Named after a lake that used to cause week long floods during heavy rains, Torrance’s Walteria neighborhood along Hawthorne Blvd. just west of P.C.H.is stacked with small businesses that could help you broker a mortgage, do your taxes, color you hair, clean your carpet, or decorate your pool or patio for starters. A gauntlet of inter-connected plazas not to keen on parking spaces or chic ambiance battle for curbside views, so it’s hard to find one of the best family owned, Mediterranean restaurants in the South Bay amongst the clutter.
It is even harder to replicate homemade comfort food from any country on a daily basis and then present it to a paying public for lunch and dinner in hopes that genuine word of mouth marketing will drive in new customers. Long before the farm-to-table and organic foodie maxims invaded the eating-out landscape, a small discreet Mediterranean style kitchen with influences from Greece and Lebanon took to the everyday art of preparing freshly made baklava, humus, gyros, lamb chops, kabobs, cheese boreg and other dishes. Café Aristo uses three adjectives to describe their food: delicious, fresh, authentic. No need for much else, their food does most of the convincing.
Along Hawthorne Blvd. in Torrance’s Walteria neighborhood
It literally feels and looks like you have walked into someone’s kitchen with homespun Spanish Mediterranean décor and tables spread out in a not so symmetrical way. Where the hostess is part of the family that owns the business, who will seat you, take your order and if you are lucky enough, dole out a free bite of baklava at the end of dinner.
The dinner menu is simple, at least simple enough that it can be re-created with fresh ingredients, pastries, and extra virgin olive oil on a daily schedule. This is the genius behind Café Aristo, the menu is short on options but long on taste. It cooks ground up lamb kabobs, beef & Chicken kabobs, gyros, a fatoush salad, lamb chops, some appetizers and not a whole lot more Monday through Saturday. The focus is narrow but the product is scrumptious. A dinner here always starts with a fresh plate of humus, made earlier in the morning, drizzled with a ring of olive oil and some lemon wedges. Humus doesn’t necessarily need red peppers, sun dried tomatoes or garlic, it’s most natural creamy state can add flavor to any kabob plate for pita bread.
Beef Kabob & Lamb Kabob Plate at Cafe Aristo
Chicken gets boring, it’s ubiquitous, and more often than not, it’s dry when served at a restaurant. The Pollo Mediterraneo plate at Café Aristo lifts cooked chicken out of the tasteless doldrums and turns it into a protein not in line with mere diet driven sustenance, but extraordinary taste that has a juicy balance between Spanish-Mediterranean marinade and charcoal.
Don’t leave without sampling the baklava, seriously. This is no ordinary dessert, it is hands down, turn around, jump out of your seat and tell your Smartphone about what you just ate, the best baklava you can pay for in the South Bay. Two triangular wedges of baked phyllo dough with crushed walnuts, honey and a special syrup. Order the Turkish style coffee too; it packs a punch with a little espresso sludge on the bottom.
Cafe Aristo in Torrance
The prices on the dinner menu are incredibly reasonable and dinner entrée prices range from $12 to $18. Café Aristo does not serve wine or beer and are open for lunch and dinner Monday through Saturday 11:00 a.m. t0 3:00 p.m. & 5:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. The address is 3768 West 242nd Street in Torrance. www.aristocafe.com