St. Bibiana Is the New (Cindy) Black

 

Back in 2011, when chef Cindy Black opened The Blue Owl as a late-night pop-up inside Zen Yai on State Street, she’d joke, “Some nights, I’m Don Rickles with a vagina and a wok.” Eleven years later, upon opening St. Bibiana on West Ortega Street, she’s more like Louie Anderson with a vagina and a pizza oven.

You could say she’s mellowed, or maybe it’s just that the restaurant biz is very different when you’re 42 as opposed to 30. “Sometimes I don’t have the energy to give the customers hell even if they deserve it,” Black admits. “The fun banter at 30 I loved, and I miss the Blue Owl regulars and the fun chaos, but I don’t miss getting inebriated customers until four in the morning.”

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

Peregrine Supreme at Barb’s Pies Is Umami Bomb

 

It’s easy to forget the delight, amid the rest of the memorable meal, of bread service at Barbareño. But when that sourdough and fresh butter arrive, it’s a transformative moment, the simplest of food made transcendent. (And that’s part, I’d say, of a strong Santa Barbara tradition: think back to Downey’s Irish soda bread and Sly’s rye raisin rolls.)

So it’s no surprise that the pizza dough from the same punchy starter kicks off the crust to-die-for at Barb’s Pies, which is Barbareño’s sister restaurant “hiding” in the kitchen at the recently opened bar/restaurant Venus in Furs on East Cota Street. What a crust it is, formed into leftover-providing 18-inch ovals, thin in the center but puffed and charred on the edges. 

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

Hunkering Down at Home with Bettina Pizza

I can't help but think of Bettina pizza as a sort of brilliant physics experiment--how thin can a crust get and still pack flavor? Brendan Smith and Rachel Greenspan have that magic down--as thin as thin can be and still hold pizza tensile strength, and as for flavor, just that sourdough....I mean, how many pizzas have legs like wine? Bettina's do. And that's before we even get to the quality of their toppings.

So, yes, if we're going to do some Coronavirus take-out, some of it had to be Bettina. We got around to it last week, finally, and it was very easy to do. They've got their to-go menu all set online, but I called anyway as I wanted to get an order in midday for a specific time pickup in the evening. Plus we hoped to score a loaf of bread, and there are only so many of those to go around each day. As you can see from the photo above--more doughy delight!

Since humans do not live by pizza alone, and we we're at the dark end of the two weeks for our Givens Farm CSA box, we had to order some green stuff, too. Luckily the usual Bettina salads are available to go, so there's the baby gems with ranch, pickled onion, and goat cheddar that we would order if we were dining at Montecito Country Mart. With the dressing on the side, it packs very well. So crisp and so cool. And thanks for being one more place that decided to rescue Ranch (since it's a Central Coast invention, after all). There's also some broccolini with capers, ricotta salata, and pine nuts, as at home we don't have a wood-fired stove that cranks over 800°, so we can't get that insta-char that makes the cruciferous veggie so extravagant.

And those pizzas also get char to the point where it's almost too much, but it also teaches you how far too much is (way further than you imagined). And somehow all that char kind of gives you the taste and time of cooking. You take the more blistered slices, pretending you're sacrificing, hoping your dinner mate doesn't know your sneaky secret.

The left pie is the heart of spring, English pea with mozzarella, ricotta cheese, sugar snaps, torpedo onion, garlic confit, lemon (and a slice of lemon for you to give another zip at home--nice touch). Oh, and actually the one on the left is the heart of spring if you had a wet winter and a mushroom forager: chanterelle, Sottocenere truffle cheese, fontina, dandelion, parsley gremolata. Just enough of each bit so you keep getting flavor bursts, but you have to be there for the crust.

Better yet, this was many meals for the two of us.

Forno Classico Opens Doors to Pizza Heaven

“I like food,” explains Giuseppe Crisa, founder and owner of the pizza oven company Forno Classico, “and that’s how everything happened.”

Twelve years ago, and still new to the United States, the Sicilian-born Crisa was living in Summerland and craving a better pizza. So, like his grandfather before him, he decided to build his own oven. “My English was badder than now,” he says, joking, “and nobody wanted to hire me, so I had some time on my hands.”

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

Only the Dough Is Sour at a Bettina Bread Class

How hungry were our ancient ancestors, who looked at wheat waving in the wind and thought, “Yum, delicious!” I mean, the stuff looks like weeds. And to get the germ out you’ve got to mill it—quick, call, Thomas Alva Breadison to invent a machine to crush the stuff just enough! And then something invisible in the air has to make it ferment. Yeasts are the hungry magical Houdinis of the story. Finally, you have to learn to bake all of that glop you slop together—quick, call Bready Crocker!

OK, that’s a bit playful (and maybe overwrought), but so is breadmaking. So if you dare to wander into that deep water, it's best to have a very good guide, and there's none better than Brendan Smith, co-owner of Bettina with his wife Rachel Greenspan (that's them up top). The couple, who just celebrated the one-year anniversary of their fine pizza (and much more) shop, are offering sourdough bread baking classes every couple of months. If the ins and outs of bread interest you, there's no better way to spend a Sunday morning. Plus the event ends with a pizza and wine lunch included.

My front-and-back instruction sheet is so covered with scribbled notes I can barely read them all--that's a small hint at all the wisdom Brendan shares in the three hours you get to watch him discuss how to feed a starter and then turn that into a luscious loaf. You get a starter too, and by the end it's easy to feel it's like high school health class and you've been given a doll you have to pretend is your baby for the weekend (what a great course in birth control that lesson was, no?). It's a living thing, and you hope not to kill it, even if you keep dumping some of it to feed it (hey, friends, who wants starter? or who wants pancakes?).

Brendan certainly knows his dough. He couldn't even begin to come up with an estimate of how many loaves of bread he's baked since he gave up studying for law school, and inspired by Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything, made his first loaf for stress relief and instead found a new calling. After a year apprenticeship at Orchard Hill in New Hampshire he ended up at famed Roberta's pizzeria in Bushwick Brooklyn, where he met Rachel, then a fancy-food specialist, and the two decided to load up their lives and move to Montecito-y. (OK, they ran the mobile pizza delight Autostrada first.) Add it up, and Brendan guesses he's made 60,000 pizzas, at least. Which means if you ate one of the pizzas he's made a day, you would have had to start before the Civil War broke out. I mean, who forgets the Lincoln-Douglas debate that argues over pineapple on pizza....

Despite the class's length of three hours, he's actually condensing the process that would take eight hours in your own home--there's a lot of resting downtime so you can let proteins build necessary chains. Lots of proofing. And then there's all the new words you get to learn, like banneton (the wood/reed basket you proof in) and lame (the device that holds the razor blade so you can score the bread before it bakes). And while Brendan gets to use a pizza oven that cranks the red oak fired heat at a temperature higher than Ray Bradbury ever considered, he explains how you can cook at home in your own oven, using a Dutch oven to hold the initial steam (don't let that crust dry out at first bake!).

When you finish, you could end up with something like this lovely loaf Rachel is showing off. Or maybe you won't, but it's bread--even the "failures" taste pretty good. And teach you more for when you make that next loaf.

SB Poets Take Ireland: Day 10

Read

It's time to tell the tale of how this whole trip went down. Above you see PLs David, Chryss, and Paul and the rock that commemorates that Dingle, AKA Daingean Uí Chúis for those of you who handle your Irish well, is a sister city with Santa Barbara, whose Irish name is HowExpensive!? Now Santa Barbara is a tad profligate with its sisterhood--in addition to Dingle it's hugged Kotor, Montenegro, Patras, Greece, Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, San Juan Metro Manila, Philippines, Toba City, Japan, Weihai, People's Republic of China, and Blue Balls, Pennsylvania in its international sorority. (OK, I lied about one of those.) And at one point our now former mayor Helene Schneider was in Dingle, doing sister city things, and at Dick Mack's Pub, doing pubby things, and a poetry reading broke out. Helene, kind to her local poets, thought, "Hey, our Santa Barbara folks should visit here!" And then she told said SB folks.

David Starkey, man who accomplishes more than most mere mortals (many poems, textbooks, teaching, family, bands, St. Bernards, preacher--he officiated our wedding), took it on himself to put the itinerary you've been reading about together, starting with a gig at Dick Mack's but figuring if we were going to fly for eight time zones, we might as well do a few more gigs too.

The kicker is, the Dick Mack's reading turned out to be the least organized of all the events. When we got there that Wednesday evening for our 6 pm performance and asked, "Where do you want us to read?" the reply was, "Where do you want to read? The musicians usually play there," with a point directly across from the bar, where everyone has to place their order...and pick up their jaw from the floor after realizing the wealth of whiskey available.

For some reason we didn't think that wise. So we wandered about a bit and found a side room we felt was abandoned enough/suitable.

Alas, there had been no advertising of any sort, not a flyer amidst the Star Wars gimcrackery in the window, not a Facebook post, not a lonely poorly paid soul in a sandwich board stumbling amidst tourists. So our audience was us, and we were all sort of sick and tired of hearing each other--I mean, we love our poems, but we could sing along on many of them at this point of the trip. So that's one reason I got to read one, given I was not part of most readings. We opted to go for FB Live-ing the heck out of it, so the world might see us even if Dingle didn't deign to. The videos are all out there on our feeds, so go look if you want. I even read "Ode to an IPA" to my glass of Dick Mack's Session IPA, and have to admit I really felt the moment. Thanks, beer.

The good news is if the PLs ever put out an album, they have their cover, here. And that is David's guitar by Sandy, looking away. We wisely had her sing, too, which seemed more suitable for the rowdiness that didn't relent beyond our bardic brilliance. And at one point an Irish teen jumped in on one tune on bodhran--works better with a Lucinda Williams cover than you might imagine.

Bed

Same place. But here are some pictures, to give you a bit of a sense of what it looked liked, outside the place (even if the pictures were taken the next day when it was raining). Time is sort of malleable on the road. Especially when it's the Wild Atlantic Way. First, here's a view from one of the windows, with the distance disappearing into Irish mist.

Then here was the courtyard we didn't have time to spend time in.

Fed

We bought stuff at a store--as there's nothing more fun than looking at odd foodstuffs in stores in countries not your own--for breakfast. Plus--cheaper! Then we had hoped to have lunch when we looped the peninsula's tip (oh, stop giggling) on our tour during the day, thinking we'd end up at Brick's Pub, home of West Kerry Brewery, just in time for lunch. And we did, but not for what they think is lunch--turns out 12:45 is way too early for a country kitchen to fire up.

So we got back to Dingle proper (let's hope there's not a Dingle improper) and hit the town, hunting. Finally ended up at Goat Street Social [no link as there's no website and even their FB page isn't working] on one of Dingle's main drags, a simple, direct, and pleasing spot for two very hungry travelers. It was my turn to go fish chowder--I'd been envious of so many Chryss had enjoyed--so ordered that, plus a rocket salad with feta, as peppery greens never hurt, especially tossed with cheese.

There's a place for food that hits its notes and doesn't strive for more. That place is in my hungry belly. Thanks, Goat Street Social. Chryss had a salad loaded with shrimp and she too, enjoyed. We also took a drinking break and just imbibed mint-ginger water, and you can see how just the pitcher look refreshing in the edges of these shots.

For dinner we all hung out post the non-reading at Dick Mack's, for if it wasn't a great poetry venue, it is a fine bar. Especially with the trailer the Beast awaiting in the courtyard to make us wood-fired thin crust pizzas. They were good if not amazing, but that's more because there's so much great pizza any more--how weird it is this "simple" food has become something to fret artisanal tears over if it doesn't make you think of what Pizzeria Mozza can do. (And now I want to go to LA post haste.)

Poured

So West Kerry Brewery didn't have their kitchen open yet, but when at a pub there's still something else you can do. Pinball! Only kidding. I drank. I know you're surprised. Since I'd had the delicious porter I wanted to try one of their other brews so ordered the Cúl Dorcha, their red ale. It was good, but not the knockout the porter was. Might be because reds tend to be heartier here in the States (aka--alcohol--aoogha!), and this one was a practical piker at just 5%. Plus, I wanted food too. Fantastic interior, though. Can you spot the Americans?

At Dick Mack's we consumed session IPA, because it wouldn't hurt us, but after feeling unloved as the reading thing kind of fizzled, I couldn't resist ordering a shot of Writer's Tears. It's mighty tasty, our misery, my fellow writers, as one review puts it quite well, "oodles of honey'd, fruity notes. Wonderfully easy to drink, it would make for a great introduction to Irish whiskey for folks new to the spirit. No writers were harmed in the making of this whiskey." Except, as we all know, writers are harmed all the time. I mean are you reading them? I think we all know, now.

Then after another Murphy's Ice Cream excursion the rest of the PL gang went off to do some musical carousing and the ever-sicker Chryss and I headed back to our Air BnB where this solid, non-spectacular beer awaited me. That's what you get for drinking a UK beer in the Republic?

Toured

So as I said, that morning we took the loop about the far end of the Dingle Peninsula. Want to be blown away by the gorgeous, the historic? It's the ride for you. Stop one was Ventry Bay, a very horseshoe, very wide (perhaps it was low tide?) beach just west of Dingle. Sure, it was July 25, but there were still children in parkas on the sand...and folks in suits swimming. The Irish are tougher than you and me.

The view back towards more (emphasis on civil) civilization was like this.

But, of course, what civilization is out this way is sort of like an unimaginably stunning 3-D game board of the Settlers of Catan. Particularly striking is that all of the historic sites--and we're talking centuries old sites--are, it seems, privately owned, so you pay some farmer five Euros to go see the fairy fort that his sheep and goats graze upon.

They're called fairy forts as something had to live in them after the Celtic warlords did back in 500 B.C. (We get all excited about our missions in CA. Such children we are.) You'll get a cup full of chow to hand out to the animals, too, so it's like a wicked time travel petting zoo.

They are as aggressive as sweet things can be.

A bit further down the road you get even bigger remnants of the far past, the beehive huts that proved stone masonry goes back a long long time.

People are pretty amazing, you know? We claw and struggle and pile rock on rock to make our families safe against so much. Here's to at least the rocks surviving, and all that they attest to, preach for, stand against.

Then there's the storybook quality to what was life on Blasket Island, just enough off the coast to make the coast seem secure as the afghan your grandmother settled over your shoulders. The last settlers left in 1953, and when you hear of the tales, it's not so much it was hard--though it was--but that there was too much promise. Indeed, it turns out many of the people of Blasket ended up just heading further west, all the way to the U.S. There's a terrific Great Blasket Centre that captures what went on there, and given they sort of became an anthropological project, and there are many famous narratives written by its inhabitants, there's plenty to learn and know. (And, even here, literacy, story, the word. While we want to pretend in our country the folks have no sense of the literary.) All the exhibits end in a glass view of Great Blasket Island itself, a kind of church to a kind of world we've lost as much as any faith.

Here's the island unframed, if you prefer your own mythologizing.

Really this section sohuld be endless photos, but trust me, it's about as gorgeous a landscape as any in the world.

That's out towards Smerwick Harbour, and I'm pretty sure it's named beginning "sm" as that's just an ugly sound and it wants to dull its own stun. I mean, if you can take your eyes off the crystal blue sea, check out that little wave of ridges at the right, mountains on a stately march to the ocean. C'mon!

Or something like this, taken out of a moving car, the specks of birds just adding their own pointillist perfection to an already captivating scene.

And now it's time for the religious portion of the program--at one point in the afternoon we went into St. Mary's, nearly across from Dick Mack's, as that's the two poles of Irish life, I guess, both held by a love of the word. Turned out to be a church more beautiful inside than out, a kind of humble grace. And even better, the stations of the cross were in Irish.

Go ahead to the post on Day 11 (Sligo).

Go back to the post on Day 9 (Cork, Dingle Day 1).

Circumference = Hip to Be Pie2

(photo borrowed from Serious Eats)

Trying to write about a spot that's been hyped to heaven and then backlashed back to hell until everyone sort of just got some common sense and said, "Damn good!" isn't easy. So I'm going to go for the naive approach and pretend I didn't know that Roberta's in Brooklyn, or should I say Bushwick (you see, this isn't some Williamsburg or Park Slope spot), has been praised to a degree hotter than its pizza ovens run.

So I just have to say, I want one. (Turns out there's a pop-up version in Culver City in LA for a few months, and I'm very interested. Road trip!) Sure, I got to go there with three of my favorite people, so that makes it all the more special, but I think Roberta's made us all the more special, too. And that's what we want from the best restaurants, no?

Heading in, you won't think it's special, though. As the New York Times put it, it's "bunkered behind a cinder-block facade of breathtaking ugliness," plus you enter through a door into a bitty wooden-glass vestibule covered with graffiti. It would probably scare many an old person away, and by old I mean at least 40% of me. But once inside, there's that loving hearth heat of the pizza oven, loud rock 'n' roll, communal tables, and that sense of fun you almost wrinkle your nose at, it's that palpable. Heck, amidst the easily accessible (if not particularly well-priced) bottles of available wine right behind your table is A Tribute to Grace, one of CA's best Grenaches, if far too little known. I feel very happily at home.

And while the by the bottle list is a bit dear (if very well curated), the cocktails, by the glass, and beer options all are first rate, too. I enjoy a Make It Nice, the deceptively simple name for a deceptively simple drink of gin, yellow chartreuse, and Aperol that is utter delight. We share all the food, because no one would want to miss a bit of anything, and start with charred autumn greens--no not the wreckage of the Jill Stein campaign, but tops of things you often only eat the bottoms of (that sounds sexier than I meant it to be), plus roasted new potato (the freshest of bright earth), laved in, of all things, Bearnaise. Now, as a steak eater, I'm no stranger to Bearnaise, but to have it in this context was revelatory, especially as they zipped it up with some horseradish, too (those potatoes say thanks). Lovely, simple dish.

On to the pizzas. You can have one with Brussel sprouts, so, we had to have one. I mean, Brussel sprouts out of a pizza oven? If they're best roasted, how amazing could that be? Pretty much pizza perfection, especially with caramelized onions, capers, chili, lemon, and then not just mozzarella, but this cheese called Alp Blossom--nutty and green and floral. (It's called the Nun on the Run...after Julie Andrews/Maria hightailing it across the Alps with kids in curtains? I guess.)

And then there was one of the specials, which turns out to be a regular special, as you can Google it and find internet drool--the Baby Sinclair. This is the food that will make any kale hater find love for the leafy green god. Because, again, high high, quick heat. And, of course, cheese--both Parmesan and a better than usual cheddar called Prairie Breeze from Milton, IA (they did not make this when I lived in IA or I still might be there, as I'd be too fat to leave after eating so much cheese). Garlic, maitake mushrooms (notice you never get any ingredient 101 here), Banyuls vinegar. And then Calabrian chilis, enough to ratchet up the heat in that slow but heck, yep that's sort of burning way.

But I've neglected to talk dough, and, of course, to do so with pizza is like to skip talking about "oh, my! how the hell did this happen?" with our president elect who lost the popular vote by 2.5 million. Roberta's dough turned me into Colin Clive mighty fast. Elastic and lovely and salt and chew all in thin you'd think couldn't hold anything. It rivals what Nancy Silverton has come up with at Pizzeria Mozza on this coast--I'd love ot have a just out of the oven taste-off of both (and the winner is?! ME!).

I also want to give a shout out to the beer we shared a pitcher of, because, c'mon, pizza! Kings County Brewers Collective, housed mere blocks away from Roberta's in Bushwick (historically once a huge brewing center for the US, actually), based on its Robot Fish No. 2 IPA, is doing some amazing things. The beer could fall into CA's beloved Alpine's roster easily, managing to be not huge (6.1% ABV) yet full of flavor, resiny and citrusy and happy to be had with some delicious melted cheeses.

The fine beer had nothing to do with my appreciation of our server Marcus, who had the tough job of hearing us over the big booming soundtrack of the place, while not being able to be on both sides of our long picnicky table at once. He never missed an order, explained wonderfully well, was there just when you needed him. So while this might be a sort of heart of hipsterdom, there's no attitude. Plus we had the amazing luck to get right in when we showed up, but it was a Monday evening, so that probably didn't hurt. Sorry to all of you who have ever waited here, but if you finally got in, I can't imagine you were the least bit cranky upon leaving.

Eat This: Deep Dish Spinach Pesto Pizza @ Patxi’s Pizza

Not to start a food fight, but as an East Coaster by birth, I have to argue deep dish pizza isn’t really pizza. (Sorry, Chicago.) That doesn’t mean it’s not delicious, though. Think of it as lasagna with crust instead of pasta, perhaps. And what thought that starts with lasagna doesn’t end with drooling?

Want to read the rest then do so at the Indy's site.

I Got Younger and Younger

Turns out I blogged too soon, and with another attempt at it, I ended up with a whistle wet with Pliny the Younger after all. The sublime Blind Lady Ale House in San Diego--which exists in the brilliantly named neighborhood Normal Heights (that's a goal for life if anything is)--pre-sells their Pliny allotment. Through Brown Paper Tickets, which doesn't charge too much extra and gives a bit of that back to charity, too. That's where BLAH's profits went also (oh, and they call themselves BLAH even if they're anything but), to a literacy group called Room to Read. So it was all win-win.

Especially when at 6 pm the Friday night the tickets went on sale my purchase sailed (saled?) through flawlessly. That meant we had to be at BLAH Sunday, March 10 between 11 am and 12 noon, get checked off the list, and get our tickets for a .25L glass of Pliny the Younger and a .25L glass of Pliny the Elder. People really seem to be into the mini-flight presentation of Pliny this year. I like people. You can see our tickets at this entry's heading.

We did have a tiny bit of a problem, end-of-the-alphabeters that we are. They really wanted to be sure no one bought multiple drinks for him or herself (it was about 65% guy/35% gal if you were wondering--the cult of hops definitely leans male), so I went back in and changed the name of my wife's ticket to be under her own name. And it seems Y-o, coming after Y-a, also pushed her off the list onto a new page...they forgot to print. So we had a teeny-tiny "don't tell me this is going to go wrong" moment, but they let us both in and BLAH owner Lee Chase himself very kindly helped sort stuff out. As you can tell from the photo, all's well that ends with beer.

Is Younger worth all the fuss? It is a sublime beer (it's on the right, Elder on the left). Stick your nose over your glass and it seems like you have walked into a pine forest, that much lovely resiny hops hit you. I almost would be happy just sniffing the stuff all day. The taste is the same, rounded with floral notes. Russian River manages the balance impeccably, though, especially for a beer at 11% ABV. It seems nowhere that strong, lacking any alcohol spank at the back of the throat like some double and triple IPAs. Instead, its flavor lingers for a good thirty seconds like a fine wine. I drank it first, the Elder second, and it took the Elder about half the glass to assert itself as the brilliant beer it is; it's kind of like, "Yeah, Kelly Hogan, you sing great, but you need to back-up Neko Case, ok?"

So, is it worth the fuss? Depends upon how much fuss you want in your life, I guess. It's certainly cheaper and easier to get (if you don't mind a drive and some planning) than landing some Screaming Eagle Cab, say.

Even better, in addition to getting the original beer for your $15, you got a raffle ticket. You could buy more tickets for $5, so of course we did (for literacy!). Then they started pulling numbers, and each time the digits got close my Pliny-loving-heart skipped a beat. Keep pulling glasses, I thought. And they did, and did, and perhaps the fifth to last one was one of my tickets. So I got to have it all again.

The food's mighty good at BLAH, too, thick cut Belgian style frites with three excellent dipping sauces (all ketchup needs curry, evidently) are particularly useful for soaking up beer. And the pizzas are delightful, very thin crust yet crust with taste, and toppings like Bordeaux spinach. Plus the regular beer list always rocks, too--a Craftsman Cave Art managed to seamlessly blend a smoked beer and a sour, and that was mighty new and delicious.

Wham Bam Thank You Lamb

It's a sunny, rosy day in Mendocino, so get those pruners out! At least that's how I see the photo above, one of many we took of the bounteous botanical gardens in Mendo. If you have a thing for rhododendrons, this is the garden for you--it's a riot of bloom in May. Luckily we went to the 47-acres of the gardens well-fed, for another MacCallum House bonus is that breakfast is included, and it's sit-down, order from the menu, and enjoy it with a complimentary mimosa, even. (Don't mind if I do...it might be a Tuesday, but it's vacation.) I was very happy with my Benedict, and Chryss liked her breakfast burrito so much, she ordered one both mornings we were there. This is direct food made good by a sure hand and high quality, fresh ingredients.

In between is walking, lots, along the headlands and along the mouth of Big River. And then that trip to the Botanic Gardens. All that walking meant we got a hungerin' and a thirstin', so we went looking for a deer we could chase down and a fresh mountain spring. Oh, ok, we just continued up the 1 back to Ft. Bragg, and let Yelp once again be our guide, leading us to Piaci. It was after 2 so we worried we might be caught in the not-serving-vortex between lunch and dinner, especially when we first peeked in and saw no customers and just one worker, back in the kitchen, busy prepping at a meat slicer. But we also saw this beer board, so we asked if it was too late to get food. Turns out it wasn't, and even better, it meant the lone worker sat down on his side of the bar and we chatted away.

Topics ranged from Piaci having some roots to Russian River Brewing--and indeed, their styles of thin crust pizza are similar--to the man coming from the Yucatan, but really liking it in Fort Bragg, to how border towns (like Tijuana) are bad, as they can attract the worst from both sides. He knew his pizza and knew his beer and by the end we knew he had a hard time communicating with his teenage daughter and we got a beer for free. It was like making friends, which northern California seems to do so well. Now why Santa Barbara can't have more casual spots like this--good, simple food, great beer--I don't know. To add insult to injury, I had to be introduced to one of our beers from (mostly) back home, Firestone's Wooky Jack, way away here. It's a silly name for a fine RyePA with a lot more malt and alcohol kick than most.

We did something in-between lunch and dinner, promise, but this is a food blog, so whatever it was doesn't matter. Let's let this photo, more or less the view from our room (well, outside the fence that protected the hot tub privacy by our room), suffice as a breather. (And no, we didn't see or hear any ghosts in the graveyard. Rats.)

Dinner was at the MacCallum House itself, and somehow we lucked into having one of the several small dining rooms all to ourselves, too--a bonus romantic touch. Our breakfasts had us very excited for what was to come, and we weren't disappointed. Chryss kicked off with the hearts of romaine salad, sans the bacon (they're very accommodating de-meating stuff for vegetarians, btw) but with Point Reyes farmstead blue cheese dressing, herb croutons, roasted peppers, and oil-cured olives. Reading that list, you know it was fine. I had the soup of the day, a green garlic/leek deeply rich with those enticing spring flavors. Somehow we both skipped the grilled clam flatbread with Trumpet Royale mushroom duxelles, garlic, Vella dry Jack cheese, house made mozzarella, oregano, and chile gremolata--partially because we just had pizza for lunch, partially because it sounded like a main masquerading as a starter. But we both were sad, too.

 For mains, Chryss chose the chive gnocchi alla gratinata with morel mushrooms, snap peas, creamed spinach, and Vella mezzo secco cheese that turned out to be much more a gratin than a pasta-ish dish, as you can see. It's also a rebuke to anyone who thinks you have to have meat to eat well.

Not that that stopped me from chowing away on a hunk o' animal protein, for lookie here, I was very un-Mary like for I had a lotta lamb: a braised Niman Ranch lamb shank over mascarpone polenta, bathed in a gloriously gooey cherry and cabernet reduction, and then topped with its own salad of sorts--Point Reyes farmstead blue cheese, toasted walnut & arugula salad. The salad was completely necessary, for a mere smear of gremolata would not have offered enough balance. Nope, the peppery greens and bit of an acid tang from the dressing was absolutely needed to cut all the richness of the braised to ultimate tenderness lamb, that sauce, and the cheesed-up, soft polenta. We're talking flavors pushed to their extremes yet in fine harmony. (Although I might have cut the blue cheese--as fine as it tastes, it was one more push on the rich side of the scale, and perhaps a bit too much.)

We had no room for dessert, and can you blame us. Plus there was a bit of our 2009 Breggo Pinot Noir to finish, a fitting way to set up a transition to our next two days in Anderson Valley.

Hot Diggity Dog (Ziggity Boom)

Since there's a new pup in Georgeeatsvania, we've been spending a lot of time tracking down places with patios that allow dogs so our four-legged friend can come with and we don't have to be worried that he's home figuring out which parts of the house taste best mouthful by pointy little puppy teeth mouthful (he's even tried to chew on cast iron lawn furniture, so you just never know). Turns out more and more places are being nice about doggie diners, so here's a quick round up of three recently stopped at spots.

Cafe Nouveau, 1497 E. Thompson Blvd, Ventura
It was a quiet Wednesday night and my wonderful companion (MWC) and the boy and I were the only customers on the patio, which is actually pretty much walled in from the street-corner. That's a plus, and I have to hope it's not the usual, as the place was really really nice to us--even brought a water bowl for junior. The menu is a bit all over in that California way ("we appropriate all your foods, fools!"), sort of natural, sort of cafe, sort of Mexican. Things come out a bit of a mish-mash, but tasty; I liked a seafood stuffed relleno, but they seemed a bit hopeful to make the seafood feel still at home, as it was asea in the voluminous amount of sauce. Not delicate food, this. Still, filling, pleasing if far from gourmet, and they sell Green Flash IPA in bottles for $5 per. And, again, the waiter was a total sweetie about our pup. No doubt we'll be back. (And they don't have a website, although Yelp does list a URL--sloppiness, or a sign of bad things?)

Churchill's Pub & Grill, 887 West San Marcos Blvd., San Marcos
This spot now has a 48-tap beer engine pouring all sorts of hoppy goodness, so discovering they had a tiny bit of bricked in, concrete floored garden where we could sit with the dog was great. Unfortunately, being dog friendly also means they turns their back on patio-smokers, as if one gets cancer from second-hand-dog, but a canine-companion life often leaves one in a second-class world. That said, again the help was great, and our waitress even chatted about what he was and the dogs she had (who weren't well-behaved enough for going to pubs). Of course MWC and I had Plinys, how could we not. And we asked about the Craftsman Aurora Borealis, supposedly featuring mint and persimmon, which we figured could either be a delicious summer refresher or a pound cake in a glass. Our fine waitress warned us they can't give the stuff away and brought us tasters, and we learned why. Beer shouldn't taste like it's brushing your teeth for you. Oh, and as for the food, we split fish and chips for a late lunch. Some of the best, crispest chips we've had, and the fish was solid--great coating, but the fish itself ok, nothing to get worked up about either way. I'm sure we would have liked it more if we had more time to have more beer. Go check out the website and the beerlist here.

Pizza Port Carlsbad, 571 Carlsbad Village Dr., Carlsbad
I've been here many a time, most frequently because its the site of some amazing beer fests, like this Belgian one I extolled the glories of long ago. All the Pizza Port's make great beers--all on site and in what seems to me a friendly competition--and serve up puffy-crusted pizzas that do a fine job soaking up the usually high alcohol suds you can get to drink. This time the patio was abuzz (it was Father's Day) with families and silly people with human babies and not doggie ones, but our boy was well-behaved and met people of all ages (the youngest ones' hands taste best, you know)(or so he tells me--I don't lick the young kids' hands myself). Guest beers included some rarities like a Green Flash Le Freak aged in grenache barrels (and you certainly could taste that wine), but then their own Wipe Out IPA, which isn't an Imperial and is still over 9%, so take that, hopheads! Get the full scoop at their website.

Oh, and if you don't know the song the title of this entry comes from, Perry Como's going to croon for you.

Get Your Za-Za's Out

You'd think by now I'd be more flexible in real life, for metaphorically I'm a great self-kicker. Nothing makes me want to apply my boot to my butt more than not getting to a spot I just know is going to be good for too long a time. Of course I do this frequently, for even eating out too much, there's only so much time, so much money, so many inches in the waistband.

I fixed one such problem by finally making it to Full of Life Flatbread in Los Alamos on a weekend, when their production space gets turned into a restaurant. Pulling into its stretch of the 135, everything else in town at 5 on a Sunday seems sleepy, except for the cars, the families, the hubbub at their lovely spot that manages to mix some Western saloonish swagger with hip art (an amazing angel made from skateboards, say) and hippie-ish touches (not just the organic, local focus, but using old paperbacks as their check delivery systems--reuse, recycle, reread?). The spot is certainly full of life, with people sharing wines, running into old friends, getting greeted like the regulars many luckily seemed to be (if the place didn't leave me in such a good mood I'd damn them for their luck). It can't hurt it offers a lovely Santa Ynez Valley wine list with great by-the-glass choices, too, plus local brews from Firestone and Figueroa Mountain. And, of course, the dining room has that huge hearth of a pizza oven that just sort of makes for a primal home scene--no doubt any caveman would have killed for a saber-tooth flatbread back in the day.

Also, don't be fooled and think Full of Life is full of itself with anything approaching veggie indignation at all things meaty or more, for in addition to numerous bacon offerings, my special appetizer of the day (or any day, without a doubt) was crispy foie gras toast with wild-gathered black trumpet mushrooms on levain bread grilled with bacon & a farm egg yolk, shaved Sonoma foie gras, over green garlic fondue. Richness, thy name is this dish (which is why its name is so long, I guess). It's a brilliant way to get you the luscious punch of foie gras at 1/4 the amount you might need in a different dish, for the trumpet mushrooms, the egg a-run, the depth of the garlic fondue all just added layer and layer of yum.

We ate more, of course we did, although that first was the kind of dish that almost didn't need an entree; it's a hearty portion, in addition to a taste sensation. Still, it's a pizza joint (joke) so we had pizza, the two specials for the day (trust me, they really mean special when they use the word). That means we enjoyed (and are enjoying for two days of lunch, too, so the not cheap price doesn't seem quite so dear) a local chanterelle flatbread with Henry's cured + smoked pork belly bacon, stinging nettles, and a farm egg AND an artisanal burrata mozzarella flatbread with rapini braised with garlic & hot pepper, ember-roasted picholine olives & pepperoncino.Here they are sharing a double-decker stand that makes them seem even more decadent, a kind of two-story tribute to all pizza could dream to be.

If you've had their frozen variety, which are the best frozen pizzas you can get, you're still not prepared for these. That crust, for one, after just getting slid from the oven, tastes even more of the fire's woody-goodness. And when the quality of the toppings is this good--I'm mean, chanterelles, folks!--it all becomes yet more wonderful.