Ocean Ranch’s menu serves up surf & turf

It’s dim inside the restaurant, despite multiple light fixtures on the walls and hanging from the ceiling. Natural light plays a significant role in the ambiance; the sun’s rays can brighten up the dining room when streaming through the front windows. The decor inside Ocean Ranch also favors darkness — the black floors and cushions on chairs and in booths, as well as the wood detailing on tables, chairs and at the host stand.

Besides setting the mood, the wall decorations can tell you about Ocean Ranch’s menu. Cattle horns adorn the walls, which are painted an ocean blue color with white accents, reminiscent of a nautical motif. Before you leave, you’ll see two illustrations of a mermaid in a martini glass on the walls framing the restaurant’s doors. And if you really need it spelled out, spot the pictures of cows and fish in Ocean Ranch. You can order a lobster roll (hot or cold, $27) during one visit and get short ribs ($32) the next time. The menu also includes options like the Duroc pork chop ($31) and chicken parmigiana ($29) to offer more variety.

“There’s a little bit for everybody,” Ocean Ranch chef/partner Enrico Glaudo says. “Usually, when you go to a seafood place, there’s hardly any meat, and when you go to a steakhouse, there’s hardly any seafood. So we kind of wanted to embrace both, and so far, it’s been working.”

Ever since he was young, Glaudo wanted to be a chef. He spent his childhood in the Italian Alps bordering France, just south of Mont Blanc, in a family full of food and hospitality workers.

“My grandma had a hotel, my mom had a restaurant, my dad had a butcher shop and deli shops,” Glaudo says.

Because of Italy’s educational system, Glaudo’s training started early. He was cooking his own food by 8 years old, and as a 14-year-old culinary student, he recalls preparing boneless chicken stuffed with chestnuts, pine nuts, raisins and breading without breaking the bird’s skin. He graduated from culinary school in the early ’80s before his 18th birthday.

While he was in school, Glaudo worked at hotels during the summer, and after graduating, he landed a job at a Michelin-starred restaurant called Locanda Dell’Angelo in Bergamo, which is east of Milan. He worked his way up through the ranks, from kitchen prep to chef at 21 years old, which he says made him the youngest chef in an Italian.

Michelin-starred restaurant at the time.

The call to the United States came from Los Angeles. In 1990, at 24 years old, Glaudo moved to the West Coast to work in restaurateur Piero Selvaggio’s Primi in West L.A. He was motivated to stay in America and learn English, but the experience was a culture shock at first.

“In Italy, if you serve food as fast as we do in America, they don’t want to get it because they think you have it pre-made,” Glaudo says while listing off the biggest differences between Italian and U.S. restaurants.

Glaudo stayed in Los Angeles and worked in restaurants for over 30 years, though he did take breaks, like when he worked at the Hotel Granduca in Houston for a couple of years in the 2010s. From that experience, he fell in love with Texas for our state’s open roads, which he explored with his motorcycle and camera.

Even though he returned to California, Glaudo was looking for a way to get back to Texas.

Glaudo opened Ocean Ranch with his partner and restaurateur Nando Silvestri in March. When looking for a location, he found plenty of positives on Greenville Avenue.

“We liked the feeling of the area,” he says. “It’s a city, but it still looks like a village. There’s a lot of people walking. There’s a lot of different businesses.”

Ocean Ranch is located in the space where the bakery/fine dining restaurant Carte Blanche used to be before closing last summer. The restaurant won recognition in Forbes Travel Guide and AAA, but it also came under scrutiny when chef and owner Casey La Rue was accused of falsifying his resume, though he has denied those claims. His wife and fellow Carte Blanche owner Amy La Rue started up a doughnut shop in Trinity Groves last summer after Carte Blanche shuttered. The La Rues are also planning to open a tasting-menu restaurant in Downtown this year.

When opening Ocean Ranch, Glaudo mentioned moving the bar from the middle of the restaurant over to the side and, of course, decorating the restaurant to draw attention to the menu’s fish and beef items. The chef says the vibe in Ocean Ranch is supposed to evoke comfort.

For now, Ocean Ranch is open for dinner six days a week (closed on Tuesdays) and opens early to serve brunch on the weekends. The brunch menu includes a variety of breakfast-inspired house specials, like short rib hash ($17), Alaskan benedict with crab cake ($22) and tres leches French toast ($14).

This is just the beginning for Ocean Ranch. When asked what he wants it to become in the future, Glaudo says, “Just a neighborhood restaurant where people come for food, find something different that not everybody has or prepared in different sauces.”

“We have different things, different unique things. And that’s pretty much what we wanted to be, not pretentious — just to come in, enjoy the food and be part of the neighborhood.”

Ocean Ranch, 2114 Greenville Ave., 972.803.3008, www.oceanranchrestaurant.com