Salutations, gentle diner! ‘Tis the week of the grand collegiate rivalry. Huzzah! We are, of course, looking forward to the exalted upcoming game in which our beefy, Cardinal-hued male representatives will grapple intimately with some other sweaty men as they hash out our cherished intercollegiate hatred and toss around the ol’ pigskin. Yippee!

In preparation for what we anticipate will be a good sports-based trouncing of those rapscallions at Cal, we’ll treat to you a good trouncing of a nominally Cal-related eating establishment: The California Café.

This eatery is rarely frequented by Stanford students, and for good reason. It’s pricey, and it’s not particularly accessible; it’s hidden in a large barn on Welch road, a block down from Nordstrom. And to be honest, it’s aimed at the kind of people who shop at Nordstrom: the charmingly tasteless elderly and their victims (grandchildren and daughters-in-law). Did we mention that there was soft rock and jazz playing over the loudspeakers? Because there was. Ewwwwww. But apparently the Café has not been unsuccessful; it boasts six nation-wide locations, including one in King of Prussia, PA. (!)

The interior decor of the restaurant is best described as Howard-Johnson-meets-alpine-ski-lodge-chic. The HoJo factor is produced by the Cafe’s immaculate hotel-furnishings aesthetic. There are tidy booths, weirdly floral fabric patterns, potted plants, liberally scattered poinsettias and other additions that remind one forcibly of a hotel brunch area. And lo, the Café serves brunch on Saturdays and Sundays from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.! Anyway. Above the large-ish dining area arches a lovely, dark raked roof (it is, after all, a converted barn). The place has room for outdoor and indoor dining, in addition to an event room.

In stark contrast to the straight-laced quality of their decor, the California Café serves up a flirty menu that is alternately enticing and overpriced. Sure, our mouths started watering as soon as we read the “Small Plates” menu, which included shrimp satay with mango coulis, pork potstickers with chili-garlic aioli and salmon spring rolls. (If that list doesn’t make your mouth water, then we can’t help you; you’re a frigid diner. Stop reading. Just stop it.)

But witness how the aforementioned “Small Plates” list is also unbearably pretentious. Consider that “shrimp satay with mango coulis” roughly translates to “shrimp on a long toothpick with mushed mango,” and that “chili-garlic aioli” simply means “fancy mayonnaise.” We appreciate the highbrow food vocab, but calling mayonnaise “aioli” doesn’t mean that one can charge $7.75 for the five pork potstickers that accompanied the “aioli.” Five. We find this abuse of power to be both repugnant and damaging to our tiny wallets.

And speaking of pretension, we should probably mention that the “Small Plates” menu is divided into the following categories: leafy, savory, sassy and lively. “Sassy” includes crab cakes. Oh, those sassy crabs. The “Main Plates” menu features only three categories: water, fire, and earth & air. These groups make slightly more sense, as they seem to indicate where their contents come from. “Water,” for example, includes the seafood dishes. “Earth & air” features both airborne critters land-based mammals. “Fire” includes tofu and pasta. (???)

We should also mention that the main plates range between $11.95 (for tofu, because who wants that?) and $31 (for filet mignon, because who doesn’t want that?). Most dishes fall between $20 and $25, and inexplicably pair foods people want and don’t want. More on that soon.

For starters, Janet had the “Warm Cambozola,” which was essentially a mini-fondue accompanied by crackers, tomato garnish and garlic. All this for only $10.50! (Yikes). We did enjoy it, though; the garlic came in whole cloves, which was pretty neat. The cheese was lovely, the crackers were a bit dull, but, all in all, the idea was clever, and the result was rather tasty. Ruth ordered the aforementioned potstickers, which came in a tiny frying pan, into which our waiter poured the aioli at the last minute, producing a dramatic bout of steam. The waiter blushed and muttered, “It’s supposed to be theatrical. Like Benihana.” Theatricality aside, the potstickers were decent: the soy sauce caramelized onto the unusually thin dumpling wrapper, which encompassed the same sort of unidentifiable-but-tasty meat filling that Jing Jing serves up.

We were a little full when the entrees arrived — the appetizers, in keeping with the California aesthetic, are anxious to please and of hearty proportions — but we gave the food the old college try (unlike those wimpy Berkeley whippersnappers, who are cowards and girly-men). Janet had the Flat Iron Steak ($24), which came with a “potato brulee” topped with onion rings, white cheddar and sour cream. The potato/onion accompaniment was tasty but artery-stopping. The steak, which Janet takes medium-rare like any decent caveman, was a bit heavily loaded with peppercorn, but, on the whole, fresh and pleasantly undercooked.

Ruth pulled from the “Water” menu and had the ahi tuna on a bed of udon noodles with mango garnish and veggies ($25), for which our bashful waiter laid down on the table a single pair of cheap, disposable chopsticks. It was anticlimactic. The ahi was as fresh as the steak, with a light sear around the periphery so as to minimally damage the fish, and the mango garnish was tangy without being cloying. The accompanying noodles, however, were arranged in a weird salad assortment and weighed down the dish. Janet chimed in with the opinion that they were “fast-food-quality udon noodles,” and Janet is from Korea, so she probably knows about Asian things. The whole ahi enterprise was served on a triangular plate, just to emphasize the innovative Asian-ness of this dish. Again, can you see how this appeals to the elderly? Oh my goodness, Asia! Asian foods! Do they really eat on triangular plates there? This fish isn’t even cooked! etc.

We then solicited a dessert menu from our overly friendly waiter and were tempted by a range of excellent-sounding options, such as the warm chocolate truffle cake, pumpkin cheesecake, and green apple creme brulee. The dessert choices range between $5 and $12.50, and the menu also includes teas, espresso drinks and some lovely sounding alcoholic espresso drinks that we couldn’t order. Bummer.

We were tempted by all of the delicious, conventional foods that we know to be delicious, but when we spotted the Poached Bosc Pear (served with “caramel balsamic gelato, sweet balsamic reduction”) we knew we had finally found something daring and dangerous to test our mettle as real men. Here was a story we could tell the grandchildren, an episode to persuade our parents that Palo Alto was a rollickin’ dangerous place.

The pear dish arrived as a fan of sweetened, syrup-drenched pear slices topped with dark brown balsamic reduction, crumbled peanuts and the mysterious “caramel balsamic gelato,” which was also drizzled with balsamic reduction. The dangerous, smoky-sharp flavor of the vinegar still shot through the reduction, and its ubiquity on the plate made eating dessert a time-consuming, unsatisfying ordeal — not unlike perennially following Stanford’s football season with the hope that someday we’ll win more games than we lose. The caramel balsamic gelato was intriguingly tangy, but the rest of the unfortunate dish left us gulping down water. We can blame this fiasco on the California Café’s own Chef Bob who, as their website tells us, worked his way up to being Executive Chef by travailing long and hard as a kitchen lackey and “Saucier.” We do not tell a lie. Ruth, too, used to be saucier, but childbirth really takes that out of a woman.

But wait! We’re supposed to end on a spirited, self-congratulatory note that promotes a rivalry we care next to nothing about. OK, what about this: if Cal’s American Football (not to be confused with futbol) team is as terrible as the California Café’s pears-with-balsamic-reduction, then... well... we might lose by the low double digits. Go team!

For more on the California Café, visit californiacafe.com, at your peril.