Sinodinos: A Family Restaurant Focused on Quality

By Lowell Johnson

At Sinodinos, everybody is family. 

That means you're invited as the restaurant celebrates its grand opening as on from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. on Monday, Aug. 22.

Formerly Beck’s Steakhouse, the eatery is freshly repainted and the new owners have been working on a bold new approach to traditional local steakhouse fare.

In addition to the generous servings of prime rib, Sinodinos offers New York steaks, filet mignon, hamburger and 10 other beef selections.

Fresh seafood items include succulent jumbo tiger shrimp, halibut, salmon, scallops and, of course, lobster tail with drawn butter.

The wide range of appetizers and homemade soups include the minestrone, Boston clam chowder and a soup du jour.

Diners can finish up with delightful desserts — if you are too full after finishing the main course, the servers will wrap them up for you to take home.

The owners, husband-and-wife team Bill and Toula Sinodinos and business partner Max Goodwin, bought Beck's in 2010. While they have kept most of the menu in place and have retained almost all of the experienced kitchen crew and waitstaff, there are significant changes.

Great Quality, Great Food

Sinodinos now uses choice or prime cuts of Certified Angus Beef, aged for 28 days, for all its beef selections. (Bill Sinodinos calls this the “Rolls Royce” of meat.)

Several of the recipes, especially the sauces, have been improved by combining the experience of Bill Sinodinos — who also owns Dino’s Family Restaurant in Fremont — and current Sinodinos Chef Fernando Placido. They are especially proud of their combined effort in the pepper steak sauce.

Combining premium burgundy wine, onions, whole black pepper and demi-glace that the duo makes daily, the sauce evokes high compliments from their guests, Sinodinos said.

The two chefs take turns making the soup du jour.

The restaurant’s fish sauces contain real butter, fresh (not bottled) lemon juice, a variety of fresh herbs and seasonings such as oregano, garlic and thyme, and seasonal mushrooms.

For the health- and diet-conscious, the new menu contains several new chicken and pasta items, all with homemade light sauces.

Our Restaurant, Your Restaurant

Besides serving up quality food, the staff hopes to create a cozy community within the restaurant.

This is why waitress Priscilla Bravo, a veteran of the restaurant   commented that diners are referred to as guests, not customers.

 “This is our home. You are our guests, so we invite you into our home to have a fabulous dinner,” Bravo said.

The restaurant has even catered special events. Bravo, who also acts as restaurant manager and banquet manager, has arranged events that include up to 175 guests and giving them the option of ordering “off the menu.”

For Jessica Lemas, service is all about getting to know everyone who steps inside the restaurant.

As the daughter of Sinodinos bartender, Darryl Lemas, she has restaurant work in her blood, Jessica Lemas said. She proudly referred to her special talent of being able to remember returning guests’ names, their favorite drink requests and their regular menu selections.

Every staff member is important, and they often work together to better serve their guests, several of the staff said.

They’ve conducted frequent wine tastings and wine pairings in order to increase their own knowledge — and thus better serve their guests — and have proposed improvements to the venue.

Darryl Lemas recently talked the chefs into adding sliders to the appetizer menu, and two days later, he sold a total of nearly 200 hundred sliders, he said.

The owners of Sinodinos recently announced that the restaurant will be opening for lunch soon after next week's grand opening celebration, which will include complimentary appetizers and champagne. 

To learn more about Sinodinos, click here. To read more on what the author recommends about the restaurant, read his review below:

As a guest of Sinodinos on many occasions, often with our entire extended family, including our two and a half year old grandson, our family favorites are the prime rib, as well as the jumbo tiger shrimp, which is offered breaded and served with cocktail and tartar sauce or grilled with garlic butter sauce. Since the prime rib is only available on weekends, I often opt for the succulent ribeye steak during weeknights.

Having dined out rather frequently during the past several decades, I find the Sinodinos has rare qualities of teamwork and old-fashioned pride, which combined with the many years of restaurant experience by the chefs, owners and servers, provides the basis for an exciting fine dining experience at a fair price.

We have found that a trip to Sinodinos is an experience well worth repeating, as the restaurant with its friendly staff provides a broad range appeal to discriminating clientele of many kinds.

As a final comment, it doesn’t appear likely that Chef Gordon Ramsey, host of Kitchen Nightmares, or Robert Irvine host of Restaurant: Impossible, need to visit Sinodinos other than to enjoy a great meal.