Appetizers: Restaurants ready to open as summer comes to a close

With summer winding down, restaurateurs are gearing up for fall and winter, when appetites revive and folks feel more like dressing up for a night on the town.

Restaurants that have opened recently or are to open in the near future include:

• Cafe Bernardo. Haven't we heard that name before? Right -- it's a longtime fixture of the Paragary Restaurant Group, with branches in Sacramento, Roseville and Davis.

But while the Roseville branch is closing, a second Sacramento branch is set to open around Sept. 1.

It will occupy quarters at 15th and R streets that most recently housed Icon, and before that Sammy Chu's.

The concept and menu will be basically the same as at other Cafe Bernardos, though the kitchen at 15th and R is larger than the ones at the cafe's other locations, opening the possibility that the selection of dishes will be more numerous, ambitious and varied.

The bar portion of the facility will be rechristened R15. Though Randy Paragary is famously resistant to installing television sets in his establishments, R15 will be a notable exception. About nine are to be put up, tuned to sports when games and matches are on the air, with music videos later at night.

Sacramento designer Bruce Benning is working on the makeover, hoping to give the bar the same sort of appeal that draws throngs to Paragary's Monkey Bar, adjacent to the Cafe Bernardo along Capitol Avenue at 28th Street.

• Mas Mexican Restaurant is expected to open in a week or two at the Roseville space that has housed Cafe Bernardo at Lead Hill Boulevard and Eureka Road.

Mas is a collaboration of Randy Paragary; his business partner Kurt Spataro; Ernesto Jimenez, owner of Ernesto's Mexican Food, Tortugas and Zócalo in Sacramento; and Jim Johnson, a principal in Ernesto's.

"It will be more upscale than Ernesto's, but not as nice as Zócalo," says Jimenez.

• Paradise Grill has recently opened in quarters previously occupied by T Bistro at Palisades Plaza at East Roseville Parkway and North Sunrise Boulevard in Roseville.

Brothers Andrew and Matt McCoy characterize it as "an American restaurant with tropical flair."

Matt's the manager and Andrew's the executive chef. After cooking in Hawaii and the South Pacific as well as at Scott's Seafood in Sacramento, Andrew McCoy has put together an extensive and diverse menu that adds several island touches to mainland dishes -- fried calamari with a pineapple jicama slaw ($7.95), beef short ribs marinated with ginger, honey and soy ($8.95), lamb chops with a hoisin marinade and mango chutney ($17.95), and rib-eye steak with Maui onion rings ($18.95).

• Malabar is both a region of India and a big, curving and comfortable rattan chair, but the Malabar in Natomas will be a restaurant, and it won't be Indian.

Instead, John Cook, a partner in the Scott's Seafood restaurants in Sacramento and Folsom, and executive chef Mike Wilson, formerly of P.F. Chang's in Roseville, are creating a restaurant to focus largely on regional American cookery, but with several Latin American and Asian touches in the mix.

Along with classic American sandwiches, starters such as chicken wings and clam chowder, and entrees along the lines of beef ribs, meatloaf and grilled seafood, will be house-made tamales, queso fundido and tempura ahi rolls.

Malabar, 2960 Del Paso Road, just east of Interstate and northwest of Arco Arena, should be ready to open in another week or two, says Cook.

Specials heat up: Restaurant 55 Degrees along Capitol Mall has added a three-course, prix fixe menu on Monday through Thursday nights until Sept. 15. For $30 per person, guests have such choices as a chilled green-pea soup or chicken-and-mushroom croquette for a starter, and Atlantic salmon or mussels for the entree. The restaurant's chef de cuisine, Christophe Gerard, has left to return to the Napa Valley. Luc Dendievel remains as executive chef.

New head chef for Nugget: After seven years as chef at R.H. Phillips Winery of Esparto in Yolo County, Rachael Levine has resigned to become corporate executive chef for Nugget Markets of Woodland.

She succeeds Tom Fries, who remains the chef at the company's West Sacramento store, said Kate Stille, Nugget's marketing director.

Levine is just getting acquainted with her new role, but Stille expects that her presence eventually will be reflected in more diverse prepared foods.

About the writer:

• Reach The Bee's Mike Dunne at (916) 321-1143 or mdunne@sacbee.com. Back columns: www.sacbee.com/dunne.