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.

The Mousse That Baaa-ed: Black Sheep Is Back

Since closing down on September 4 at its longtime Ortega Street location, the Black Sheep has been reborn on Cota Street a mere three months later. In addition to the location change, it's now officially The Black Sheep, SB Brasserie, which is fitting as the new location was for two decades the home of one of Santa Barbara's legendary restaurants, Mousse Odile. Co-owner, GM, maitre-d Ruben Perez definitely hopes to invoke the French spirit of the spot, offering coq au vin and cassoulet and more, but with a definite Santa Barbara, contemporary twist. He found a great partner in the endeavor, chef Jake Reimer, who has done the high end executive chef for restaurant groups and the private chef gig, among others, but seems very happy to have fun with Santa Barbara produce and seafood.

We had the great fortune to be hosted for a culinary trip through permutations of the tasting menu they are already billing as "famous," which might not be conceited much as predictive. For everything we tasted rocked--vibrant flavors, thrilling freshness of both ingredients and concepts. So while I could go on and on about, say, the perfect steak frites, starting with the tender Entrecôte meat itself, and then a secret sauce that's got some anchovy in it but is otherwise vegetarian and rich and almost worth licking the plate to enjoy (luckily instead you have plenty of yummy handout fries), I won't.

I also won't talk about the reinvigorated creme brûlée, spanking the oft-tired dish back to life with a pinch of salt and what must be a fistful of Tahitian vanilla bean.

Nope, to focus, let's just talk about the three dishes that opened the meal and hit the table simultaneously. Above you see an essay in fishy contrasts, some lightly pickled sardines atop some sprouts atop some tuna you can't see, but it's confit and rich. Then there's a slice of baguette on the plate awash with a mustardy sauce. The contrasting textures and flavors kept your mouth alive to flavor's possibility.

Here's the evening's crudo--it's listed on the menu as d'jour, as it sort of has to be as it needs to be something just caught to sing. This one did a little aria, so might have crawled into the kitchen on its own. Well, if scallops crawled. Again, all the accents aren't just for show but push the dishing fascinating angles and richness without hiding the pleasing, starring salinity of the scallop.

And then, as a true Santa Barbara nod, here's uni with "dirty" rice, seaweed, and tobiko. Things get a bit soupy as you eat it, but with the rice it's kind of a wet porridge of big flavor delight. Here the accoutrements reel the urchin's assertiveness in just a tiny bit, which works with all the other vivid reminders of the sea in the bowl. It's a great example of lots of technique being brought to bear on something that seems simple. 

It's wonderful to have the Black Sheep back.

World of Pinot Noir: Pairings with Mushrooms and Uni

While the annual World of Pinot Noir event might be best known for its two days of grand tastings featuring wines from over 200 producers, it also takes its job exploring the world, not just the taste, of pinot quite seriously. For instance this year's version of the annual event, to be held March 6th and 7th at the Bacara Resort & Spa in Santa Barbara, has scheduled a Foodie Frenzy Seminar Pairing, exploring a classic pinot noir match with mushrooms, along with a push of the spiky envelope -- uni.

Want to read the rest then do so at KCET's Food Blog.

Evan Kleiman Brings "Good Food" North

“The food geek preceded the chef or the cookbook author,” said Evan Kleiman about her life and role as the happy host of KCRW’s weekly radio program Good Food for 17 years. That’s longer than she ever imagined. “I tend not to look very much ahead, which could be a problem,” she said with her bubbly laugh, then quickly admitted, “I hope I never have to stop doing it.”

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

Ode to Uni and More

You almost have to assume the Japanese studied up their Latin before naming uni uni. For unique it is, a pungent terror to the timid, the essence of sea funk. If some chef devised a bone marrow and uni surf and turf, she might clear a restaurant in no time, offering too much mucilaginous elemental essence on one plate. So you've got to develop a taste for it, or simply like your taste buds slapped around a bit.

Or you could have it perfectly placed on a dish as it was in course three above. Draped over the miso black cod, the sea urchin turns into a hearty sauce, pushing the fish's flavors yet more forward, and black cod is no wallflower. It also, by contrast, makes the fish seem even firmer, as firm is the last thing uni ever is. That gets mimicked by the avocado appearing two ways, too, one simply sliced into artful arches, the other a loop of avocado mousse, you might say--it was too rich to be guacamole. And while it might seem from my description to be an intellectual exercise, these fine gradations of texture on a relatively simple plate, it was totally sensory as the palate got to parse smooth in a way Eskimos talk about snow.

To top the plate off, there's the element not listed on the menu, which made us think on any given night a "basic" dish might get a more market-friendly twist. We got to have a flash-fried squash blossom, delicious, and the dish's one bit of crunch, too.

Then again, Alessandro Cartumini at the Four Seasons Biltmore's Bella Vista always seems to make kitchen magic with nothing up his sleeve. These aren't tricks, but treats, from the way the finger lime made the salad pop in course one (although I have to admit the finely sliced approach--they looked like mushroom slivers--seemed to diminish the baby abalone) to the way the Inception Pinot Noir, a surprisingly lighter wine choice for short rib ravioli, brilliantly brought up all the dish's bright notes (golden raisins, indeed).

That's not mentioning the perfect salad, the late harvest tomatoes as bold as late harvest zin, practically, and then that dusting of crazy good Santa Barbara Cheese Company fresh cheese (the Carpinteria "squeaky" or the Santa Rosa queso fresco I'm not sure, alas), all cream and salt and fat. Or the dessert, which doesn't get described nearly as fully as the plate was full--that pistachio cake came in several slightly bigger than bite-sized chunks, amidst a sauce we still can't quite figure (just a-grade zabaglione?) but wish came in bottles and the freshest of raspberries, and then that passion fruit sorbet, exotic and comforting at once.

This epicure.sb thing  can sure highlight the best of SB, particularly when a Chef like Cartumini is in the kitchen.

C-Food, A+

How fitting it was that for our anniversary celebration we got to enjoy one of the best marriages of talent Santa Barbara could muster on Sunday night at a pop-up dinner at Municipal Winemakers featuring Cindy Black of the Blue Owl cooking using the seafood caught by Sea Stephanie Fish (aka Stephanie Mutz). This was truly a feast, listed as a three-course meal but much much more, especially with Dave Potter pouring generously, and for the last two courses from milk jugs (you can age in them! only kidding) since the 2011 Moorman Vineyard Pinot Noir and the delectable 2010 Lopez Ranch Cucamonga Zinfandel Port aren't bottled yet. But that does mean there's lots to look forward to from Municipal, and when I go on and on about the food you didn't have, there's at least that consolation.

The evening kicked off with lots of 2011 Bright White Dry Riesling, the perfect pairing for a salad that could have easily been my entire meal and left me totally happy. Part of that happiness comes from getting to include the words Semicossyphus pulcher into this entry, a name much more suggestive and catchy than California sheephead, which is the type of fish featured in an incredible salad. Stephanie joked she liked to call lobster "rich man's sheephead," and it did have more of that luxurious taste and texture, especially when Cindy Black got done with it, both grilling it and then pickling it (or vice versa?), so it had some of that good charcoal flavor and then the quick zing of the pickle-process too. That set the chunks up well to star in a salad full of all sorts of greens, from mint to dandelion (I think) to other herbs too numerable to mention. Then add pistachios, grapefruit, and tomatoes-a-bursting with flavor for more brights and acids and different levels of chew. Oh, and there was even quinoa, and it was so good one of our finicky tablemates exclaimed afterwards, "That's the most quinoa I've ever eaten, and I liked it!"

The menu for the evening suggested that for course the second "You should go outside." There we were met with platters of rock crab, mallets, and trucks waiting to whisk our soon-to-be-crab-besplattered clothes off to the dry cleaners. (OK, made that part up.) We got to whack away at our crabs, served cold and doused with a lemongrass-chili oil, plate them up, and then head back in to enjoy, where a platter of grilled vegetables (oh those romano beans--now that was edible summer rich in garlic oil and carbon char) and corn grilled in uni butter awaited. Now, I did my time in Maryland so I still long for the tradition of camping out at a table piled high with Old Bay steamed blue crabs that you pick at all day while drinking beer, so this was my idea of a great time. Rock crabs are heartier than blues, though, so one of my thumbs took one for the team getting through the shell some--the good news is a bit of blood is a fine accompaniment to lemongrass chili oil. By the way, in that photo, that's a big chunk of bread on my crab, soaked with the oil, too, because you can't get too much of that good a flavor.

Here's the vegetable platter we got nowhere close to finishing, despite 6 of us at the family-style-served table. Warning-the tomatoes in the photo are yummier than they appear.

I didn't get a photo of another portion of this feast, Kellet's whelk flatbreads, another item I could have eaten all night. Black has a way with dough, so simply the surprisingly thick bread itself was wonderful, with good pull on the inside and some crunch on the out, but then the chopped whelks were a cross between abalone-snail-clam to taste and not in the slightest rubbery, and atop all that was a healthy handful of chopped cilantro. So good.

As for dessert, there's no photo of that either, as I think I ate it. Dessert, that is, not the photo. I'm a sucker for gallettes, as the dough is always tasty and it doesn't bother with nicety--it's just folded over in a rustically beautiful way and let's the fruit peek out suggestively. (The suggestion: eat me.) This gallette, fired up in the oak oven so it had that extra character, too, starred apples and grapes, but then also was sprinkled with figs and berries, so was a fruit-wonderment. I only regret I was too full to have two pieces.

Cindy, Stephanie, and Dave, you all knocked it out of the park.