Effective October 15, 2011, restaurateur Louie Feinstein has joined Larry Kramer and Sam Pace as partner/operator of Sammy G’s Tuscan Grill in Palm Springs and Trilussa Ristorante in Cathedral City.

For 30+ years, Feinstein has been an active part time resident of Palm Springs, having opened Daily Grill restaurant as general manager in Palm Desert in 1993. Daily Grill restaurants are owned and operated by Grill Concepts. Inc. He furthered his career with Grill Concepts by being promoted to Senior VP of Operations and overseeing 20 Daily Grill and 7 The Grill on the Alley locations across the country. In June 2011, Feinstein retired from Grill Concepts to concentrate on developing a restaurant company in his beloved desert community and along with Kramer and Pace founded Desert Restaurant Group LLC.

Feinstein went right to work revamping menus of both brands and bringing in Palm Springs resident/food consultant Chef Dave Schy, who developed the new Sammy G’s lunch menu being offered to the public starting November 29th. Along with the new menu, Sammy G’s now boasts an expanded patio, seating 60, allowing more guests to enjoy dining al fresco in the heart of the downtown Palm Springs shopping area. The new lunch menu features offerings such as classic salads, sandwiches and burgers, with specialties such as a signature Coachella Valley Citrus Salad and Italian Burger. Literally something for everyone! The new lunch menu is served daily 11am – 4pm.

At Trilussa, Feinstein saw the need for a value-oriented menu geared towards those guests desiring to dine earlier in the evening and developed the new Sunset Menu: A three course menu consisting of soup or salad, a choice of four entrees, and a “just the right size” tiramisu dessert priced at a modest $18.95. Entrees include an 8 oz NY Steak served with Mushroom Marsala Wine Sauce, and Sand Dabs served with wine and lemon sauce. The Sunset Menu is offered daily 4:30-6pm.

“Larry, Sam and I are very excited to be taking Sammy G’s and Trilussa to the next level in desert dining,” said Feinstein. “Throughout the upcoming Palm Springs season, we hope to continue to surprise and delight our guests with new menu offerings and new programs, such as a birthday club program and loyalty rewards program implemented over the next few months.”

Sammy G’s Tuscan Grill is located at 265 South Palm Canyon Drive, Palm Springs. Telephone: (760) 320-8041. Trilussa Ristorante is located at 68718 East Palm Canyon Drive, Cathedral City. Telephone: (760) 328-2229.

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How do you set about creating a lunch menu in a kitchen where dinner is already well established? Did he go through the dinner menu and see what could be adapted? No, he said. The first thing was to go through that kitchen and find out what ingredients they already used on a regular basis. Once he said it, it sounded self-evident. It avoided putting any extra strain on the kitchen and also ensured that whatever items he decided on, they would still be in the same spectrum as the evening food.

He then came up with a list of suggestions and sat down with the owners to thrash through the final selection.

It’s a fairly simple, basically Italian grill menu but from the selection I tasted that doesn’t mean that the items themselves, straightforward as they may sound, are simple. From the starters/soups list I got an order of garlic bread — and how straightforward is that? I thought I was almost bored by garlic bread. It turned out I was wrong. This garlic bread had a depth of cheese flavor that I had never met with before — Schy had experimented with several different approaches, trying to capture a taste that one of the owners remembered but couldn’t name or analyze. The experiments finally paid off — the owner was satisfied and I was more than surprised.

From the salad selection I went with the Southwest “broken” crostini salad.

“Oh, that’s my favorite salad!” one of the young women behind the bar exclaimed when she saw it arrive.

“I know it doesn’t sound so Italian,” Schy laughed. But it does have crostini, substituting for croutons. One taste and it became my favorite salad too. Broken crostini are a terrific crunch factor in a salad, more delicate than croutons, and they add a distinctly Italian-American touch to the mixture of tomato, avocado, bacon, roasted corn, black beans, red onion and honey mustard dressing.

The Caprese croissant sandwich, (which I also tried), met with a similar reception from the other young woman behind the bar. “That’s my favorite sandwich,” she said enthusiastically. I could understand why — the croissant is from L’Artisan Bakery, arguably the best croissant in the valley, and maybe in Southern California. The mozzarella, tomato and basil filling, with a touch of pesto, olive oil and a light dash of balsamic syrup, is fresh and satisfying.

It was the pizza, though, that really took me aback. How can a Margharita pizza hold anything new? It’s one of the most classic pizzas in existence. Yes, but… I begged Schy to explain why there can be such difference in pizzas. After all, it seems like a simple thing — but he has already demonstrated that simplicity can be a complex matter.

“I think it’s a matter of timing,” he said. By that he didn’t mean timing the cooking, he meant watching the amount of time the pizza dough was left to rest before cooking. He wasn’t being doctrinaire; I got the impression it was the result of a lot of trying things out. But it worked.

Suffice it to say that this suddenly became a contender for my favorite pizza in the desert. It’s a contest I can’t resolve because my other possible contender is only served at dinner time. It would be impossible by some miracle of timing to arrange to eat them simultaneously, hot out of the oven, side by side. I’m just going to have to live with uncertainty.

Written by
Henry Fenwick
Special to The Desert Sun