New Kailua bistro offers comfort, casual charm

Bella Bistro is a lot like its Kailua surroundings, laid-back and casual. The name and location at the site of the former Zia’s Caffe suggests an Italian bent, but no, it’s simply named after chef-owner David Kaminski’s and wife and manager Stephanie Pierobello’s well-fed chocolate lab, a sometime presence at the open-air restaurant.

It’s too bad it opens to the traffic on Hamakua Drive instead of the stream and bird sanctuary on the opposite side of the parking lot, but the couple has created a living wall of plants as a barrier to the street.

Once you get into your meal, you’ll forget where you are anyway. The casual, come-as-you-are setting is charming, and it feels like a luxury to escape to a place where you don’t have to worry about being on display.

The restaurant combines Greek, Spanish, French and Italian influences in a short but sweet menu of familiar fare, such as the lunchtime Greek burger topped with feta, tomatoes and cucumber, or dinner starters of hummus or French onion soup.

If you’re the sort who could never make sense of fusion cuisine, you’ll find comfort in being able to identify everything on the plate here.

The lunch menu offers a handful of entree salads and sandwiches. If you have a craving for Greek flavors, you can get the combination of feta, tomatoes, onions and cucumbers atop a burger ($12), or in salad form ($12) with romaine and kalamata olives.

The Nicoise ($17) is a generous assemblage of spring greens, grape tomatoes, green beans, red potatoes, boiled eggs and onion, all topped off with buttery, textured seared salmon.

Of all the dishes, I find the pastas here the weakest, but some will find solace in linguine with garlic, basil and marinara ($12) after adding in extras of Italian sausage ($5) or a trio of old-fashioned meatballs ($5) as big as baseballs.

Lunch and dinner courses are presented on the same menu, igniting cravings for some starters that can’t be filled at lunch, meaning a return trip in the evening for the likes of a baked blue crab artichoke dip ($15) served with slices of focaccia, grilled seasonal vegetables with polenta ($12), and flatbread pizzas of the day ($12) served with a small helping of Caesar salad. A recent offering of vegetarian pizza and pesto was divine, and one picky eater at the table could not get enough of the rich, creamy crab-artichoke dip.

Seared scallops ($21) are beautifully browned and served with a white wine lemon sauce and rice pilaf layered with green beans. I don’t care for the similarity of textures of the scallops and rice, though now that I think of it, I could probably have requested the potatoes that come with the steak offering. It would be nice to give diners some options.

The 12-ounce rib-eye steak ($26) was perfect, char-broiled and topped with caramelized onions and sherry mushrooms, with garlic fingerling potatoes on the side.

And oven-roasted garlic shrimp ($23) was something of a surprise, with butterflied jumbo shrimp that looked as big as lobster tails and were just as flavorful, served over Alfredo campanelle pasta. It’s not every day you see this flowery, bell-shaped pasta, about the same size as penne but softer, and the bell opening tends to hold onto more of the sauce.

Dessert features favorites like cheesecake and a rich, old-fashioned chocolate cake a la mode topped with a crust of roasted, slivered almonds.

As casual as Bella Bistro is, you’ll leave feeling that you’ve treated yourself to something special.

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Nadine Kam’s restaurant reviews are conducted anonymously and paid for by the Star-Advertiser. Reach her at nkam@staradvertiser.com.