Adventures in Dining Out: Public House – Temecula, CA

This past Saturday Hubs and I met up with another couple in Temecula to go wine tasting.

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Temecula is only about 1.5 hours from our place in Dana Point, and I really don’t know why we don’t go there more often. I might have something to do with not wanting to drive 1.5 hrs after you’ve been sampling wine all day. Maybe.

We hit about 4 wineries, my favorite being Monte de Oro. The tasting room has only been open for about 7 months, but it had the best wine I tasted all day… but that is another post for another time… or trip because I didn’t take any pictures. Oops.

After wine tasting we needed dinner. A friend of Tiffany’s had recommended a place in Old Town Temecula (which I had no idea existed, but now love) called Public House. We’d asked the last winery we went to about it and he said it was good, but sometimes there was a long wait and then recommended something at the mall. The mall? No, thanks. We decided to try our luck with the wait. And, lucky we were because we were seated right away… outside, but right away. It was about 100-ish in Temecula that day, but since it was the evening the heat was cooling off and the patio had a ton of umbrellas for shade. Once we had water and more wine, everything was great.

Our waiter was AWESOME! He made an effort to learn our names and when one of us made a joke about giving him a fake name he offered up his stripper name (you know, pets name and the first street you lived on) as an alternate for his name. Soooo, we called him Sasha Cherry all night.


After examining the menu we decided to start with some Goat Toast because it sounded delicious, had cheese, and would buy us more time to decided on our main dishes.

I liked this so much I promised to recreate it at home this week (and did last night). It was sweet, yet savory. Creamy, yet crunchy. Light, yet a little heavy. Mmmmm.

Up next we ordered the Rueben Goes Public, Herbed Thyme Square and Missin' "R" Geeky Beefy.

It’s so hard to get pictures of people food when it comes to table, because everyone just wants to EAT, DANGIT! But here it goes, Hubs had the Rueben Goes Public…

When I asked him to describe it for you guys, he said, “Tas-tee!” Thanks for all the descriptive words, Babe ;-)

Tiffany had the Herbed Thyme Square…

She said the beef has really tender and the it was spiced perfectly. We had to ask what the purple herb was, because it was on both our dishes. It’s purple basil. Both of us were like, “huh? never heard of purple basil, but it’s delicious.” Once I Googled it, I totally remembered the plant, but never thought to eat it… probably because I had no idea what it was.

Jeremiah and I both had the Missin’ “R” Geek Beefy…

See more purple basil! I love tzatziki and I’m also really picky about my tzatziki. I needs to have the tart yogurty flavor, you know? Well, this met and exceeded my tzatziki requirements. Again, the meat was tender and excellently seasoned. Jer and I both ate our entire dish… I was FULL!

As you can see in the last picture beer and wine was consumed. Public House has an excellent beer and wine menu. Including my favorite Sauvignon Blanc, Kim Crawford.

After dinner we hung out on the patio, drank more wine and enjoyed the band. The patio had a great vibe and we met a lot of fun people. We will definitely be going back here the next time we’re in Temecula. Public House uses the best in local, seasonal, and sustainable products, so menu and specials change regularly. I'm excited to see what they'll have in the Fall.