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Remember Cheers? Dish is a place where you feel like you're at home
 By Gary Lirette
Some
restaurateurs and hoteliers just have the touch. You know, that gift
that makes their food better, your dining experience more enjoyable.
Gary and Laura Peitz seem to have that ability. With Sandpoint’s
newest restaurant venture, Dish Home Cooking, Sandpoint locals are
already finding something magical. Gary reasons, “It’s not magic.
Between Laura and I, we have decades of restaurant experience. It
takes a lot of hard work to make it look easy.” The Peitz family
moved from the San Francisco Bay area to Sandpoint, buying the Coit
House Bed and Breakfast in 2003. “It was tough for a couple of years
there. We renovated, built the business, then bought the K-2 Inn
across the street.” The inns became successful, and Gary and Laura
sold those hotels, and began looking for their next project.
Meanwhile,
Chef Gabe Cruz manned the fires at Café Trinity, helping make that
one of Sandpoint’s most successful venues since the Garden closed.
“Gabe and I started talking about opening a place months ago. We
started a test kitchen, and came up with a menu that is meant to
appeal to our tastes up here in North Idaho. It’s going to be an
evolving menu, using local ingredients, prepared fresh, and not
gonna hurt the pocketbook,” he related during their soft grand
opening. February is not the busiest month in Sandpoint, and though
the first two days were typical of the month, business picked up
quickly. Gary and his staff had no doubts: “We were confident that
we would be busy, the right location, the right price point, and the
great food along with excellent customer service, is an unbeatable
combination.”
While Gabe has
moved on to begin his own restaurant concept, Chef Luke Mason is
putting his own style on what has become Sandpoint's most popular
eatery. Voted Sandpoint's Best New Restaurant by locals, with
sparkling reviews in the Sandpoint Reader, the Daily Bee, Idaho
Cuisine Magazine, and the Spokesman Review. Coming up in a major
feature by Country Living Magazine, Dish also received not only
cudos in the article, but the writers and staff of the magazine
spent hours at the restaurant.
The Dish
dining room is reminiscent of a café in San Francisco. Soft lights
with local art hanging on the walls, umber walls with memorabilia
lining the back hallway, the place has an immediate feeling of
comfort. The food is eclectic, yet familiar, and the espresso machine is Gary’s
pride and joy. The sleek, polished stainless-steel European-made
Mirage espresso machine looks like a Lamborghini on the counter top.
The barista station was set up by Uriah, formerly of Bongo Brew Hut.
"We use only organic coffee that seems to be more robust and less
bitter than what people are normally used to."
Wine is
another of Dish’s fortes and another point of pride for Gary and
Laura. Typically in Sandpoint the wine lists are general and the
interesting wines are often out of stock. The Dish Wine List has
several award-winning wines, many that are rated 90 or above,
dessert and late-harvest wines that can't be found in Sandpoint, and
even the occasional vintage wines. "Finding a 1997 for under $25 is
time-consuming, but we have had good luck providing our diners with
a truly unique wine experience. We want wine to be a pleasure for
people to sample, not something to create a kind of wine snobbery.
It’s supposed to compliment food, and we think we can find wines
that will have a price point that makes our diners want to
experiment with and enjoy."
The lunch
menu and dinner menu are very different and lunch at Dish quickly
became a Sandpoint staple. How is dinner doing? "We opened for
dinner in April, and typical nights we see at least a couple of
seatings. If lunch has been great, but dinner is a blast."
For those
who like to check their e-mails, Dish offers free Wi-Fi. The open
kitchen proffers the ability to interact with the chefs while
sitting on 1950s style stools at a brushed stainless steel counter.
The staff is surprisingly professional and efficient for a newly
opened restaurant, and the food comes out quickly.
“The concept
for ‘home cooking’ fits what people are looking for right now in
Sandpoint,” Gary explained. “Downtown there is a problem with
parking. Dish is only two minutes from downtown and has plenty of
parking. Plus, we have a drive-thru window, so people on the go can
pick up and be at home in no time.” The drive thru offers the
complete menu, plus having an espresso and Cappuccino pick up window
provides a morning fix for caffeine in a part of town where there
formerly wasn’t a coffee hut. Dish is located in the new Mountain
West Bank complex on Highway 2 near Division.
Saturday and
Sunday Brunch
has omelets including the meat-filled Lumber Jack, French toast and
pancakes are next, with Gabe's original menu keeping with his love of Southern and
New Orleans inspired dishes like the Pancakes Bananas Foster,
organic offerings, and their “Bennies,” several variations on Eggs
Benedict. They appeal to the North Idaho diet as well honoring the
comfort food concept with pot pies, pastas, salads, and soups. The
daily lunch menu still features several great breakfast items.
Dish is a
product of a very successful restaurateur and Sandpoint’s most
renowned chef. It has a location that is as convenient as any in
town, and diners are hungering for their next meal there. If their
former winning formulas are any indicator, then next on the menu for
Dish is success, and another great place to dine in Sandpoint.
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