Foodie alert: Not only is there a new butcher at Village Market, Frank Dorame, he has also cooked for a president. “I cooked lamb chops for President Clinton and Chelsea at the Vintage Club in Indian Wells,” said Dorame.
Dorame also served as meat and seafood director at upscale Jensen’s Finest Foods in Palm Desert for 12 years, as sous chef at the new Rowan Hotel in Palm Springs where he had his own niche eatery, the Juniper Table serving Mediterranean cuisine, and as meat director for Bel Campo Restaurant and Butcher Shop, a local farm-to-table restaurant on Wilshire Boulevard in Santa Monica. Bel Campo raised its own animals, and part of Dorame’s responsibility was to spend several weeks per month supervising the farm in Yreka and the company’s own USDA-inspected and Animal Welfare-approved processing facility.
Photo by Marshall Smith
Married with three young boys, ages 3, 6 and 11, Dorame said he wanted a position with less travel and jumped at the chance to take over both the meat department and kitchen at Village Market. “Jay and Scott [McCormack, Village Market owner and manager] gave me free reign to run this. Everything will be working off the meat case. We have a new menu beginning first of November where everything on the menu will be made from what is featured in the meat case. I’m also going to be offering butchery classes — maybe a beer-and-wine tasting with a particular cut of meat as the class subject — new offerings to bring people in to taste our menu and experience our restaurant.”
At Idyllwild Aura, on North Circle in the building that once housed Georgia’s Jewelry and Minerals, proprietor Rachelle Belleci, émigré from Carmel, beamed at the space and layout of her new healing center. Aromatherapy products, healing crystals, books, and other alternative health remedies are beautifully displayed and arranged in the shop’s front room. To the rear is the already much-heralded oxygen bar. No, it does not serve health beverages. Instead it serves 95 percent oxygen in 15- to 30-minute sessions at $1 a minute.
In a handout, Belleci explains that oxygen treatments heighten concentration, alertness
and memory, and can be a tonic for altitude adjustment, jet lag, headaches and hangovers. In “Facts About Oxygen,” the argument for oxygen supplementation suggests that 200 years ago, the Earth’s atmosphere was more oxygen rich and human’s breathed higher concentrations of oxygen than we do today, and that “all cancerous beginnings are due to lack of cell oxygenation.”
Belleci makes the case that oxygen treatments are positive and uplifting.
Also adjacent to Idyllwild Aura’s front room is a space that will eventually be used, on a rental basis to practitioners, for massage and acupuncture. In a space in a separate building in back, sound treatments and meditation classes will be offered.
Belleci proffers her establishment as a wellness center, a one-stop soothing environment for purchasing healing products and experiencing healing treatments. At this point, Aura will be open from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Thursday and Sunday, and from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Friday, Saturday and Monday, and closed Tuesday and Wedesday.
Finally, to sweeten the scene in the Idyllwild Village Center, is the Atomic Cow Creamery, adjoining Rough Riders Sporting Goods. Atomic Cow will be co-owned by Jennifer Fey, who also owns Rough Riders, but will primarily be under the purview of Fey’s mother, Judy Purvis. “We’d always wanted to do ice cream within Rough Riders,” said Fey, “but when the adjacent space came available, we decided to open the ice cream business as a separate shop. We’ll also be making and featuring homemade waffles and pies.”
The name Atomic Cow comes from the mid-century modern theme in which the shop is decorated. “The theme reflects the mid ’50s, the Atomic Age,” said Fey, who assures potential patrons that no radioactivity is involved in any products. “We’ll be doing everything locally sourced and homemade,” she said.
Hours for now are 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Friday through Sunday, holidays and long holiday weekends such as Thanksgiving and Christmas.
