Why Not a Pinot Party?

Twenty-five years is as fine a reason for celebration as any, so that's certainly what happened at Thursday, February 27th's Opening Night Party for World of Pinot Noir. Of course anything feels luxe happening at the Ritz-Carlton Bacara, a hotel that's sort of its own grand Pacific-side world. (Just the collection of the cars you'll never come close to driving parked in the central plaza as you enter tells you that.) But WOPN did its best to spiff up, putting on its metaphorical white tie and tails for the evening. Even the step-and-repeat was attractively classy. (Notice I didn't ruin that effect my getting picture taken in front of it.)

After having your ticket scanned and and your armband affixed (note, they use the clip ones, not the sticky ones--my wrist hairs, unpulled, say thank you), you were ushered into what would turn out to be the sparkling station/room for the whole weekend, and pours of Seppi were handed you. There are worse ways to kick off an evening with wines made in honor of Joseph "Giuseppe" Phelps. Heading out that door, servers offered mini-Wellingtons you could dip into rosemary aioli. Somehow this golfball-sized gourmet delight worked--the flaky crust stayed on, you could eat it three bites tops. You'd been at the event four minutes, and you felt at the least fancy, if not half way to schmancy. 

I'm going to make this look like all I did was eat, but: 1) remember my rules about ballast at drinking events, and 2) food photographs better than wine bottles, if you ask me. So that's mezzi rigatoni pomodoro, the pasta exactly al dente, the sauce essential tomato yet kicked up with gunciale and a hit of Grana Padano. What's more, spiced sausage offered that great fat, with its own heat cutting the fat too, and then the lovely, light cloud-like tufts of whipped garlic ricotta. I fought the urge for seconds and the second didn't win.

This shrimp cocktail positively glowed. (Sorry.) But I was a real sucker for the lighting from under the ice trick. The shrimp were cooked precisely, but that trick of locking them both into each other and into the serving spoon made it hard to unhook them, in a weird way, and I even tried to eat them before I had had much to drink, I promise. 

While it is the World of Pinot, it's always heartening to see providers from our very region, and you can't get one much closer to Bacara than the Cultured Abalone, who not only brought their delicious mollusks but also had a rep on site to tell you about their terrific farm. The presentation of the seared abalone was a straightforward sear in garlic sea salt butter, then hit with herbs and citrus, but these wonders of the sea are so delicious, that's all they need. It was an honor to indulge in them, and to get to nod to what was once a food in great supply on our coast.

OK, yes there was wine. But I've got two more wine-soaked entries to write about WOPN 2025 and its grand tastings, so will go lighter on all that here, if you don't mind. You can see a hint of some of the range of stuff on offer in the photo. I drank from a different bottle of La Follette, a 2022 Heintz, a vineyard that runs deep in lore with Williams Selyem fans. It lived up to my expectations, racy and wild, with good fruit rounded with a bevy of attractive side notes--hillside sage, white pepper, baking spice. I also enjoyed a 2021 Ram's Gate Bush Crispo Vineyard that should be in the dictionary alongside Russian River Valley Pinot. A classic. And other wines we'll get to in future posts.

It was tricky to tell who the crowd was. Certainly a lot of winemakers, but one local who will go unnamed suggested, "Most people stay partying in their rooms and then show up here later and buzzed." I didn't stick around for that, saving myself for two days of grand tastings. Did I mention there would be grand tastings? There was also fine rock n roll from Dan Curcio of Moonshiner Collective, stuck trying to juice us up when there was plenty of juice to drink for that. Maybe you had to hangout until the very end to see if the dance floor got used. I know the step-and-repeat did.

Seven Seafood Courses Swimming

We finally got around to doing something we've always wanted to do, and I mean that two ways, as you soon shall see. To celebrate the season we decided to try to pull off a version of The Feast of the Seven Fishes. Of course it's odd to do this during lockdown, when the only ones feasting on the fish would be Chryss and me, but the most unusual of years deserves a fittingly strange fete. Note, while people like to act the Fo7, as I will be calling it, is something passed down from generations ago, as if Italian grandmothers smuggled heirloom recipes between their sweaty bossoms from the Old World, it actually started in the U.S. just over a century ago. What's more, if we were being traditional we would have done this on Christmas Eve, but we decided to make it a day's journey of seafood eating on Christmas Day itself. After all, we didn't have to worry about any of the non-meat-eating fasting pre-Christmas vestigial rules, not being dues paying Roman Catholic Church members, plus Chryss is pescatarian all the time anyway. Oh, and we opted to skip any course with pasta (too heavy--we've got all the fish to swim down our gullets!), or tomato sauce or even fra diavolo, and we opted to make it to seven seafood items and skip a seventh dessert course (panettone is just fruitcake with an Italian accent, you can't fool me).

The trick was coming up with a menu that was diverse enough and worked somewhat progressively, so we could keep eating throughout the day and spread out the food prep. That means Fish the First, was smoked salmon, the crazy good version from Cambridge House right here in Santa Barbara that Lazy Acres sells without fancy packaging by their seafood counter. You see that above, on little brioche toast circles Chryss artfully cut out and toasted in butter, as we figured this wasn't going to be indulgent enough otherwise. There's a dollop of creme fraiche below, a sprinkle of fresh dill above. Each one a salty, tender, creamy, bright bite. We were off to a good start.

Keeping it simple, around lunch we toted out the tins. To the left (above) you see Fish the Second, smoked clams, and to the right Fish the Third, Jose Gourmet Smoked Trout fillets in Olive Oil. There's also some Asiago with rosemary for a creamy cut to all the oily fish, and some kalamatas for a snap of brine. Without a doubt the trout was the star here--my guess is it's best to do something with smoked oysters, not eat them "raw" as it were. But we got caught discussing whether to go dip or chowder and did neither out of ease. Not that we didn't consume them all.

If you were beginning to think--gee, you really didn't make anything, did you?--let me introduce you to Fish the Fourth, a Mexican-style shrimp cocktail from a Rick Bayless recipe and Fish the Fifth, a crab Louie salad. That shrimp packs a kick, cooked and then marinated in fresh lime juice, to be finished with Tapatio and white onion and avocado and cucumber and cilantro and a jot of olive oil. And, yes, ketchup. The only approved use of it in our house. The crab salad had a bit of a kick too--some Sriracha in its mix of Veganaise and lime juice, and then tomatoes, capers, more avo(!) and Bibb lettuce. Given the preciousness of crab (both it's light if delightful flavor and that it was the most expensive per pound thing we bought) it was hard not to try to just eat all of that first and then enjoy the salad after, to be honest. This course was around Happy hour time, and it went perfectly with Buttonwood's unusual Hop On White, that's Sauv Blanc dry-hopped. So smells a bit like IPA, tastes like grapefruit and lemon.

Fish the Sixth was mussels in Pernod cream, sauteed with leek, fennel, red bell pepper. The last of the Hop On went into the cooking juice we of course devoured with spoons after. Don't ask me how, but I forgot to put a crusty loaf of bread on the shopping list, but we wisely remembered we had Alexia truffle fires in the freezer, so heated those up and suddenly it was moules and frites. Perfect with the mightily potent Gulden Draak Belgian ale we'd been hanging out to for evidently just such a Belgian occasion. We really did not do the Italians proud with our Fo7, I have to shamefully admit. But we ate well.

So well that we threw in the towel for the day. (A beach towel, given all the fish.) Fish the Seventh waited for dinner the next night, a gorgeous filet of Coho salmon that we did in very much a throwback style, adapting a recipe from Beverly Gannon's Family-Style Meals at the Hali'imaile General Store. That's what she calls a take on dynamite scallops sauce for sushi, again with some Sriracha, scallion, Veganaise, miso, splash of veggie stock. It's a rich kick and keeps the baked fish marvelously moist. Alongside are coconut-green-curry green beans and jasmine rice given a bit of added flash with cilantro stems, fresh ginger, and a spritz of black sesame seeds and dried seaweed (we actually bought in Ireland--don't tell the Italians, or the Hawaiians...) atop, too. 

So we made it--seven fishes, four meals, two days. No apologies. Well, maybe only to the things that used to be a-sea but now are a part of me. I appreciate their tasty if unwilling sacrifice. And if we ever get to do this again with actual other people to feed too, there will be pasta.

Grilled Shrimp and Sausage @ Paradise Café: Cassoulet a Santa Barbara Way

Would a cassoulet by any other recipe taste as sweet?

It might if you’re used to being enticed by the oak grill smells that waft about the intersection of Anacapa and Ortega. Paradise Café offers something simply called Grilled Shrimp and Sausage ($15.95), but simple it isn’t. Not that it’s complex. But it surprises.

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

Four More Beers, Uh, Years!

You have to click on that menu to make it bigger, but you know you want to, and trust me, the menu made me bigger as it was wonderful through and through. But what else might one expect from the dynamic duo of brewer Eric Rose and Chef Dylan Fultineer at HBC? I won't take you through it course by course simply because I don't have the time, but I did want to point out a few things:

1) I could get very used to eating local ridgeback shrimp whole, like little softshell crabs, especially if I had Dylan's killer peanut sauce to drizzle atop.

2) I never order salmon out because it's one dish I nail at home, so why pay someone to do what I can do? This salmon, however, well, I would order it again. The slow poaching keeps it moist with all its lovely fattiness (admit it, that's why salmon is everyone's favorite fish--you get the good fat you want from a steak but get to feel virtuous eating it) but the real secret is getting a bite of everything on the extremely well-conceived plate at once, so the zip of the Meyer lemon, shaved just thin enough, cuts that fat a bit, and then the tabbouleh, made from actual malted wheat (it's a brewery after all), is a comforting sweet (that's what malt in your beer does, after all, besides process the alcohol), but then there's the parsley and Persian mint doing the great countering, centering things herbal greens do, and it's all in your mouth. At once. Which you get to follow with a healthy swig of the 4th anniversary ale, which is billed as an "American style sour ale brewed with Brettanomyces and lactobacillus," that reminds you of the old aphorism "Brett in wine, say nein, Brett in beer is the sour you'll find dear." Or something like that.

3) If a version of the red rock crab chowder doesn't end up on the menu someday, I'll be the crab. OK, having lived in Baltimore for awhile and doing my time with a bushel of crabs, I understand picking out the meat from the shell is a chore, and I only had to pick it out and feed myself, and drink lots of beer while doing it. So the kitchen prep is a bitch. But surely some other fish might work in a chowder that good. Red curry. Yum. And vegetables still with a bit of bite in them, tasting like potato and carrot and whatever they actually were, not just soup ballast. The giant hunks of crabmeat didn't hurt none neither, of course.

And then there's the one new beer of the evening, and a delightful surprise it was, the cask conditioned Pocket Full o' Green.  An India Pale Wheat, it makes me say junk all those Belgian-IPA crosses that sort of seem the platypi of brewing, and go for the wheat-IPA combo instead. Rich and full in the mouth (the cask helped that, of course, and Eric warned it will be a different beer off cask), but still, so so good.

Luscious Liquid (Not Like That) Lunch

Talk about your too much goodness--if you ever have the slightest reason to head downtown midday, be sure to take it just so you can go eat at the Santa Barbara Museum Cafe. It's sadly easy to forget, as it's not open in the evenings (just museum hours) and has no street presence (they really need to chop out some of the giftshop and have a doorway straight to the cafe. Brenda Simon, who also does Secret Ingredient Catering, is making the best of a spot with a minuscule kitchen--when life gives you little heating, make veggie and vegan food. They can still turbo-charge the temp on these hot pots (pictured above, and that's supposed to be just a starter portion, well, if you order it sans shrimp) they're currently serving, which puts the lie to the idea that something sharing similarities with ramen noodles has to be a salty monochrome drag. Lots of flavors, from salt, sure, but also ginger and more--lord knows what tasty miso is at the broth's base. And then there's the mound of spinach holding up the mound of seaweed salad--it's almost Earth Day, so go green, sure!

Gotta Howl for Blue Owl

I guess I have to admit I'm sad to say that I'm not sad to say that I've come to the point in my life when hanging out in a rowdy bar drinking to the wee hours doesn't hold much appeal. I did my bar-boozled time, and probably some of yours, too, back in my younger days, but now it generally seems best if there's drinking to be done to do it at home as a series of delicious decisions built around an equally delicious meal--cocktail pre, wine with, after after. Then the good night is easy, as I just have to walk to the bedroom.

This prelude is a long way to say--I was on State Street at midnight this weekend, amidst those much younger, much more blinged out, and much drunker, and was overjoyed to be there. And there was no drinking of anything stronger than water involved on my part, for I was at Blue Owl at Zen Yai, Cindy Black's weekend late night concern that should concern anyone interested in scrumptious versions of southeast Asian streetfood in our humble, not very hip to the ways of the rest of the big world's food obsessions, burg. I wrote about Black when she opened back in October, and the good news is the food is just as fine.

OK, better than fine. In our house, we dream of her red curry shrimp roll, ordering each other around, saying, "Bring me a Cindy Black sammich!" But then we hardly ever go, as the thought of getting food at--or pretty much even staying up till--11:30 pm is too daunting. This weekend a friend who hadn't been told us he'd meet us there on Saturday, so we sort of had to, and that appointment helped it happen. Do note things are casual at the Blue Owl; we got there a few minutes early and were a tad distressed there was no sign of life inside Zen Yai. But sure enough, at 11:32 or so Cindy herself showed up at the door, and soon Blue Owl spread its wings to the drunken world, and us. (Indeed, at one point one large maybe just out of Velvet Jones group milled about outside and one dude almost came through the window, but I guess the plus is--free floor show!) Oh, and that is good news, that you can actually sit down inside and not just order to-go; turns out it was too cold for Black to be sending everyone away to eat on benches. See, winter does to happen in Santa Barbara.

As for that red curry shrimp roll, I doubt I can fully capture its magic in words. The shrimp themselves actually taste like shrimp, which is important--they don't get lost amidst the rest, or even in the toasted ciabatta, which is big but doesn't dominate the way a crusty bread can for such a sandwich. The curry has heat but flavor, too--it really rings royally true to its Thai-ness. Then there's plenty of cabbagy crunch, green onion zip, and cilantro pep. Finally there's the tofu, rectangles wisely the same size as the shrimp, so each operate as equals, but the tofu must be baked or something first as it's crispy almost and fully flavored. You could eat the sandwich made solely of tofu and be content.

The rice is nice, too, again an attention to detail making it all so much better--why she bills it "gourmet drunk food." Nothing like a truly fried egg, all sizzled at its edges, but still able to ooze yolk over the rice, adding even more richness to the dish.

And in case you're wondering, if you get a second shrimp sandwich to go, they hold up really well for a next day lunch, right about when you start getting sad it's been a few hours since you'd had one. Ok, you'll want to eat lunch early....

Putting the Fun in Gumbo

Last night's Mardi Gras meant it only seemed appropriate to turn to New Orleans for menu inspiration (and a cocktail, of course, in this case the delightfully layered Vieux Carre), and after a bunch of internet and cookbook searching for some sort of gumbo that didn't lay on the links too much (sausage sausage everywhere, and not a gumbo for pescatarians to drink!), we found this Shrimp and Collard Greens Gumbo. So, yes, this isn't my recipe, but we did some tweaking and have some warnings, so I'm going to run through it our way for you to enjoy the next time you want a big bowl of slowly simmering Louisiana heat. Plus one more excuse to eat collards, not that you should need one.


4 TBS. safflower oil
2 TBS. flour
1 1/2 cups chopped onion
1 medium sized green bell pepper, chopped
4 ribs celery, chopped
1 pound frozen cut okra
2 bunches collards, washed, stemmed, torn into bite-sized bits
5 cups shrimp or seafood stock (we used Kitchen Basics seafood stock and it was perfectly fine)
1 14.5 oz can whole tomato, undrained
3 cloves garlic, crushed (these will fall apart more in the soup and be delicious)
1 bay leaf
2 robust tsp. Creole seasoning blend (of your choice)
1/2 TBS. hot sauce ( we used Caribbean Chile Habanero)
salt and pepper to taste
1 1/2 pounds shrimp, peeled and deveined, 72-90 count best size

In large skillet make a medium roux of 2 TBS of oil and the flour. Stir constantly over medium high heat till the mixture gives off a rich smell and is peanut butter colored--at least 10 minutes. Add onions, bell pepper, and celery and cook till the onions are translucent, about 10 minutes. Remove from heat.

In soup pot cook okra over medium heat in remaining 2 TBS of oil for about 10 minutes or until soft and a bit gooey (that gooey will add to the dish's consistency). Add the collards and stock, bring to a boil, reduce heat to simmering, and cook for 15 minutes. Add roux-vegetable mixture, tomatoes, garlic, red pepper sauce, bay leaf, Creole seasoning, salt (start lightly as boxed stock can be sodium-full), and pepper. Stir to combine and break up the tomato a bit. Simmer for another 20 minutes. Add shrimp, cover, and cook slowly for no more than 10 minutes--keep checking on how much those shrimp have pinked up and tightened their little circles.

This goes well with a mixed greens salad and some crusty bread, maybe even a crusty-garlicky-cheesy bread, would be great.