It takes just a sip of water to tell you that Restaurant Omakase in Riverside is something different.
It arrives in a tall glass with a slice of citrus half submerged in shaved ice. Innocent enough, but this is anything but the usual lemon used to disguise the gnarly taste of municipal water. The citrus is extravagantly perfumed, wafting over the table the way the scent of orange blossoms used to glide in open windows on a summer night, back in the days when much of the county was carpeted in citrus groves. What is it? Bergamot, the aromatic fruit that gives Earl Grey tea its distinctive lilt. Delicious and refreshing, the scented glass of water is a hint of good things to come at this unusual 19-month-old restaurant.
Despite the name, Omakase is not a Japanese restaurant. Brein Clements, the chef and owner, has an intriguing resume that includes stints at Domaine Chandon in Napa Valley, and Gary Danko and Manresa, both in the Bay Area. The 26-year-old chef last headed up the kitchen at the Balboa Bay Club & Resort in Newport Beach. Once he decided it was time to open his own place, he and his wife, Roryann, who had been his lead cook at the club, scouted all over Southern California, but ended up in Riverside, where she grew up, drawn by the lower rents and the sense that the restaurant scene had potential. That choice turned out to have some unexpected benefits.
Clements soon discovered the extraordinary Citrus Variety Collection at UC Riverside, with more than 1,000 varieties of citrus trees, and began to explore using their fruit in his cooking. Then a customer, Randy Reeves, came in one day and offered to grow fruits and vegetables for the restaurant on his 1-acre plot. Now they pore over the seed catalogs together and have developed the organic garden into a phenomenal resource for the restaurant's larder.
Clements stops by the garden every couple of days to see what's ready to use in the next menus. Right now, in the middle of winter, he's got all sorts of fresh-picked greens, beets, radishes, carrots and other root vegetables. I'm already planning to come back in spring and summer to taste what he'll have then.
Vegetarian tasting menu
