I ate at Santa Fe Capitol Grill twice in the last two weeks. It’s a great restaurant and convenient when Zorr and I are heading to PetSmart for our weekly obedience class.  (both of us are doing well in class!)

The Capitol Grill describes its menu as New American Cuisine.  It has several salads, many seafood dishes and of course chicken and beef.  A couple of pasta dishes too.

I got the grilled mahi mahi last week.  The chef at the Grill likes a lot of different fruit cream sauces.  The mahi mahi was served with a mango cream sauce.  It was tasty but I thought the fish would have been better served with a (now ubiquitous, I know) mango salsa.  The cream sauce didn’t compliment the texture or flavor of the fish that well.

This last Friday I had the sea scallops with a tangerine cream sauce and it worked beautifully. It was served with Israeli couscous with dried cranberries which was delicious.  The baby spinach was a little salty for my taste but with a dollop of the tangerine sauce it was perfect.

So-called Israeli couscous are small, round, pasta-like granules made from semolina and wheat flour. While the Israeli company Osem claims to have “invented” Israeli couscous in the 1950s, it is simply a marketing term for what was known previously as North African berkukes or Palestinian matfoul and popular in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. Unlike familiar small, yellow semolina-based North African couscous, Israeli couscous (which is sometimes called pearl couscous) is twice as big and is toasted rather than dried. This gives it a nutty flavor and a sturdy composition that gives it a chewy bite and makes it stand up to sauce.

I’m intrigued by and want to try The Hawaiian Stuffed Chicken next time.  It’s described as a chicken breast stuffed with green chile, jack cheese, ham and pineapple and then topped with yes, a pineapple chile-infused cream sauce. The description alone makes the dish sound overwhelming.  A great comfort dish perhaps.  We’ll see…