to test it out a lot.  Yeah, it's not as nice as his or as many other bloggers', but it'll work for me.