Old Films, New Chef at Restaurant Marcella

Dinner and a movie has been one of the standby dates probably since Edison, but Restaurant Marcella at Fess Parker’s Wine County Inn (2860 Grand Ave., Los Olivos, 688-7788) has decided to provide you with both in one fell swoop, if a lovely outdoor patio is a swoop. New chef Ron Stewart is dishing up three-course menus themed to each Friday’s screening, oddly enough called the Film Noir Dinner Series, even if only one (The Big Sleep) of the films screened (the series began in July) is really noir. They are true classics, however, with Citizen Kane screening this Friday, August 15, Preston Sturges’s delightful Sullivan’s Travels on August 22, and the inimitable Gable/Colbert screwball It Happened One Night August 29. As for Chef Stewart, he attended San Marcos High but then cooked around the world, including at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, the Netherlands, Paso Robles, the Caribbean, and Cabo San Lucas. Bringing all those influences together while not straying from the glories of wine county cuisine, Stewart should have only one concern in the coming weeks: people choking on their food while laughing too hard at the films.