Burrito Week 2026: Mesa Cafe and Seoulmate Kitchen

 

It's Burrito Week 2026 over at the Santa Barbara Independent. That means over 50 burritos on special at 9 bucks per. I had the good fortune to sample and write about two--at Mesa Cafe and Seoulmate Kitchen. Highly recommend both spots!

The World on a Plate at El Encanto

So that menu above needs some explaining. It was from the September 17 Culinary Experience Dinner at El Encanto, a series I've had the good fortune to write about before for the Indy. Most of the Culinary Experience evenings have invited a guest from south of the border; that story, if you don't visit the link, was about chef Rodrigo Rivera-Río from Monterrey (the 2 R one). So it's easy to assume what you're going to get at one of these is something elevated, often Michelin-starred, from Mexico.

Estrella Jafif, the September 17 chef, lives and works as a caterer and cookbook author in Mexico City. But if you peruse the menu above you'll quickly catch on that Jafif, as she puts it, "grew up surrounded by a lot of cultures and a lot of flavors." Turns out she's a Mexican Jewish chef with roots in Lebanon and Cuba. It's easy to see why she insists, "Food is the best language."

Food, it turns out, can be an offhandedly charming centerpiece for a table, too. The evening's diners were sat at long tables and served relaxed, family style, even while the attentive service was quick to adapt for any eater's or drinker's needs. People across from us got dishes provided free of nuts to avoid allergies; my wife Chryss got a NA pairing that nearly made alcoholic me (wait, I didn't put that right, did I?) jealous. If you want to know, check out the fine product from French Bloom.

I'm going to avoid writing about every last dish extensively because, as you can see from the number of photos, that's a lot of dishes, and somehow I didn't get snaps of the olives or either of the desserts. But that's a creamy and luscious babaganoush above, a delight scooped with fresh-made, airy pitas.

And the hummus got a different twist with both pomegranate seeds and pomegranate molasses, both an acidic bite and some tart-sweetness.

These fried kibbeh crunched but then crumbled as their insides were tender ground beef studded with pine nuts and bulgur. People all do their own kibbeh thing--if Wikipedia can be trusted just the city ofAleppo boasts 17 varieties--so it's hard to be an expert. But I found these hitting that fried food sweet spot. This opening salvo of dishes got elevated by the wine pairing, Villa Bon, “Accueil Les Danaides,” Vandieres, Champagne NV. Bubbles sure can magically re-awaken your taste buds between every bite.

This signature watermelon salad makes a good transition, as it's a favorite dish of Wero Cham of Vinos Boutique, who served as lead sommelier for the night. Plus, it was his recommendation that got Chef Jafif the gig. So she had to make the salad, and a fine one it was for late summer, the melon perhaps somewhat compressed (?), lightly dressed with oil and herbs and spice including nigella seeds, and set off by tufts of a creamy house cheese blend (feta-esque). A scatter of pistachios added more flavor, crunch, and salt. Thanks, Wero, for the menu request!

Beetroot salad could be considered a bore by now (they trended back when Ron Reagan was president!), but this one, with the earthy globes roasted in salt, kept a surprising firmness and tenderness at once. And then their sugar got met with the acid from orange supremes and labneh, and some more pomegranate molasses. 

In a meal aiming for homey comfort, the kibbeh tartare above was the closest to a challenge food, for your eyes aren't deceiving you--that's about a half inch thick of raw ground beef in the bowl. Spread across some toasted bread it worked, if finding a place between domesticated animal and something gamier without being wild. The heat from a slice of jalapeño also served as a way to cut the meat's meatiness a bit. And sure, there's bulgur, again, and some tamarind to give the typically Lebanese dish bit of a Mexican accent.

As if to mirror the international house of flavors approach, Cham choose to pour two wines with this set of dishes: Barrigón, Charelo-Albariño, Queréraro 2022 and a Bruno Giacosa, Barbera D-Alba, Piedmont 2022. The Mexican Barrigón was described as an orange wine, as it had some skin contact, but you had to squint to glimpse that color. The flavor was grippy and lovely, though. And the Barbera had its tannic grip and rich red fruit that helped open up the tartare into something more encompassing than its initial one-note hit might suggest.

More wine, crummier photos, sorry. But that's a couple servings of the local vermillion rockfish, topped with tahini and chermoula, and sat on some more oil-based chermoula and labneh (there should be walnuts and almonds, but we got the remaining pieces from the no-nuts diners). Quite a delish dish that made sure the fish was the star. It paired perfectly with the one local pour, a Sanguis, Chardonnay, “Whale Song,” Sta. Rita Hills, 2023--dry, mineral, with a waft of lemon blossoms.

Let's do these together, as they went together so well, too. Sometimes meat and potatoes, even when they are "just" meat and potatoes, aren't just meat and potatoes. That's a platter of wood-fire crusted Baharat ribeye with roasted tomatoes, and potato confit, sliced thin as window panes. Crusted isn't just aspirational--the steak crunched--yet as you can see, was immaculately medium rare every other bit of its insides. Baharat, a spice mixture that's been around at least 10 centuries, so, yeah, there's a variation or a thousand, means all sorts of rich flavors engulf the tender beef, from paprika to cumin to cardamom. Every time I think, for my own health, the health of the planet, the kindness of sweet cow faces, and the fact that eating a whole steak I always get bored 2/3 of the way in, somebody serves me a dish like this. I might just be damned to be an occasional carnivore.

Particularly so there's something perfect to pair with that wine, a Chateau Musar, Red Blend, Bekaa Valley 2004. Yep, a wine old enough to vote, from Lebanon (how fitting!), silky, fruit-forward (black cherries and raspberries, and even some dried fruit notes) without being a fruit bomb blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Cinsault, and Carignan. 

Even better, it rang nostalgic bells for the long gone but not forgotten weekend wine bar Five & a 1/4 run by Jeremy Bohrer back in the day, the kind of place where some Chateau Masur was almost expected. 

So the meal did that, too, creating circles of culinary delight, not to mention truly connecting chats with the folks across the table from you.

 

A Review of Judd Apatow's "Comedy Nerd" and Cameron Crowe's "The Uncool"

 

It would be impossible to write the story of late 20th century-early 21st century pop culture without considering the work of Judd Apatow and Cameron Crowe. Even an abbreviated list of titles they wrote/directed/produced would be a roll call of beloved TV and filmic memories that have launched a million memes and coined troves of quotable quotes. Freaks and Geeks, The 40 Year-Old Virgin, Anchorman, Bridesmaids. Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Say Anything…, Jerry Maguire, Almost Famous.

Despite being ten years apart in age (Crowe was born in 1957, Apatow in 1967), both men have recently put out big looks back, full of delicious details of lives creatively well-lived. The Uncool is more of a straightforward biographical take, crafted out of punchy, generally chronologically ordered chapters framed by Crowe’s anxiety prior to the debut of the musical stage version of Almost Famous. Comedy Nerd is a self-proclaimed hoarder’s scrapbook of Apatow’s life, composed of recently-penned passages, lots of primary documents (texts, reviews, emails, scripts), and many, many pictures of the funny and famous.

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

Review also posted at the Santa Barbara Independent on October 6, 2026.

Indy Origins: The 30-Year Hobby Job That Has My Heart

 I came to town with an alternative paper history, having cut my marginally paid journalistic teeth at the Baltimore City Paper while still in college. As an aside, holding the mildly impressive title City Lights Editor there meant I bugged bars for their live band schedules, which in those ancient days involved phone and mail. How a paper came out every week was sort of a miracle.

It all led to a lifetime with a hobby job: writing for the local. Got to do it in State College, PA, where the paper was the Centre Daily Times, something early computer spell-check really wanted to rename the Sinatra Daily Times. Had a host of clips, some already fading newsprint, to prove that I had done this work a time or 20. So in 1995, half a year into my still running Santa Barbara tenure, I cold-called then Arts Editor D.J. Palladino, dropping off a clutch of clips, hoping the mélange covering everyone from Rick Danko to Yo La Tengo would convince him I should write about music.

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

A Review of Amy Rigby's "Girl to Country: A Memoir"

 

Singer-songwriter Amy Rigby sets up the arc of her moving, charming, outsider-insider’s memoir Girl to Country poignantly in the prologue, when she considers what she might say to explain herself to Hazel Smith, who she calls “the Grande Dame of Music City,” while cheekily describing her “like…one of the Gabor sisters, if they’d been from Kentucky instead of Budapest.”

“I just want to earn a living!” I wanted to shout. “But I also want to be AN ARTIST—to create work that no one else has ever thought of doing. In addition, I’d like L-O-V-E and/or S-E-X, to live in a decent home, and to raise a happy child to adulthood. All while looking cool. That isn’t too much to ask, is it? IS IT?”

When the self-proclaimed Dean of American Rock Critics Robert Christgau reviewed Rigby’s solo debut Diary of a Mod Housewife in 1996, giving the album an A and eventually naming it his second favorite disc of the year, he wrote, “Personalizing the political for a bohemia that coexists oh so neatly with structural underemployment, thinking harder about marriage than a dozen Nashville homilizers,” he had no idea he was predicting Rigby’s next career move. For she would leave the crudy-but-cosy comforts of New York (read all about her exciting exploits there in Rigby’s first memoir, 2019’s Girl to City) for Nashville, hoping her gimlet-eyed, catchy tunes might land her a publishing deal, and therefore steady money.

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

Review also posted at the Santa Barbara Independent on September 2, 2026.

Props to the Peeps at Bistro Amasa

Doesn't it seem like restaurants should have more fun? Yeah, it's a business in a shitty time for businesses. Yeah, we're often paying serious money--especially given the price for produce and all foodstuffs right now (thanks, Obama)--so it's easy to think patrons need a mature, nothing but respectful, nothing approaching jokey, luxe repast. But shy of fart jokes at the table, shouldn't we all just loosen up a bit?

The already delightful on "regular" days Bistro Amasa (see my article when they opened last fall) clearly has chosen to heed that more whimsical call, for on Friday, July 10 they offered up--in addition to the regular menu--A Totally Rad 90s Night. Witness Exhibit A up top, a special cocktail, Fruit Loops. The Boring Bar, led by Doug Boring who crafted Amasa's regular list of drinks, too, was whipping up these special tipples, with the team all bedecked in bucket caps like they would be extras in a music video when their shifts were over. So, every sip that rainbow ring of loops would knock you on the nose, ensuring your olfactory senses sang you a nostalgic tune sung by a toucan. Clever. And then the drink itself, clear as a Nordic fjord, yet lively with lemongrass, makrut lime, pixies juice (the ones from Ojai, not the band trying to find their mind). Somehow the liquor was a house gin and rum blend--obviously not a usual pairing but the two came to a lovely meeting of the angular and round, probably thanks to a cereal milk wash. These were cocktails that read like stunts but sure didn't drink like them. (Turns out this one was originally created by Doug Boring for executive chef Julian Martinez's wedding at Julian's request.)

There's the full special menu, ready to replenish any exhausted skateboarder with a parent's credit card in hand. We opted to do a bit of it and some of the regular menu, partially because one of us is pescatarian, and evidently that distinction wasn't invented 35 years ago (I kid). In addition to the 90s menu and the regular menu, there was also a special dish, a beet salad, which, come to think of it is a throwback a different 1990s dining scene (thanks, Alice Waters). But once again, the Amasa team brought something new and fresh. Those roasted beets were sliced just above paper thin, yet still vividly earthy. A hit of anchovy kicked up the sparse "dressing," pistachio gave it a needed crunch, the sprinkle of sprouts just enough green. Then the carrots were pickled, and even more finely sliced than the beets. Then some mighty fine burrata for creamy indulgence. Such balance on a plate.

I'm going to try to speed this post up or it will take you longer to read it than it took us to eat our meal. Burt behold the Cool Ranch Crudo, and if only Doritos came as quiveringly-fresh kampachi, with this elegant a buttermilk-lime cream. The serrano pepper slices soared this dish up the Scoville scale, but that's why god made handkerchiefs. And the brilliance of toasting masa to become crispy bits atop. Once more an item that could have been awfully awkward turned into a glorious, elegant swan.

Take the ingenuity the Cold Pizza. The Boring Bar admits it's a riff on a similarly named drink from lauded Lower East Side Manhattan spot Double Chicken Please, but two drinks in the line between borrowing and homage is a blurry one. Somehow it brings together blanco tequila, Parmigiano Reggiano, burnt toast (I wish I had a chance to ask how--I assume double strained out as you don't get a single carbon speck in the glass), tomato water, basil, honey, and egg white for that lovely foamy texture. Again, this one gets you on the nose, leaving you thinking, "Sure smells like 'za!" Then yes, you get the agave as you sip, but it's blended so well with all the other flavors and aromatics you just keep desiring more. For who doesn't want a second slice of pizza?

Maybe someone with this plate of Nuggets in front of them. Unlike Mickey D's, these kind of explode open when you puncture the crunch of the perfectly toasted crust (I assume panko?), revealing a tender surprise of confit chicken and the delightful, mild funk of duck liver mousse as a binder that would prefer to just taste great and not hold everything together too much. (They were offally good!) It was hard to choose which of the three rethunk sauces to dip each bite in, from a vinegar over sweet bbq, to a sweet 'n sour that deliciously twirled between those two poles, to a spiced honey mustard that would be the king of any condiment tray.

So I have been going on and on, haven't I. Here are the roasted carrots from the regular menu, all piled up like Lincoln Logs cosplaying Jenga. To double down on rootsy heartiness, there's a quick smear of parsnip puree underneath, giving the carrots' sweetness, even more prevalent from roasting, a proper contrasting note. The sauce is a sophisticated mix of brown butter miso and sherry, there are some plump, surprisingly in the best way pickled sultanas (don't tell me you don't like raisins), some hazelnuts to make up for everything else on the plate being so little of a chewing challenge, and again, a sprinkling of micro-greens giving you color and fresh pop. Simple, and not so, but simply delicious.

I'm still not sure where we fit dessert beyond our covetous for more eyes. We returned to the 90s menu for a tribute to Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal in cheesecake form (and, yes, scattered on the plate too). I certainly never had, even in nostalgia's rosy glow, a breakfast as dessert this good. Both light yet substantial, as a good cheesecake should be, the crème fraîche quenelle offered more lift and just the right bit of puckering sour, and the cereal milk caramel we only wished there was more of, to slather onto every last bite.

All in all a sick, bangin', off the hook dinner. I'd call it the shit but that doesn't work for a fine meal, does it, no matter how much fun the kitchen, the dressed for the evening staff (sorry I didn't mention how wonderful everyone working there was, too!), and the fine bar surely seemed to have and share.

 

It's Easy to SVR FLVR!

NOTE posted 7-8-26: I guess when you get samples in May, write about them immediately! Sad news: It sounds like Untitled Art is no more. Oh, well.

Let's put it this way, what Untitled Art's line of non-alcoholic beerish (more on the need for the -ish soon) pours, FLVR!, lacks in vowels it makes up for in...well, you can probably guess. I was lucky enough to get shipped a couple of taster six packs to see what's up with the product line that used to be called NON (as in non-alcoholic), and am pleased to report deliciousness on all fronts. And we're talking diverse fronts--sure, there's a West Coast-Style IPA and a Juicy IPA to make the never-out-of-fashion hopheads happy, but then there's a Chocolate Dark Brew, an Italian-Style Pils ("style" might seem to be adding up as a hedge word but I promise it's not in the glass), a Mango Dragonfruit Sour, and a Grapefruit Radler.

Those two IPAs are certainly IPAealing, the West Coast doing a bit of the dank thing, the New England, uh, I mean Juicy, giving the squeeze of citrus. So you get what you'd expect, which is just what you want, as the less successful low-abv beers often don't seem to achieve their style at all, hoping to bamboozle you in a wash of bubbles and foam. I'd put them both up with the ever reigning king of NA's, Athletic, to the point I should probably do a side-by-side to decide who would win out.

The Pils also delivers that nifty mix of malt and hops levity you want in such a beer. It's supposed to be something you can suck down, and enjoy, while doing yard work on a summer's day, even if that yard work is reading in a hammock, not mowing the back 40. And it is. The Chocolate Dark Brew hits you with cocoa the moment you pop the can, and is surprisingly complex for an NA, kind of "chewy" in a good way, even if it might lack the lingering finish a stout with some alcohol can. Think of it as an after dessert drink that won't make you sleepy.

And then there are the-ish pours, and I don't sling that suffix as a slight in the, uh, slightest. Both the fruity offerings are less beer-like than just tasty, with the fruit being featured dominating the flavor profile and the hops gently raising its hand demurely in the distance. The Mango Dragonfruit takes you straight to somewhere tropical--what a fine Maui poolside pour it would be--while the Grapefruit Radler does that cool "I quench you as I make you thirsty" thing that isn't an issue because you could zip through a six pack and still drive home (if you were sure to hit the head before the drive--that'd be a lot of liquid, your bladder mileage might vary). 

On a day when the Los Angeles Times' lead guest editorial (subscription required, so the ideas shouldn't be that life-threatening) asserts "alcohol should be marginalized like smoking," it's easy to be left fuming if you feel most evenings tend to call for a potent potable or two, especially in our current beleaguered times of Trumpiness. What's coming-out of Wisconsin from Untitled Art can help you scratch that itch without pouring any alcohol on it, so to speak. So here's a huge HRY!* to FLVR! 

*If the sometimes Y rule is in play, please shorten that to HR!, even if that makes it sound like I'm rooting for home runs (that's ok) or Human Resources, the suck-ups whose job it is to allow the bosses to do whatever they want to the employees and give it the veneer of "fairness." 

So let's just say HOORAY! then.