Zoe Kleinbub, co-owner of dual-restaurant concept Paradisaea and Dodo Bird Donuts in Bird Rock along with husband Eric, comes by her reliance on whole organic foods naturally.
For her, it’s a family tradition.
Zoe’s mother and grandmother were Russian immigrants who came to Ellis Island after living in a German prison camp during World War II. Her grandmother Katya was a cook in the prison camp. Her mom, Amine, who learned from her grandmother, ultimately opened a burger restaurant in FiDi, the Financial District of Manhattan in New York City, at age 60 using money she’d made off writing a book about her life.
Consequently, Zoe, an understudy to mom Amine, grew up with an organic, everything-from-scratch, whole-food approach long before it was ever mainstream or fashionable. It’s a culinary legacy that has been passed along and is very much alive and practiced daily at Paradisaea.
Today, Paradisaea’s palate-pleasing burger and the breakfast sandwiches served at Dodo Bird use the same buns that Zoe’s late mother used at her New York restaurant. This has helped Paradisaea gain notoriety. Recently, the La Jolla eatery was added to the 2024 Michelin Guide as a new and recommended restaurant for their California selections. The Michelin Guides are a series of French guidebooks, which, since 1900, have reviewed restaurants awarding up to three Michelin stars for excellence to a select few.
Of her mentor, mother Amine, Zoe noted: “She was an amazing cook who you would only find in the kitchen. I grew up with her cooking. She would use (only) the best ingredients. Cooking was just a way of life (for her).”
Concerning her family’s culinary influence on her Zoe said, “It was instilled in me from birth by my mother that what matters is your product. This means you had to get whole foods, use no refined sugars or processed foods, and no use of plastics or pesticides. My mother was talking about organics when it wasn’t even a term.”
Zoe picked up the practice from Amine of seeking out “special purveyors” to get the best ingredients ensuring the food products you served were as wholesome as possible. That meant getting all your meats from the butchers you knew and trusted, as well as shopping at farmers markets to get the freshest foodstuffs.
The drawback of using special purveyors, noted Kleinbub, is that it was “not only more expensive but it took more time to find what you were looking for.” But it was worth it, she noted, adding it made for a warm and inviting environment for guests to enjoy the foods you prepared for them. Zoe pointed out her mom had a well-deserved reputation for “always inviting my friends and everyone who wanted to come over to my house to eat.”
Zoe’s mom’s wholesome approach to cooking and her generous attitude toward accommodating guests while treating them to her cooking has carried over to Zoe’s present-day attitude toward food preparation and service.
“My ideology is that the product comes first,” Kleinbub said. “You want the best of what you can get. This is what you get at Paradisaea, regardless of whether it’s the food, the silverware, the napkins, or the glassware; it’s all highly scrutinized. And it has to ‘feel’ and ‘look’ good. You can feel that in everything we bring into the environment of Paradisaea.”
Kleinbub said Paradisaea has only the finest of fish overnighted weekly from Los Angeles. The restaurant also gets its meat from Cream Co., A 100% natural whole-animal butchery and distributor for sustainable and regenerative ranches. It’s one of the things that sets the La Jolla restaurant apart. “You can taste the difference between something that is cared for versus something that is not cared for,” Kleinbub noted.
Asked if there are any lifelong lessons to be gleaned from her family’s wholesome culinary experience, Kleinbub concluded: “Everything my mother and grandmother said to me was the truth, that it is the extra level of care and thought that goes into your food that matters. At Paradisaea, we’re getting the best of the best. And then doing something with it, and letting the customer experience it (food) the way it needs to be prepared.”
PARADISAEA
DODO BIRD DONUTS
Donde: 369 Bird Rock Ave.
Información: paradisaea.com.
