And here Chryss got a pescatarian sub that earned its many envious glances from other diners. Thanks, La Paloma, for being so accommodating. Indeed, overall the service was top-notch, even navigating around the large single table in the back patio.

Friday, March 29, 2024
Can't Get Over La Paloma Pairing Dinner
And here Chryss got a pescatarian sub that earned its many envious glances from other diners. Thanks, La Paloma, for being so accommodating. Indeed, overall the service was top-notch, even navigating around the large single table in the back patio.
Saturday, March 23, 2024
Silvers Goes for the Gold
When you hear the too-common story of a Santa Barbara restaurant taking 30 months to open, you assume it will be a tale of permit hell and financial woe. But for Lennon Silvers Lee, whose big gambit Silvers Omakase finally debuted on February 6, that long wait was a secret blessing. “I had two and a half years to work on my dream restaurant,” he asserts. “I went all-out.”
Lee certainly has had help going all-out. His partners in Silvers Omakase are venture capitalists Mitchell and Lisa Green, who befriended him when he opened Sushi|Bar in Montecito with his brother Phillip Frankland Lee (the Top Chef alum who was behind The Monarch and Silver Bough in Montecito and still heads the Scratch Restaurants empire). When older brother Phillip pulled the plug on every regional business but Sushi|Bar in October 2019, hoping to spin the sushi omakase concept into more locations, Lennon decided it was time to move out on his own. “I’m just a young kid with a 4-year-old,” he admitted during a long, recent interview sitting at his sushi bar. “It was a big leap to leave my brother and do something of this caliber.”
Care to read the rest then do so at the Independent's site.
Thursday, March 14, 2024
A Review of "The World According to Joan Didion" by Evelyn McDonnell
You know you’re in great authorial hands when on page two of this book Evelyn McDonnell insists about her subject Joan Didion, “Narrative was her expertise and her enemy.” Not just a great insight, that line connects the dots between these two powerful women. McDonnell skillfully offers all the lessons she’s learned from years of reading, considering, and teaching (currently journalism at Loyola Marymount University) Didion. So both can wield a rapier thrust of a declarative, quick last sentence of a paragraph. For as McDonnell closes one graph, “For Didion, words were earned, not spent.” Indeed.
McDonnell, editor of Women Who Rock: Bessie to Beyoncé, Girl Groups to Riot Grrrl, is not attempting biography with The World According to Joan Didion, or even a literary biography, but something more attuned to her fascinating subject. It’s an examination of where Didion met the world on the page, read through a series of Didion totems that function as chapter titles, such as Gold, Notebook, Stingray, Jogger, Morgue, Orchid. For what better way to honor Didion than with a collection of essays?
Care to read the rest then do so at the California Review of Books.
The review was also posted at the Santa Barbara Independent on March 21, 2024.
Burger Week 2024--Yellow Belly and The Brewhouse
It's time for the Independent's 2024 Burger Week. I got to preview and write-up two, at Yellow Belly Tap and The Brewhouse Santa Barbara. Read the whole thing at the Indy's site, go support local businesses. Eat well!
Wednesday, March 13, 2024
Girl Grape Power
And I wanted to end here, as it encapsulates the joy of the day. I'd laugh a lot, too, if I were as talented as Jessica Foster, who came up with the brilliant, sweet-salty bite: s'mores pecan bananas foster. Beyond the Foster/foster joke, I could have stood at this table all afternoon, gulping them down. Between lots of laughs.
Friday, March 8, 2024
World of Pinot Noir 2024: New Finds
Thursday, March 7, 2024
World of Pinot Noir 2024: Old Friends
Monday, March 4, 2024
California Crows a Cru
This write-up would be nearly as long as the seminar itself if I took you through the tasting and comments about each of the wines, which feature a talented and well-spoken panel of winemakers, GMs, and farm managers. But here are some the highlights: