A Review of Marc Ribot's "Unstrung"

 

Brilliant guitarist that not enough people know by name Marc Ribot has written his first book, Unstrung: Rants and Stories of a Noise Guitarist, and all those scary words in the title are meant to warn you. Not very many pages in, while eulogizing Derek Bailey (yet another level of obscure guitarist deep), Ribot writes: “The palpable fear of beginning from, of returning to…silence/nothing…is an expression of the fear that the sounds you make won’t compare favorably with the silence which preceded/follows it. This in turn represents a deeper fear. In music, too, silence may equal death. The suspicion that both are preferable, and all this implies, is among the oldest of terrors.”

You can read the rest of the review at the California Review of Books.

The review also was posted at the Santa Barbara Independent on November 3, 2023.

The Presidio Neighborhood Welcomes Alessia Patisserie

Alessia Patisserie + Café has such a musical ring to it that it’s surprising the name wasn’t the first thing that popped into Alessia Guehr’s mind before opening her jewel box of a spot on East Canon Perdido. But given that her parents, Brigitte Guehr and Norbert Schulz, are Santa Barbara food scene veterans — arguably, the creators of it — who both owned restaurants named after themselves, Alessia eventually realized, “I should keep up the family tradition.” 

 And that she does, not just in name. Guehr’s team had to demo pretty much everything in what was briefly Miso Hungry to create this inviting urban space of hardwood floors, copper banquettes, and a pastry display that demands damning the calories, as full devouring is ahead. “People eat first with their eyes,” Guehr explained, “so everything has to be beautiful.”

If you want to read the rest of this story, you can at the Independent.

(Photo of the duck confit sandwich mentioned later in the story)

A Review of Cecilia Tichi's "Gilded Age Cocktails"

 

If you’ve ever wondered how historical nonfiction can be dry like a martini and not dry like a textbook tome, you need to pick up Cecelia Tichi’s Gilded Age Cocktails. A professor of American literature and culture at Vanderbilt (and the Commodore who founded that university even makes an appearance in the book, as both a figure and a cocktail), Tichi brings to glittering life what it meant to drink from 1870-1910. Chock full of quotes from primary sources of the day with titles like 1890’s Society as I Have Found It, Tichi makes clear how much lubrication kept this period of history afloat, prior to the double blow of a first World War and Prohibition.

You can read the rest of the review at California Review of Books.

The review was also posted at the Santa Barbara Independent on July 25, 2024.

A Review of Richard Buckner's "Cuttings from the Tangle"

 

Richard Buckner, songwriter, singer, can open a song with the lines “Tough is as she does, won’t you slump on over and stir my shuffle down,” and you don’t get too hung up on not parsing each word exactly. Part of it is this is a song, and while the melody is simple, it’s still catchy enough in its strummy guitar way to draw you in. Part of it is Buckner sells it with his emotive baritone that helps make the somewhat odd words feel lived in. You get the emotional weight of a relationship from these lines even if you don’t get the outlines of the actors.

Want to read the rest of this review, then do so at the California Review of Books.

Review of Alice Waters' "We Are What We Eat"

 

In Charles Laughton’s fantastic 1955 fairy tale noir Night of the Hunter, Robert Mitchum’s curdled preacher is infamous for having “love” and “hate” tattooed across the knuckles of his hands (see Spike Lee and The Clash for just two echoes). As Mitchum puts it, these fingers are “always a-warring and a-tugging, one agin t’other,” but luckily, it’s love that’s won. 

 Reading Alice Waters’ We Are What We Eat, it’s easy to imagine she’s a preacher for a food revolution with “fast” and “slow” tattooed across her knuckles. And alas, we don’t yet know who will win. But if Waters has the slightest say in it, the whole world will soon be eating slow.

Want to read the rest of the review then do so at the California Review of Books.

A Dees-licious Wine Dinner at The Lark

 

So I could simply say just read that menu and that would save both of us a whole lot of work--you can probably taste the yumminess just from that.

But I still want to write about how well a wine dinner can synch, for the one last night at The Lark (ok, actually held at sister property the SB Wine Collective, but created by The Lark team) featuring wines from the wondrous Matt Dees--namely Mail Road and Kimsey--danced like Rogers and Astaire, harmonized like the Temptations, even comically contrasted like Laurel and Hardy.

Let's start with dessert, shall we? See what wine paired with it? Now, when does a wine dinner end with rosé? But it totally worked, here, its copper color fitting in with the playful mix of balled melons, and the wine's acid cutting the sweet of the granita. Even the kick of the Aleppo pepper--and it was pretty kicky--turned the dish into something more (the borage flowers, so pretty and a bit tart, didn't hurt). Such a clever, refreshing course.

And refreshing might be the key word for Dees' approach to whites, too. That Mail Road Chardonnay illuminated the brilliance of the unique Mt. Carmel Vineyard, a site Dees clearly loves. (He likes his vineyards a bit harsh and unforgiving--remember he gets to work with Radian and Bentrock, too.) If you're looking for oak, this is the wrong wine for you--it's a pure expression of its fruit, with lime zest zing and then enough acid you could almost cut with it. 

Or cut a surprisingly rich dish like the opening halibut crudo, that I joked was halibut potato salad because of the grilled corn aioli that leaned a tad into its mayonnaise-ness, especially with the addition of some pickled green tomato. (I mean this is the most loving way.)  Still, that fish was rich and nearly unctuous. And then the perfectly fried avocado nuggets.... Chef Jason Paluska put together a dish cohesive and unusual all at once, and it set the tone for the rest of the delicious evening.

That's Dees explaining that when the block of marble comes in from the amazing vineyard sites he gets to play with, in this case Mt. Carmel in the Sta. Rita Hills and Kimsey in Ballard Canyon, you can either take a chisel to it and make it something else or take some sandpaper to it, and make it shine. One guess what he does.

Which he does no better than the Mail Road Pinot they poured last night. Here's how Antonio Galloni aptly put it: "A wine of structure and power…dark, sumptuous and enveloping on the palate…the 2015 possesses remarkable fruit intensity…Black cherry, plum, spice, leather and menthol…Don’t miss it." We didn't--and thanks to the staff for keeping refilling the glasses, too--very generous.

That powerful pinot was an on-the-nose match for the richness of the duck liver mousse, not quite as gamey as foie, but lavish and creamy, sort of like if meat and gelato had a baby that could live at room temp. This dish's accoutrements were equally brilliant bites, cashews roasted in duck fat so extra umami-ed, and Rainier cherries poached and plump. I might have said I would have spent the rest of my life at the Wine Collective if someone would keep bringing me boards of mousse and glasses of pinot. 

Yes, it's almost hard to see the lamb ribs in there, but that just attests to this dish being all about its strewn-composition, the smoke on the meat, the char on the eggplant and peppers, the juice of the pluot, the bite of the watercress. So much to take in, you just keep savoring bite after bite. And then there's the Kimsey Syrah, a bold wine, as it needed to be to stand up the fat and sweet lamb, but then it just cascaded with flavor, blackberry, a hint of anise, sage, black pepper, and more. 

Here are Chryss's two subs for the meaty things she doesn't eat. She says they were as good as they looked. And the couple of bites I snuck said the same.

The Lark is going to keep doing these winemaker dinners, and now that all of us vaccinated folks can sit inside next to each other and not die, they're going to be a lot of fun. The next one will be with Graham Tatomer.

And one tiny issue--why is "served to share" still a thing? I imagined COVID would have knocked that one out of the kitchen playbook, but even without the fear of cooties, it's often just awkward, especially with something like the mousse board. And our end of the table sat three people with dietary restrictions, all different (one gluten free, one pescatarian, one lactose intolerant), so they had to bring up a bunch of different dishes too. I get the largesse of it, and the sense we all dip into the communal plate and all that. But that's also not quite reason enough. 

Review of "Ladies Who Lunch: a satirical taste of L.A." by Josef Woodard

 

It’s 1990-something, and although fabulous Danielle Wiffard’s marriage is about to blow, fortunately for her (and this book’s readers), all of L.A.’s eligible bachelors, not to mention its ineligible but still very willing married men, are eager for a dalliance and maybe more. But not much more, for this is L.A., of course, and the surfaces tend to run surface deep. At least in the way they’re reflected in Josef Woodard’s biting but far from bitter debut novel Ladies Who Lunch: a satirical taste of L.A.

Care to read the rest then do so at the California Review of Books site.