A World of Tastes

On Father’s Day, treat your dad to dinner. Then maybe he will return the favor by the time the menu has been revamped at the Favoritz restaurants.

The way to a dad’s heart may be through his stomach--but an even shorter route is via his wallet. A meal at Favoritz won’t set him back a week’s wages--and that will really please Dad.

In these parlous times, finding a real meal deal is a tall order, but if Dave Dietle--who oversees the kitchens for the two Favoritz restaurants in the Southland--has his way, you won’t find it impossible.

Dietle plans to add a potful of new dishes to the Favoritz menus in the next week or two, and to drop his prices a bit, too.

The new menu debuts well after Father’s Day, but maybe your father will like the money saved so much that he won’t mind a late-date Father’s Day dinner. Besides, if a good meal satisfies, surely an inexpensive good meal delights, and is worth waiting for.

Favoritz derives its name from the decor--murals on the walls depicting scenes from everybody’s favorite old Hollywood movies.

The restaurant operates on the theory that if you give people a wide variety of traditional dishes from around the world they will come. At Favoritz, that means you can sample the foods of Mexico, the Pacific, the Far East, the Mediterranean and, of course, the U.S., all under one roof.

It makes for variety.

As a case in point, Dietle’s new menu will offer an $11.95 sampler showcasing everything on his appetizer menu--a vegetable quesadilla, a warm pesto with goat cheese on toast, zucchini slices in a honey mustard sauce, chicken pot stickers, a Thai chicken satay with a peanut sauce, onion rings fried in a beer batter, grilled chicken skewers in a barbecue sauce, and buffalo wings.

On the dinner menu will be such items as skewered chicken in either a Maui plum sauce or a Cajun spicy sauce, garlic shrimp linguine in a red pepper sauce, pasta with mascarpone and sweet peas, and a number of pizzas, not to mention three kinds of roast chicken.

Even the beverages reflect the restaurant’s international flavor--sodas from Italy and beers from the U.S., Mexico, Germany and Great Britain.

Last but not least, patrons will have a host of new soups and a raft of burgers and sandwiches from which to choose, including a barbecue bacon burger, a mushroom and Swiss cheese burger, a sandwich with vegetables and provolone cheese, even a salmon sandwich with ginger mayonnaise.

And if you wonder where prices might end up on Dietle’s new menu, consider how low they were on the old menu--under $4.50 for most appetizers, under $8.50 for most pizzas, and under $10 for most entrees.

What father won’t appreciate that?

Owners Joe Knight and Robert Niesner opened the Woodland Hills Favoritz in 1995 and a second Favoritz in Thousand Oaks in 1996. They have a third under construction in Cerritos now, to open in the fall.

The Woodland Hills Favoritz is in the Promenade mall, at Topanga Canyon Boulevard and Erwin Street. (818) 313-8580.

*

As an alternative Father’s Day gift, you might test how your father responds to the notion that a good cigar, unlike a meal cheap or dear, satisfies--in the sense that it lingers for days in the persistent aroma on a man’s hands, in his clothes and in the back of his throat. A good cigar isn’t forever. It just seems that way.

But if such is to your father’s liking, give him a big meal followed by a big cigar at Stoney Point Bar & Grill in Pasadena, which on Sunday will offer trencherman portions of such regular menu items as porterhouse steak, roasted chicken, veal scaloppine and a variety of fish specials, plus a complimentary cigar to top things off.

The restaurant has a full bar and a separate smoking area for those who wish to indulge but not to offend. It is located at 1460 W. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, (818) 449-9715.

* Juan Hovey writes about the restaurant scene in the San Fernando Valley and outlying points. He may be reached at (805) 492-7909 or fax (805) 492-5139 or via e-mail at JH[email protected].