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.

It's a Cinch to Want to Go to Finch & Fork

Many restaurants are taking the opportunity to come out of COVID (ok, let's pretend we are) with a reset, and no one has done that more seriously than Finch & Fork at the Canary Hotel. They've redone the room--say goodbye to the previous darker, wood, shuttered club feel and welcome lots of white, and sun, and video screens that run different modernist art prints. It's all very beach resort appropriate, if a bit generic, not that a dark, come-dine-in-my-library look is particularly novel, either.

The key is, you're going to be paying attention to the food and drink anyway. For as part of the reset, F&F has a new executive chef, Craig Riker, with a varied and storied resume (including Rustic Canyon, Patina, bassist for Deadsy) who locals will know from his time at plant-based Oliver's in Montecito. Now getting to play once again with any foodstuff he finds fascinating, Riker and his kitchen are hitting on all cylinders, doing what he claims is mom and grandma food, as read through his worldly travels as a touring musician. It's elevated comfort food, both because of his access to so much great produce and because of his skills. So imagine a deviled egg, and then a little raft of perfectly rendered pork belly atop, riding the wave of the creamy yolk. Now that's a bacon and egg bite.

We had the wonderful opportunity to taste through a good 60% of the dinner menu this week, and I'm not going to do a dish-by-dish recounting but do want to focus in on two items as exemplars of why you need to get yourself to F&F. And that's without talking about the three fine desserts (nothing like a banana cream pie style shake to awaken and appease your inner child), or the fine service that the charming Tim Thomas, Director of Food and Beverage, oversees, or the locally-focused beverage and cocktails list, put together by Santa Barbaran Jazz Moralez (how deliciously clever to come up with a Francesco Franceschi cocktail, of course botanical-forward, featuring green chartreuse, Fernet Branca, pineapple, lime, and chili threads for quite a kick). 

But then there's the hamachi crudo you get to see in the photo above (stolen from the F&F website, as lousy Blogger won't let me post my video) bathed in cucumber aquachile. A lesson in balance, this is. As flavorful as hamachi is, it's pretty darn delicate, so it's easy to have the amberjack swim away in a too powerful sauce or accompaniment. Not here. First, there's an itsy scoop of avo inside each swirled slice of sushi, its fat pushing the fat of the fish into yet more flavor. And that aquachile brings warmth more than heat, extending all the flavors with each taste. Those flavors include citrus to give the acid zip any dish needs, and then some jicama for just as much cooling sweetness as required. This could be a meal for me and I'd be happy.

Not that I wouldn't be happier with this scallop dish, too. Again, it's a dish--the components are meant to play well with each other (perhaps food is the only place anything does this anymore, alas). The scallops are scintillatingly seared so almost crispy, and just cooked to the center as you would hope. Then there's the Roman artichoke, shaved to only the tastiest parts, like a little thistle cone of delight. Or consider it the ice cream, as the cone is actually a wrap of Serrano ham, all porky-salty goodness. Add it up for a truly imaginative surf and turf. 

But then there's that risotto I would order all on its own. Calling out Acquerello as the brand of risotto isn't just for the mellifluous name--F&F serves you seven-year old rice because it cares and wants you to, too. And how bright and green it is, redolent of shallot and basil and Grana Padano and no doubt a bunch of great stock and sea salt. Fancy without any shmancy, homey without being homely.

Rooting Interests: A Roger Angell Appreciation

 

I can be assured I’ve been reading Roger Angell for nearly 45 years, as my copy of his Five Seasons, is inscribed 1978 and “Merry Christmas” from family friends. Now the book’s dust cover is ragged and ripped, and when I open it, it seems the pages are about to let loose from their binding. But I had to turn to it again, as Angell passed away May 20 at the astounding age of 101.

I’m not alone in admitting that Angell is no doubt one of the reasons I became a writer—FanGraphs’ Jay Jaffe insightfully titled his moving tribute to him “Your Favorite Baseball Writer’s Favorite Baseball Writer.” But what a wonderful door opening into a writer’s world Angell provided—the elegance of his prose, his adult wit, his gimlet-eyed observational skills. He could regularly attest, in long-form New Yorker journalism collected every five years into books, his abiding love for a game I also adored, but one that awkward and gawky me would never be much good at it, so I needed another way in. Words were that way.

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

Bluewater Grill Renews Santa Barbara Ties

 

The steadily growing Bluewater Grill chain may be opening a new outpost every year — there are 10 so far from Catalina Island to Phoenix — but the goal for each restaurant is to stay grounded (or “sea-ed” perhaps?) in its region. The pandemic provided the opportunity to refocus that mission at our own Bluewater on Cabrillo Boulevard, which opened in 2018. Specifically, the restaurant hired new executive chef Alberto Torres, a 30-year Santa Barbara resident formerly at Hollister Brewing Company and Chuck’s Waterfront, as well as a new GM, Autumn Vaughn, a rising star in Bluewater’s ranks.

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

I Left My Heart in Fizzy Pisco

 

It’s easy to go a bit mad considering mandarins. Clearly pulling apart tangerines from clementines from trademarked brands like Ojai Pixies and Cuties… well, it’s certainly not as easy as pulling apart the luscious segments from these oblate wonders of the citrus world. Actually, telling them apart has something to do with the roughness of the skin, and, of course, genetic crosses you’d have to be a botanist to bother about. But the best thing is many of us locally have a tangerine tree of some sort or know someone who does who is probably offering you fruit. Say thanks, and get cracking on this cocktail.

Care to read the rest then do at Edible Santa Barbara & Wine Country (they've even got a fancy new site for you).

Dishing Up a New Julia

 

When Oscar-nominated directors Julie Cohen and Betsy West set out to make a documentary about the legendary Julia Child, they realized the public believed they knew her. That meant their goal was for a tone that was, as Cohen puts, “Not the same old same old.” People can find out how they made the story new when their film is screened as part of the Santa Barbara Culinary Experience’s Taste of Santa Barbara weekend on Friday, May 20, 7 p.m. at SBCC’s Garvin Theatre, with the directors on hand for a post-film Q&A.

Early on, chef Marcus Samuelsson, one of the first of many fascinating talking heads, calls Child “the Madonna of television chefs,” an outlandish comparison that’s also apt, as both challenged what celebrity women could and should do. Next, footage of a roasting chicken is set to Jimi Hendrix’s “Fire.” Sure, Child began her breakthrough public TV show The French Chef in the 1960s, but rocker Hendrix still seems from a very different world than the Pasadena-born patrician dishing up boeuf Bourguignon.

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

A Review of "The Ninth Decade: An Octogenarian’s Chronicle" by Carl H. Klaus

 

I like to think of Carl Klaus as a journal-ist. No, he didn’t write for newspapers, but his series of nonfiction books all were certainly journals, rich accountings of his life. His prose was lean and unfussy, but the more you thought about it, the more elegantly crafted it became. So, his writing was a lot like the man himself. That’s why it’s a gift that his final book The Ninth Decade chronicled his life in his 80s, a keen-eyed, non-sentimental examination of old age that he published a few months before his passing in February 2022.

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