Happy and Hopping. I'd been looking for an opportunity to try Cafe Z in Greenbrae for lunch and finishing up with tests at Marin General around lunch gave my Dad and I the perfect opportunity. The last time I wrote about Cafe Z, it was for a celebratory breakfast, and it has been a consistently great breakfast spot, but how about lunch?

Cafe Z is a casual yet stylish place to eat where you order at the counter and pick up your food from the cooking area. The first thing I noticed is how busy it is for lunch, and they've put a 'buzzer' system into place for orders. And the operations manager, Rick, was quite friendly and popped up and handed us our lunches before we could stand up after seeing the buzzer flash.

Dad tried the Turkey and Gruryere with Radicchio, Dijion, and Tomato Pannini with a green salad. Never having had Pannini before, he commented that they had him the heel ends of the bread! I giggled and told him about the joys of Italian sandwiches. He loved the sandwich.

I'm such a sucker for dill that I ordered the Egg Salad with Dill. I tried the curried potato salad, which was a nice twist on potato salad. The dill in the egg salad was a good match as well.

I saw Rick putting out copies of a shiny new book "From Warehouse to Your House" and went to browse. Rick kindly pointed out that the author, one of the restaurant's founders and the person behind the creative recipes at Cafe Z, Sally Simpson is in town, and in fact just outside the door autographing copies. With that title, how could I resist? You'll remember my recipes using 'Costco pantry' items (October 27th, and November 16th posts with recipes) -- could always use a few more ideas for those items where I overstocked. Oh, now thinking of that, I'd best end here and take a read!