Caprice Cafe

Downtown Redlands and the Case for Deliberate Dining

East State Street in Redlands runs through one of the Inland Empire's more composed downtown cores. The street retains enough early-twentieth-century brick and low signage that arriving on foot feels different from the strip-mall approach that defines much of San Bernardino County's dining scene. Caprice Cafe occupies 104 E State St, and the address alone places it within a walkable cluster of independently operated businesses that have made Redlands a reference point for travelers moving between Los Angeles and the high desert rather than just a freeway exit.

The Inland Empire has historically been underrepresented in California's wine-forward dining conversation, a gap shaped partly by geography and partly by the gravitational pull of Los Angeles and the Coachella Valley.

What the White Star Recognition Actually Means

Star Wine List, the Stockholm-based wine guide that covers programs across more than 80 countries, awarded Caprice Cafe its White Star designation, with the listing published in July 2022. The White Star tier on Star Wine List is reserved for restaurants where the wine offering demonstrates genuine curation: range, sourcing intelligence, and a coherent point of view rather than a default distributor list. For context, this is the same publication that covers programs at properties like Le Bernardin in New York City and The French Laundry in Napa, meaning the evaluative standard travels across price tiers but not across quality tiers.

That a cafe-format venue in a secondary California market earned this recognition places Caprice in a narrow category. Across California, the restaurants drawing this kind of wine-list attention tend to cluster in San Francisco, the Napa-Sonoma corridor, and Los Angeles. Venues like Lazy Bear in San Francisco, Providence in Los Angeles, and Single Thread Farm in Healdsburg represent the upper end of that California wine-program conversation. Caprice operates at a different scale and price point, but the recognition places it on the same evaluative map.

Sourcing as Editorial Lens

The Star Wine List designation functions as a proxy for a broader sourcing discipline. Wine programs that earn recognition from specialist guides tend to reflect the same underlying commitment as kitchens that prioritize ingredient provenance: both require the operator to make choices that go beyond the path of least resistance. Southern California's produce infrastructure is substantial, with the region's growing season and proximity to both coastal and desert agriculture making local sourcing practically viable in ways that colder-climate cities cannot replicate. Restaurants that take that infrastructure seriously as a sourcing base are operating with a regional advantage that rarely gets acknowledged in national dining coverage.

For comparison, the farm-to-table framing that defines places like Blue Hill at Stone Barns in Tarrytown or Addison in San Diego rests on tight relationships between kitchen and producer. The philosophy behind those programs is that what comes in the back door determines what can happen at the pass. A cafe operating in Redlands with a curated wine list is, at minimum, demonstrating that the same selectivity is being applied to at least one major procurement category. Whether the kitchen extends that discipline to the plate is a question the White Star alone cannot answer, but it raises the probability.

Redlands in the Inland Empire Dining Context

Redlands is not where most California dining coverage lands. The Inland Empire as a whole receives far less editorial attention than its population and geographic scale would suggest, and restaurant criticism from Los Angeles-based publications tends to treat the region as peripheral. That dynamic is shifting incrementally, partly because of venues like Caprice that attract recognition from sources with no local boosterism incentive, and partly because the region's own food culture has matured alongside its demographics.

For travelers, Redlands sits roughly 65 miles east of Los Angeles on the I-10, making it accessible as a stop on longer routes toward Palm Springs or the Arizona border. The downtown cluster around East State Street includes Citrone, another independently operated venue in the same corridor, giving the area enough dining density to warrant a deliberate visit rather than a quick stop. Our full Redlands restaurants guide covers the wider scene, and for planning the broader trip, our full Redlands hotels guide, bars guide, wineries guide, and experiences guide provide the supporting context.

Placing Caprice in a Wider Reference Frame

The most useful way to think about Caprice is not in comparison to the grand-format tasting-menu restaurants that dominate California's dining headlines. Venues like Alinea in Chicago, Emeril's in New Orleans, The Inn at Little Washington, or 8 1/2 Otto e Mezzo Bombana in Hong Kong and Alain Ducasse at Louis XV in Monte Carlo occupy a category defined by theatrical ambition and destination pricing. Caprice is not in that conversation, and framing it that way would misread what it offers.

The more relevant comparison is the tier of independently operated, wine-serious cafes and bistros that function as anchors for their local dining scenes in mid-sized American cities. These venues matter because they set a standard for what the everyday dining experience in a neighborhood can look like when an operator makes deliberate choices about procurement, program, and presentation. The White Star recognition is the kind of external signal that confirms the standard is being held without the fanfare of a major-market platform.

Planning a Visit

Caprice Cafe is located at 104 E State St in downtown Redlands. Redlands' downtown is compact enough to combine a meal here with a broader exploration of the East State Street corridor on foot. Given the wine program's recognition, arriving with appetite for the list rather than treating it as an afterthought is the more informed approach. For the wider Redlands picture before you go, our full Redlands restaurants guide covers how the local scene has developed and where Caprice sits within it.