Often a restaurant’s star dishes aren’t the entrées but the sides that accompany them. Take the “Green Phunque” at C. Knight’s Steakhouse in El Dorado Hills. “It’s definitely the dish that we’re best known for,” says manager Elly Navarro.
The amusing moniker is what first grabs the attention of diners, who inevitably fall hard for this seriously addictive dish. “Sometimes people are turned off by the name,” admits Navarro. They’ll ask me, ‘What the hell is the Green Phunque?’ So I explain it to them and I tell them it’s divine and they absolutely have to get it. No one has ever sent it back.”
So what is it, exactly? Cream of spinach gets the royal treatment with the addition of applewood smoked bacon, three types of mushrooms (cremini, oyster and shiitake). Then the rich mixture goes into a ceramic au gratin dish where it’s capped with aged cheddar and broiled to bubbly perfection.
“It pairs well with our steak, so that’s how lots of people have it, but it’s also on our tapas menu where we serve it with crostini, like a spinach dip,” says Navarro. “In fact, customers love the phunque so much that they’ve started adding it to their burgers and even to the beef frank.”
C. Knight’s Steakhouse
2085 Vine St., El Dorado Hills;
(916) 235-1730;
cknightssteakhouse.com
