|
| After 25 years, San Benito House closes dining room to dinner service By MATT KAPKO Published/Last Modified on Wednesday, July 7, 2004 11:25 AM PDT Half Moon Bay Review It's been a fixture of the city's Main Street for 25 years now, and it will continue to be - only with a few changes. The San Benito House will no longer be serving dinners at its century-old building on the corner of Main and Mill streets, but it will be venturing into uncharted territory with a new "almost done" dinner menu. The packaged meals, which the restaurant began offering for sale last week, take 10 minutes to finish cooking and are made in pairs. For $20, customers can still enjoy the fresh ingredients and evolving menu that this restaurant's has come to be known for. The homemade ravioli will remain a constant stay on the menu, while soups and entrees will change from month to month. The restaurant is also looking to focus more on special events for groups. "We're still a restaurant, what we want to do now is focus on group events," owner Greg Regan said. "We're still here, we're not changing ownership or anything like that. We're just tired of working the 14- to 15-hour days," he explained. Regan, 37, has been working in the restaurant since the age of 12, when his mother Carol Mickelsen first bought the building for the bed and breakfast, deli, bar and restaurant. Twelve years ago, Regan took over the operation and he's enjoyed watching it grow over the years. "We're not tired of this business, we're just tired of working from 6:30 in the morning to 11:30 at night. We want to have our evenings free. We want to spend time with our families," he said. When the restaurant's 25-year anniversary approached a couple of weeks ago, Regan said neither he or his mom were in the celebratory mood - they were just tired and wanted to try something a little less taxing on their energy. "We don't need to work ourselves to death," he recalls thinking. "Done that, don't need to do that anymore. We had fun." Regan is currently gearing up for special events in the future. "We feel that we're the perfect place for private parties," he said. Aside from group events, the restaurant will still be used to prepare breakfasts for guests staying in one of the building's 12 rooms, and also to prepare the ready-to-cook meals. "We want to stress that we are keeping our head chef," Regan added. Head Chef Lidia Machado has been working at the restaurant for 13 years. "She's a fixture here, she's a part of the San Benito House," Regan said. The fresh soups, chips and salsa and bread will always be for sale at the bar or deli when it's open and on Thursday nights, the restaurant will continue to prepare soup and bread for dine-in for its weekly live music bookings. The "almost done dinners" will be on display in the deli and can be purchased from anywhere in the deli, bar or restaurant. Orders can also be called in or faxed for convenience. Regan said the restaurant is known best for its homemade raviolis and seafood sausage, which is comprised of prawns and scallops with herbs poached in a seafood fume, served over soft polenta with slow roasted red onion and cherry tomatoes. He's also proud of the bar's margaritas. The difference, he says, is the sweet and sour mix is made in-house. The restaurant served its final regular dinner on June 27 and by the beginning of this month its ready-to-cook meals, which come in a clear packaging that disintegrates within 70 days, were on sale. Regan expects no financial losses from this move, mostly because his mother owns the building, and with more special events he's anticipated even more success. Some servers had to be laid off though, but Regan explained that most of them already had full-time jobs elsewhere and the others were recent hires. The San Benito House is located at 356 Main Street in Half Moon Bay and can be reached at 726-3425. |