Mysteries remain uncorked at Sheila's Place

Sheila’s Place
Wine Bar & Cafe
330 N. Lantana St., # 32
Camarillo, CA
(805) 987-9800
www.sheilaswinebar.com


The images on the Sheila’s Web site were warm lively photographs of diners canoodling, musicians strumming, and enticing morsels of gourmet food — I could not wait.

We arrived in the strip mall parking lot where Sheila’s is flanked by Peking Inn and D’Amore’s. The restaurant is a long shotgun room with a bar running down one side and rack upon rack of wine along the other.

Detailed castings of jazz and blues musicians playing their instruments are displayed behind the bar. The interior is dark and gets increasingly darker as you walk away from the front windows toward the fireplace braced at the opposite end of the room.  

It’s like a cross between an old boy’s club, a Tuscan-themed restaurant and a poker parlor — the kind of environment that seems natural at night but a little illicit during the daytime.  As the C-Jazz radio station enrobed us in its upbeat sticky sounds, I realized it would be easy to get lost in the 300-bottle selection of wine that offered and not leave until long after the sun had set.

While I perused the menu, my companion happily clicked off photos, playing with long exposures in the darkened room. Our waiter approached the table but quickly stepped aside to reveal a lady walking purposefully toward us.  

She asked why we were taking photographs. “For fun?” my companion answered. “The owner prefers that you not,” she said sternly. The camera went down and we wondered why, but due to the intensity in her voice chose not to ask. We were the only table left; it’s such a curious thing to not want a restaurant photographed.

The wine list looked enchanting and several choices were offered by the glass. I immediately saw a Viognier that I was excited about and my companion noticed a Malbec yet when I looked on my list, I saw no Malbec, and his had no Viognier. After a frustrating game of Where’s Waldo? (the wine version), we surmised we had different lists. The waiter came over, told us that both of our lists were incorrect and the wines we wanted were no longer offered. We were given yet another list and forced to start again.

I asked the waiter for a taste of the New Orleans gumbo. Meanwhile, we sampled a couple of wines and chose an ’05 Chilean claret by Le Playa that was dry and tart with notes of dark berries. My small ramekin of gumbo arrived. It had an authentic dark chocolate-colored roux but was overall too spicy. Real gumbos do have some spice but it comes in bites that contain andouille sausage rather than the whole soup tasting like fire.  This was just generally hot so we chose other dishes.

We ordered the Boursin cheese ravioli appetizer, the pear salad and the filet mignon carpaccio. Our food arrived quickly along with a plate of baguettes served with a sauce that tasted like an Italian dressing.  

The presentations of the dishes were lovely. The Boursin cheese ravioli were floating in a rich sea of sweet vermouth reduction sauce with chunks of wild mushrooms and topped with crunchy, thin, fried leek matchsticks. The raviolis were cooked perfectly and the sauce held the sweet yet bitter flavor of vermouth. It was unctuous and addictive. The flavors were thrilling at first bite then settled into more bitter tastes that created a love/hate relationship in my mouth.

The salad featured purple slices of poached spiced pears, halves of candied toasted pecans and crumbles of blue cheese on a bed of mixed lettuces, drizzled with a port wine-infused vinaigrette. The flavors fused beautifully together. My companion wielded his fork enthusiastically, stabbing around for crumbles of cheese and pieces of pecans.

The carpaccio looked like pop art. The ruby, thinly sliced rounds of raw beef filet made large polka dots on their triangle plate. There was a dusting of ground black pepper circling the fresh arugula dressed with olive oil and Parmesan shavings. All the ingredients were there except for an acidic component. It cried out for mustard, citrus, capers or vinegar to cut through the weighty flavors.  

We ended our meal with a cocoa-dusted truffle roughly the size of a golf ball. The Rubenesque confection was extremely high in butter fat and quickly melted on our tongues. It was perfect with the last of our claret and just enough for two.  
As we walked out with our bellies full, squinting in the light of day, we looked back once more into the darkened room and collectively pondered what mysteries lived there that weren’t meant to be captured on film.     

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