Restaurant Profile A Little Bit of Pebble Beach on North Fremont Point Joe's focuses on seasonal fresh ingredients to draw larger crowds of locals to this re-invented restaurant.

By Dan Shafer

This is a fish story. No, it's not about "the big one that got away." It's more like "the big two that found a way."

Tim Fisher and Francisco Mellado met when both were working in the Portola CafÈ and Restaurant at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. The aquarium's full-service restaurant is well known among locals and tourists alike for offering delicious meals whose seafood dishes rigorously follow the "Seafood Watch" rules aimed at maintaining a sustainable ecosystem in the oceans of the world.

Today, Fisher and Mellado are manager and executive chef, respectively, as they partner in the one-year-old restaurant called Point Joe's. The restaurant is located at 2149 N. Fremont Street in Monterey, the location of the former Monterey Joe's, a Monterey fixture for 17 years before the new owners bought it.

Point Joe's menu is built almost entirely around locally grown produce and locally harvested seafood. Chef Mellado changes the menu every quarter as the seasonal shifts bring new produce into availability and seafood catches vary as well. "Every day, I look at the best local produce available through local distributors like Camacho's," Mellado says. "We also shop the Monterey Farmer's Market on Tuesdays for fresh fruit and vegetables."

From that fare, Mellado creates the daily specials that add even more variety to an already substantial menu of seasonal offerings anchored by a few year-around mainstays.

The distributors with whom Fisher and Mellado work are the same ones who service the Aquarium, so the suppliers know that the Point Joe's owners are demanding in their food requirements.

"They know our standards," Fisher says, "and they treat us accordingly."

One aspect of those standards is the continuation in Point Joe's of the sustainable seafood program of which Fisher and Mellado were a part of when they were at Portola CafÈ and Restaurant. They also insist on organic vegetables and fruit whenever possible and they buy very little non-local ingredients for their offerings.

A Fast Move
One Friday evening at a children's birthday party they were both attending, Mellado approached Fisher and said, "Let's open our own place together." They chatted about the idea for a while and then went their separate ways.

"The next day," Fisher recalls with a chuckle, "I opened the paper and there was an ad for a restaurant in the North Fremont area. It didn't say much except how much parking it had. I called Francisco and I said, 'Hey, Monterey Joe's is for sale!'"

On Monday, Fisher called the realtor. On Tuesday, he and Mellado looked at the facility. By Saturday, they'd made an offer on the place. If it hadn't been for the long delays associated with transferring a liquor license, they might have been open months sooner. As it was, they closed the deal in July, closed the doors for three days, and then re-opened under their new management. "We used that three days to do some remodeling, upgraded things a bit, created the final menu, brought in some local artists to hang their works," Fisher remembers.

The new owners kept almost the entire staff of Monterey Joe's, including the host and bartender who had both lasted through three previous owners of the restaurant. The team numbers about a dozen employees.

Both of the owners are largely self-taught restaurateurs. Fisher moved to California in 1982 from the Midwest. He worked at several Carmel restaurants before hiring on as sous chef at the Aquarium in 1987. He was soon promoted to Executive Chef and he stayed at the Aquarium until a management change in 2004 caused him to decide to move on. Mellado, a native of Mexico, came to the Aquarium in just a year after Fisher started there. He began as a dishwasher, a job he did for three years before he began a gradual promotional career trajectory that had him serving as Banquet Chef before he decided to throw in with Fisher on Point Joe's.

They named the restaurant after the famous diving landmark in Pebble Beach. "We wanted people to connect us to the cuisine available in Pebble Beach, and to try our menu, which is priced considerably lower than most Pebble Beach restaurants," Fisher says with a grin.

Menu Has Nice Touches
The menu varies so much from season to season that any description of the main offerings at Point Joe's is sure to be obsolete not long after it's written. The summer menu, for example, included a summer vegetable risotto cake with braised asparagus on the "Starters" portion of the menu. Other dishes were garnished with local fruit compotes and the ever-popular Castroville artichoke. One staple of the menu is the local favorite, Sand Dab Piccata. The fish is served by many local restaurants, but Mellado brings a special touch to his offering each season. Sauteed in a simple basil caper butter, the sand dabs are usually accompanied by one of the seasonal specialties Mellado cooks up. The summer vegetable risotto cake was a particularly nice addition.

Another diner favorite is the olive and asparagus stuffed skirt steak. The olives add a nice accent to this unusual and savory dish.

Mellado also offers diners fresh, homemade potato chips that are light, crisp and tasty. These provide an unusual and tasty beginning to your Point Joe's experience.

Point Joe's accepts reservations and recommends them for large parties. The restaurant is open beginning at 11:30 for lunch Monday through Friday. Dinner service begins at 3 p.m. seven days a week and the restaurant closes at 9 "or a little later if people are still wanting to come in," Fisher says.