What A Tasty Nation You've Got There

Not too much time for details, so I'm hoping some visuals will do. First, a menu from a brilliant dinner last evening:

Click on it to make it bigger, and if you do, your eyes will get bigger too. That menu doesn't include the beet, fresh ricotta, truffle tartlets and pheasant rillettes that Chef John Pettitt from Cadiz prepared, either.

This photo is to prove that a salad on a menu might not prepare you for what you'll get on the plate. You might not think a chef would slice apples on a meat slicer, then dehydrate them in a low oven for 4 hours, then form a crown with them for your salad greens. At least I sure didn't think that. Thanks, Chef Pilar Sanchez from Root 246 (which is obviously in good hands even with Bradley Ogden now gone).

And then a photo of dessert, as its menu name doesn't prepare you for all the crazy goodness and vanilla bean antennae of this. Thanks, Chef Renaud Gonthier (who else?). Obviously you can't go back in time to eat this dinner (sorry), but you can go to the Share Our Strength's Taste of the Nation event May 20 at the Montecito Country Club. You will never eat and rink as well while fighting hunger (all proceeds go to the SB Foodbank, and they turn each dollar of donation into $17 of food).