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.

The Cool Cats Keep Coming for Good Lion Hospitality

 If you consider a visit to a haberdasher prior to bar-hopping, you’d want a top hat before sashaying into The Lion’s Tale, and a pith helmet before slinking into Jaguar Moon. That’s relevant sartorial information as both establishments just celebrated their first-year anniversaries. The former, gracing Coast Village Road in Montecito since October 2024, offers a swellegant hotel bar experience akin to the finest one at The Connaught in London. The latter, livening up downtown Ventura since November of the same year, takes you to the tropical Yucatán. The two join the other seven establishments that comprise the ever-growing Good Lion Hospitality (GLH) group headed by couple in business and marriage Misty Orman and Brandon Ristaino.

Given Ristaino insists it “takes a year to take a first breath” when opening a spot, it seemed a good time to check in on all things lion to see if everything was good.

Not to give the game away one-sixth of the way through the article, but the answer is complex. Crowds have been great and locals supportive, so much so that Orman and Ristaino couldn’t even get IN to their own Lion’s Tale over the holidays. “It was so crowded,” Orman explains, “that we didn’t want to come in and stress the staff having to figure out where to put us.”

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

Answering the Urge for Urchin

 

How much just shy of delicious decadence can you take? If you’d care to find out, get yourself to Carp for brunch at Little Dom’s Seafood. Now almost six years since it took over the beloved space of Sly’s, Little Dom’s has settled into its own lived-in and local feel — servers fist-bump regulars and the bar room’s booths feel like they’ve been there for decades (the space had high-tops in the Sly’s days).

But it also has a classy and cool feel, too, starting with that very elegant Deco bar and carrying right through the menu. Especially from September to March when Brandon Boudet, executive chef and co-owner, gets to drop a few in-season uni dishes. None beats the simple-sounding but far from simple-tasting uni and eggs on brioche.

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

Get Ghirardelli in Your Santa Barbara Belly

If it's going to take non-local businesses to rescue State Street, at least they better be California icons, and based on the line of folks queuing up to score a free sundae on opening day, January 22, I'd wager Santa Barbarans are going to welcome Ghirardelli with open arms and hungering gullets. Unless you have Rip van Winkled for 174 years, I assume you know of Ghirardelli, as Domenico opened his first store in San Francisco in 1852 when he could have met a living Washington Irving. That's one reason the name is practically synonymous with chocolate, but it's more than a long-established brand. On its website it claims to be "one of the few chocolate companies in the United States to control every aspect of its chocolate manufacturing process," which, of course, leads to a better tasting product. So combine ace flavor and a heaping helping of nostalgia and you have a winner. (Do note they are currently owned by giant Chocoladefabriken Lindt & Sprüngli AG, but at least Lindt also has a history of quality chocolatiering. And there aren't any small companies anymore in a world dominated by massive capital. I'll put my Marx away....)

So the Santa Barbara store, located on lower State in what had mostly recently been Pascucci's (which, I know, most most recently was on upper State, sorry for any confusion), is so brand-spanking renovated it can come off a bit mallesque--all blue and white and tile and light--but my guess is time will add its patina eventually. The center of the store offers oodles of ways to take the famed chocolate bars home in more varieties than you might imagine (I'm not going to reference Wonka, I'm not going to reference Wonka). But no doubt the main attraction is the ice cream bar and its 26+ versions of sundaes, many starring Ghirardelli's famously rich, thick, and addictive hot fudge sauce. So while ice cream can seem an extension of the brand, it certainly doesn't mind literally bathing in the company's roots.

In the photo up top you see the Ocean Beach, a sea salt caramel sundae for those of us who know that saline hit of savory makes the chocolate all the better. And note your dessert comes with its own dessert--atop each sundae rides one of their SQUARES® and you get to call dark or milk chocolate. I have to admit I didn't know you could copyright geometric shapes. I think after eating one of these I'm headed to a governmental office so I can own ROUND®. It is scrumptious, definitely.

What's even better, Ghirardelli gives back. To celebrate being part of the Santa Barbara community, locals & students will receive a local discount of 15% off their entire purchase (with proof of valid ID). 

Drink Your Mesquite Neat

The whiskies from Islay in Scotland are as hard for some to swallow as it is for others to pronounce Islay (it's EYE-luh). That's thanks to the peat--Islay is where all the best smoky single malts come from. They roast barley over peat, and that flavor stays strong through the distillation process. If you're a fan--and I imagine all you mezcal-lovers out there just got interested--it's sort of addictive. Who doesn't love the scent of a campfire?

So, sure, there's a muchness to it. But for many, this writer included, that intensity is thrilling. One of the best Scottish Islay expressions can be found at Laphroaig, so it's exciting to know that Laphroaig's longest-term distillery manager, John Campbell, is now making whiskey at Warbringer in of all places Oxnard, CA. That might seem like too far from home in too many ways, but remember what Hubert Germain-Robin did for U.S. brandy and you'll realize there is some repeatable history to emulate. 

Of course, California shores aren't famed for their peat bogs. One thing we do have is mesquite, although to be honest, what Sespe Creek Distillery, which is the over-arching company for Warbringer, uses is charcoal from Texas--hence the official name, Southwest Bourbon. As their website puts it: "mesquite smoked corn comprises the majority of our mash-bill (65%), the rest is fire-roasted in a rotating steel drum, caramelizing sugars and imparting a sweet, roasted flavor." (The remainder of the grain bill is rye; as bourbons go, this one's low on the sticky side.)

Think big and bold--that makes it seem more Californian to me. Yep, there's a big hit of campfire on the nose and on the first sip, but then everything begins to balance as if a gifted cinematographer was pulling focus for you so you can explore all the frames of the drink. Caramel, a bit of graham cracker, a hint of cocoa--sure, think a drinkable s'more. Warbringer is finished in sherry casks, so gets a bit of pedigree in its finish. 

Obviously, and especially at 98 proof, it's a fine sipper all on its own, particularly after dinner around the fire pit. (If it ever stops raining so we can sit outside. How is this California.) It also works well as a smoky sub in cocktails like Difford's 100 Year Old Cigar, of course. But I had to know how it might do in a Health Inspector, my variation a Penicillin (long story--thought I was allergic to penicillin, so needed to make my take on the drink have anime that wouldn't make me ill). Typically the cocktail gets a float of Laphroaig to get some smokiness direct to your nose. Typically the whiskey bill is a blended Scotch, and to honor my Dewar's drinking dad, that's long been mine, too.

But, what happens if you skip the float and go straight for the smoke, using the Warbringer as all your whiskey? Well, that's a perfect delight, especially on a damp winter night. 

Smoke Em if You Got Em

(makes 1 drink)

3/4 Tbs. honey (try a local one wherever you are--I liken from Hollister Ranch)

3/4 Tbs. ginger extract (Liquid Alchemist does a vivid one)

1 oz. fresh lemon juice

1 oz. dry vermouth

2 oz. Warbringer Mesquite Smoked Southwest Bourbon

Add everything to a cocktail shake. Stir, first, as the honey takes a bit get incorporated. Then add ice and shake, vigorously, because, you know, that honey. Strain into a cocktail glass and garnish with a lemon peel.