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.

Irish Whiskey Business at the Lark

I might risk having many of you want to kick me right in my shamrocks, but I'm not a fan of corned beef and cabbage, unless that cabbage is sauerkraut and I've got a Reuben in my hands (even there, I prefer pastrami). So when The Lark suggested the menu above to celebrate St. Paddy's Day, I couldn't have been happier--not an over-cooked anything all evening!

It didn't hurt that there were eight Irish Whiskeys* also offered, including stuff as mythic as a Bigfoot sighting. I can be extravagant, but I rarely pop $600 for a bottle of booze, so getting an ounce or two of Redbreast 27 was truly a treat, but I'm getting ahead of myself. (Good booze does that to me.) 

*Does the whiskey versus whisky spelling issue confound you? It goes like this: if you're drinking American or Irish, it's whiskey; Scottish, Canadian, or Japanese, it's whisky. Why? Nobody quite seems to know. But at least at The Lark for this dinner, the lovely stuff certainly made one go "eeeee."

Guests got half ounce tastes of the four "welcome" whiskeys--although you could sneak back in for re-tastes if you were pushy or me. The big difference, as the Pernod Ricard rep (yep, Midleton-Spot-Jameson-Redbreast are all part of one of the mega liquor conglomerates, as probably you and I are, at this point), is with your usual Jameson Irish Whiskey, no one knows how it tastes, they just do shots. Here, you better damn well sip. So then you'd know Green Spot has a lovely minty character, Redbreast 15, with more oak, is both smoother with a longer finish, and the Redbreast 21, oh, you want to spend an evening with this one, even if you will feel its liquor-heat. Speaking of, Blue Spot is cask strength, 117 proof, and enough to make you wonder if you're sitting down when you're sitting down. But it's also complex as all heck, having been aged in Bourbon casks, Sherry butts and Portuguese Madeira casks. So it runs the gamut from vanilla to more exotic tropical notes. 

All four went down well with the passed app, since there's some mighty good grilled sourdough to help soak up the alcohol and then a lovely mix of salty-fattiness with that porchetta di testa (pig's head roulade, sliced to be presented as charcuterie) and then a zesty balsamic onion jam and pickled mustard seeds that burst with goodness (and run a bit about like ball-bearings, too).

Somehow I didn't get a photo of the artichoke course, but it made me wish there was even more of the delicious Dungeness crab on it, and seemed a bit of a puzzling choice to be served with stuff you were drinking from a Glencairn whiskey tumbler, because pulling out artichoke leaves and scraping the meat with your teeth makes for very messy, if tasty (thanks, tarragon-flecked Fresno chili butter!), fingers. Maybe other people are better at being dainty, but I was making a mess. And, of course, we were eating family style, at festive long tables packed tightly with revelers that denied we had just come out of (and have we?) a pandemic.

The Midleton Very Rare Barry Crockett served with this course had its own battle to fight--at a mere 80 proof and aged in barrels with untoasted heads, it was a more demure pour than the Blue Spot that proceeded it. Try being just a gorgeous gal after Marilyn Monroe had blown threw a room. But it rewarded with its subtler pleasures as we sat with it, as is fitting for a whiskey named after the head distiller at Midleton for five decades.

The Yellow Spot served with the next course brought home the sherry notes from the barrels it was partially aged in, and, as our presenter called it, "Christmas cake," because no one wants to compare anything positive to fruitcake, plus, that's what they call it Ireland. Just the aroma of the duck confit was insane, and serving it with a barley risotto was clever, of course, but the barley you eat is pretty different than the malt that goes into distilling. Both the pour and the duck had honeyed notes--the dish from honey-roasted red flame grapes--but in many ways the evening proved that while you can have delicious food and intoxicating whiskey together in a meal, it's hard to have them hold a truly meaningful conversation. I'd order that duck again, though, in a second (nasturtium are so pretty and delicious both).

But I might order these ribs first, and I'm generally not a huge ribs fan (living with a pescatarian gives you less time to develop your barbecue palate as the best joints get meat into everything, from the greens to the mac-n-cheese to the meat itself, of course). These ribs, though--smoking made them exquisitely tender and flavorfully full, especially when lightly doused with the maple and pear vinegar gastrique, a perfect sweet-sour line of tension. And what could be wrong with a whiskey-pickled jalapeño for a bit of kick? 

The Jameson 18 poured alongside is a blend of three different whiskeys, all at least 18 years old (that's what the year designation means--that's the minimum of what's in the mix), and exhibits a classic pot-still richness, picking up accents from its aging in Oloroso barrels for spice and vanilla and more from aging in Bourbon barrels, too. I'd like to call it a smiling whiskey, as that's what it leaves you doing after each sip.

And then the Redbreast 27 arrived. Think about what that number means--AOL offered internet browsers to the public for the first time the year that this whiskey began aging. And you can see what aged better. A 109.2 proof behemoth of all you might want, and things you didn't know you wanted, in an Irish whiskey, as its aged in Bourbon, sherry, and ruby port barrels. Rich, luxurious, it even offers more exotic fruit notes in addition to the more traditional plum and cherry fruit soaked in vanilla. 

As rich was the ganache, wisely salted (really the only way to enjoy chocolate fully). The sea buckthorn berry/grand fir oil sauce was a bit much for some--think mango and pineapple had a particularly tart baby--but I thought it provided a pleasing cut to the obvious richness of the chocolate. And, even to the whiskey some. So let's call this oddball the pairing of the evening?

I am a bit sad no future March 17 will ever live up to this one, for food or drink, for as the Pernod Ricard rep put it, all these whiskeys are highly allocated and he claimed to have never seen them poured at one event before. So I guess that leaves me green with Irishness, and you can just be green with envy. (Sorry.)