Foodies who have been lamenting last summer’s closing of the Michelin one-star restaurant, Trevese in Los Gatos, will rejoice to hear that Chef Mike Miller is cooking again in the South Bay.

Since January, the chef who dazzled with creative, elegant fare at his Trevese and at his previous restaurant, Umunhum in San Jose, has taken over the helm at the Silicon Valley Capital Club in downtown San Jose.

Unfortunately, the 17th-floor restaurant is a private, members-only dining establishment, which means you have to belong to it to get in or have a member invite you.

But recognizing the caliber of chef now on board, the club has big plans to open the restaurant to the general public on select days in the near future. So, stay tuned.

About 80 applicants applied for the head chef job there, and only a few were restaurant chefs, according to chair of the culinary committee, Stu Carson. Miller blew away the competition when he cooked a Dover sole during his tryout that Carson still calls the best fish dish he’s ever eaten.

Miller and I go way back. During my time as a food writer at the San Jose Mercury News, he and I collaborated on two memorable Thanksgiving stories, where we pitted our respective menus against one another. Now, he gets the holiday off, though.

I was invited as a guest last week to try the new menu at the club, where about 40 percent of the menu has been revamped with Miller’s own dishes. He and his sous chef, John Burke, who also came from Trevese,  have big plans to shake things up on the once stodgy menu. Already, Miller is baking his own popovers, adding grass-fed beef to the menu, and instituting a new four-course, prix-fixe tasting menu ($40; or $60 with wine pairings). He’s also contemplating adding house-made charcuterie.

Some of the standouts of the evening were the canapes of foie gras terrine layered imaginatively with sweet cantaloupe; an amuse bouche of salmon tartare with caviar and preserved lemon; and meaty and very crisp pork pot stickers in a sticky, thick orange ponzu glaze ($8).

Among the starters, the Maine lobster cocktail ($12) piled high in a sundae glass with papaya, avocado and crisp tortilla chips was fun eating.

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Earlier this year, I, like so many other foodies, mourned the passing of San Francisco’s Poleng Lounge, one of the few restaurants not only to feature modern Filipino food, but to do it exceedingly well.

So, I rejoiced when I heard that the Mosquito had landed — at least temporarily.

For those in the know, that’s the nickname of Filipino-American Chef Tim Luym, formerly of Poleng Lounge, who earned that moniker during college, when he used to deejay at club gigs by scratchin’ vinyl to create distinctive sounds. And nothing scratches more than a mosquito, right?

Luym now can be found in the kitchen at the barely two-month old Attic restaurant in downtown San Mateo, where he is the consulting chef. Whether he sticks around permanently, remains to be seen. Luym would only play coy, saying he was still exploring all his options.

For those who have missed the bold, memorable flavors of Luym’s former Southeast Asian small plates restaurant in San Francisco, you’ll be glad to know the menu at Attic features a lot of the same dishes you fell in love with there.

The vibe also is similar. Walk in the doorway, and you’ll find yourself first in the Bar under Attic — a small, bare-bones speakeasy on the ground floor that stays open late. Walk up a flight of stairs in the corner, and you’ll enter the actual restaurant upstairs, done up in warm reds and browns, and decorated with terracotta tea pots and wood crates. Dark, polished tables are set with caddies of chopsticks. Sliding glass doors overlooking the bustling street below let in a cool breeze on warm summer evenings.

Although my two gal pals and I paid our tab, Luym sent out extra goodies as a welcoming gesture because I’ve had the pleasure of interviewing him multiple times over the past few years.

The best way to enjoy yourself, of course, is to share all the dishes family-style. That’s just what my friends and I did, starting with sweet potato fries ($3.50), which were wonderfully crisp. To dunk them in, there was a spicy, house-made ketchup made with banana. Yes, banana, which lent a wonderful note of fruity, tropical sweetness, so much so that you wonder why more ketchups don’t have banana incorpoated into them.

Then came monster-sized house-made Sinigang Chicharonnes ($3.50). They looked like tortilla-sized shrimp chips. But one bite revealed their porky, fatty lushness.

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