Paloma, SAMsARA, What a Pair-A!

So often restaurant wine dinners are extravagant and obvious: why, yes, that tannic Cab is no mistake aside the steak. And how the Chablis-like Chard sings with the whitefish sautéed in the very same wine!  

So that’s why the recent SAMsARA dinner at Paloma on March 31 subtly surprised. The first of five delicious courses kicked off with—horrors!—a red wine. A chilled red wine. That was a 2022 Grenache from Spear Vineyard, a lighter, livelier version of the grape. SAMsARA winemaker Matt Brady--an efficient, ebullient host for the evening--called it "crunchy," which pleased me to no end as in my notes just prior I used the same term, meaning either I have a perceptive palate or we both love peculiar if precise adjectives. Its mineral, playful notes perked up with the Miliken Farms Japanese sweet potato, "brûléed" with a brown sugar BBQ sauce, hit with a bit of aioli, then strewn with sesame, scallion, and a vivid pickled ginger. Between the off-beat wine opening and the grounded yet vibrant first dish, everyone around the boisterous long table had to readjust their expectations for the evening. Very good was a bar at mere ankle-height for this crew.

The second course was spring itself on a plate, Tutti Frutti sugar snap peas, artfully sliced to expose their pretty innards, tossed with a rose dressing just faintly floral, crispy guanciale, and pickled red onion (a nice nod back to the pickled ginger in the previous course--it was that kind of sly segueing that made the evening even more memorable). The peas were buried in an avalanche of grated Pecorino, rich and salty. A steely 2022 Zotovich Chardonnay provided a laser focus to keep cutting the dish into sharper diamonds of delight. 

It turns out the process for the pairings began when Brady showed up with 18 wines for the Paloma staff, led by the unassumingly talented Paloma chef John Parker, to consider. Those flavor profiles got the kitchen's team mind spinning, and coming up with delights like the third course: a grilled oyster mushroom skewer--with all of that good red oak smoke inside--hiding a line of luscious Drake farms chèvre and also atop a shallow pool of green goddess, the two different creaminesses combining as a perfect complement to the mushroom umami. It needed a bit of textural balance that it got in two clever ways, one more typical--pepitas--and another spot-on, if oddball--toasted quinoa. The wine pairing for this course might have been the most by-the-book, but as Brady pointed out, "Pinot Noir is what we're best known for," so how could we complain? Especially when it wasn't just Pinot, it was 2022 Bentrock Vineyard PN, which Brady rightfully called "a rock star, an A+ vineyard." The wine's lean but far from mean raciness, that hint of wildness, unlocked even more flavor from the terrific dish it accompanied.

 

To be honest, they could have sent me home at that point a sated, elated man. I actually made sure to share a revised version of that old Borscht Belt saw to my nearby table mates, “Such good food—and such enormous portions!” And that was even prior to the fine servers dropping Snake River Farms wagyu tri-tip in front of me: not one, not two, but three hearty slices of precisely medium rare steak. A classic peppercorn au poivre sauce and scatter of chopped chive made the dish from Santa Maria but also from Ste. Marie, if you know what I mean, a culinary mash-up that completely worked. Plus, the humble inclusion of charred cabbage carried along the good time from the grill theme in the least pretentious, yet oddly scrumptious way. 

Brady poured one of his favorites of his own wines for this course, a 2021 Zotovich Syrah (the current release is the 2022). The 100% stem inclusion gave the wine a serious backbone, but only a hint of the green that stems can offer a wine. No, this was all about black pepper, as if it had its own au poivre sauce. Who needs a Cab when a Syrah can be this wonderful?

You know, when I started this I thought I might skip a typical course by course discourse, but I couldn't help myself. Writing this is such a lovely way to re-experience the delight of a night. And sure there was dessert, fortunately piquant and bright and light as these things tend to go--doesn't graham cracker crust seem somehow less dense? And toasted meringue, well, that's just air that's somehow spun from egg white and sugar--you could eat a bucket of that and it would barely register, no? Grapefruit curd is a fruit, so pretty much salad. White chocolate pearls are precious textural crunch and more eye candy than candy-candy, right? What's more, we washed it all down with a 2023 Blanc de Blanc that had the good breadiness you want from a sparkling wine but also a snappy depth and its own citrus bite. Another brilliant pairing that made the food better as the food made the wine better.

Kicking things off Brady made clear the SAMsARA mantra, "Let the site shine, don't put our fingers on the scales." That's a way to think of the entire evening, an unfussy yet artfully skilled celebration of gorgeous fruit and produce and proteins that would make any Santa Barbaran proud.

Coffee Week 2026: Renaud's Patisserie

Renaud’s Patisserie: Drip Coffee & Croissant ($5); Drip Coffee & Croissant BLT ($10) 

Be honest — so often, a BLT promises way more than it delivers. Flimsy bread, soggy lettuce, limp tomatoes, a surfeit of bacon strips, so 50 percent of your bites are sadly pork-less.

Now meet the BLT of your dreams. It starts with Renaud’s well-renowned croissants, the area’s best since the first of Renaud Gonthier’s spots opened back in 2008 in Loreto Plaza. There’s a rich aioli and not some dull mayo. Poor lettuce, so often a sandwich’s lackluster wallflower, here dances up a crisp, crunchy storm of bright green. The tomatoes have flavor. And then not just bacon, but also thinly sliced ham, lightly grilled for more richness and ancillary pork crunch. There’s red onion for those unafraid to partake of the pungent lily. You will make a happy, delicious, finger-licking mess.

Or go classic and order “only” a croissant, a celebration of lamination, baked butter, and fragile flake.

And either eats gets washed down with Peerless Drip Coffee, from one of the country’s premier roasters for more than a century. You can even choose from Hawaiian, French, or Guatemalan roasts, depending on how much bite you’d like.

Don’t be surprised if you also leave with a gorgeous chocolate Easter bunny for the kids. (Sure, for the kids.)

If you want to read about all the other Coffee Week deals, then do so at the Independent's site.

A Peek at Pico, Ten Years In

 When Kali Kopley and Will Henry opened Pico in Los Alamos in 2016, they walked the restaurant floor, taking turns cradling their one-month-old daughter, Winslow. To help celebrate Pico’s 10th anniversary on February 28, Winslow got on stage to join her dad’s band HWY 246 for a song. That’s some serious, personal markers for a business.

But it’s also a great emblem for what Kopley and Henry wanted the place to be when it began. They haven’t swayed from the vision Henry articulated when interviewed by the Indy then: “We want to create a great culinary experience using locally produced vegetables and meats, to make as much of our ingredients in-house as possible, and to pair it with the world’s best wines.” But beyond that, there’s “the mission to make you feel at home,” as not just their website puts it, but more specifically, the page called “Ethos.”

Care to read the rest then do so at the Independent's site.

Paul Willis’s ‘Orvieto’ Takes Readers Inside an Umbrian Hill Town

 

An American abroad has been grist for the literary mill, and Italy in particular has always held its attractions, as seen in work by poets from James Wright to former Santa Barbara Poet Laureate David Starkey (Circus Maximus and You, Caravaggio).

Now another former S.B. PL, Paul Willis, has turned to Italy for inspiration in his recently published chapbook Orvieto (Solum Literary Press). For a short book, it takes us on a deep dive into this historic, artful town in Umbria perched dramatically on a rock cliff (or, as Wikipedia puts it, “The flat summit of a large butte of volcanic tuff”).

Willis, an emeritus professor of English at Westmont, began work on the poems in the collection during visiting teaching stints in 2021 and 2024 as part of the Gordon-in-Orvieto program. He candidly admits how new this setting is to him, winning us over easily with his wide-eyed acceptance of the world. Typical of his often sly craft, he opens the book with “Shutters”— this is a book about seeing — and by the poem’s end, he has transformed himself into a songbird. Which he remains, tunefully bringing us the agony of history (especially World War II), the ecstasy of art (many poems are ekphrastic), and the spirituality of faith. For the latter, no one considers angels and saints more humanely, in particular, poor St. Julian. You don’t have to be Christian in the slightest to be moved by Julian’s fate, as Willis tenderly relates it.

Care to read the rest then do so at the Independent's site.

And don't miss Paul Willis's book reading/signing at Chaucer's Books on Thursday, March 12 at 6 pm.

A Review of John Darnielle's "This Year: 365 Songs Annotated: A Book of Days"

 

If the claim “songs are poetry” drives you batty, John Darnielle’s This Year: 365 Songs Annotated: A Book of Days will give you fits. Darnielle fruitfully teases the artful line from song to poem in many of this book’s entries, even if “what poetry’s good at,” as he puts it, “dense economies of rhythm, sound, and meaning” certainly describes the majority of his lyrics. But there’s another level, too: can a written version of the heard capture a song? For he writes, “The page is not the song; it’s an echo of the song, or a wobbly mirror of it, or a clarification of its position.” (Note his love of the clause building on the clause that begins with the book’s double-coloned title.)

First, though, I’m sure I’ve already lost some of you. And want to lose you more, for I can’t help but point out this lover of the direct address in lyrics early in his book asserts: “If I have the choice between rhyming ‘you’ or ‘me,’ though, I mean that’s not really even a choice, the second person is the preferred person when possible.”

Care to read the rest then do so at the California Review of Books.

Indy Burger Week 2026: Blue Owl & Yellow Belly

Hope you didn't give up cow for Lent as it's time for the Indy's Burger Week 26! I got to preview the tasty delights from The Blue Owl and Yellow Belly, but there are four dozen options on sale for $10 until next Wednesday, February 25, so get eating, my friends!

Dry-licious Indeed with Pentire and Loquita

Pentire--with a big assist from the bar team at Loquita--is making a convincing case that NA cocktails should always be called AF, and I don't mean alcohol free, I mean tasty AF. But I'm getting ahead of myself. This post is a report on a "Dry-licious Dinner" that Loquita offered on January 22nd, when every course came with alcohol-free pairings, almost all featuring products from Pentire. You know, Dry January, and the overall trend no matter the month--folks are giving up alcohol, somehow, even as the world quickly swirls down a Trump-turded toilet. I'm pretty positive my consumption has gone up. But that doesn't mean I'm not interested in what I know is better for me, plus new products are fun to experience, and I remain ever-hopeful the cracking of the non-alcohol nut that happened for beers can someday also happen for spirits and wine. I want to live in a world where I might not achieve dry but damp I can do.

You see the extensive, detailed menu above, so note I won't take you through every bite and sip, but I do want to point out some highlights. Like the kickoff offhandedly labeled "snacks" that put to shame the Ruffles potato chips and Lipton onion soup dip I was raised on. The pan con tamate on the left offers "magical" bread that's translucent--really, I mean, you know I wasn't drunk and imagining things. (Speaking of that, despite being sat at long tables, so you get to/have to meet new friends, conversation still happened just fine without the often assumed necessary ABV lubricant, so that was cool too.) The bread is made with kuzu flour, so ends up a bit gelatinous and crunchy-chewy, a fine foil to the acid-sweet tomatoes atop, with their snowfall of Manchego. Then the croqueta is a brilliant, crispy fried ball that bursts with rich béchamel, all kicked into overdrive from a gorgeous wrap of Iberico. Perfect bites, especially alongside the El Facil, bringing together Pentire Seaward, cilantro, elderflower, and habanero. It passed the taste buds like a St. Germain-laced margarita.

The U.S. Director of Sales for Pentire, James Thomas, was at the dinner, and announced we were attending Pentire's first such event in California, "So now you're all famous." Thomas and Pentire both come from England, the product line itself from Cornwall, and many of its ingredients are found along that rough and rugged coast. So the Seaward bottling includes sea rosemary, woodruff, sea buckthorn, wild seaweed, and pink grapefruit, and the resulting liquid is botanically bright, vaguely gin-ish, but with more saline and light sweetness. 

Throughout, the Pentire products don't try to ape a particular spirit, but make a blend of distilled botanicals that sing on their own. That really helps with what's the usual disappointment with alcohol-free spirits--even when the flavor gets close, the mouthfeel is hard to come by without the sugars associated with alcohol. So, for example, you can quickly say, "I know tequila, and you're no tequila" to other brands attempts to mimic specifically. Not so with the more adventurous Pentire.

It helps even more that the Loquita bar team--led by Emilio Uribe--loves to play and does so brilliantly. Thomas recalled the first time he brought the products in hoping to interest the restaurant and the bartenders just grabbed some bottles and got to work as he talked, cooking up clever combos on the spot. "Loquita put this dinner all together," he insisted, "I only dropped off the product. We make this liquid; but these guys bring it to life." Indeed, if you didn't get to attend the dinner, the Bengala served that evening is a constant on the Loquita menu. Kicking off with Pentire's Coastal Spritz, it comes to spicy life with pomegranate, cinnamon, ginger, lime, clove, and a splash of soda water. 

The Pentire Coastal Spritz fits neatly on the NA side of the light Amari, thanks to its botanicals, blood orange, sea rosemary, and oakwood (a hit of tannin never hurt). Think Aperol without its 11% ABV and less sweetness. Turns out it's Pentire's most popular product.

Here's to Loquita stepping out of the typical wine or cocktail dinner box and trying something new--there's no question chef Cristian Granada and his team love rising to the occasion (oh, that arroz dish, a most elegant of paella-esque treats). And the evening ended without any of us feeling we'd missed a thing.