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It has been an extraordinary year for me with respect to food discoveries, and stepping beyond my boundaries. There are more good things and good people I ate with than I have the ability to mention. But there are some highlights of 2011. First meal back at Full of Life: avocado pot de crème with egg, eaten with Tracey and company.  Salmon tartare and avocado pot de creme Uni and ikura rice porridge, Izakaya Sakura with Rob and Valerie.  Izakaya Sakura: uni and ikura rice porridge Seagrass – the night of the amazing pork belly.  Seagrass: pork belly with lentils, green beans, ramps. Snails at La Tour Wine Merchants. Over time, Graham has picked up on my tastes and tolerance and for the first time ever, I’ve been completely comfortable with my (small) glass of wine. I’m not a wine snob, never was, and I’d liken my expertise more along the lines of benign ignorance, and the good people of La Tour have taken my hand and led me quietly but enthusiastically down the path of wine happiness.  Snails at La Tour Wine Merchants Figs and prosciutto, Ca’Dario with Matchoo
 Roasted figs from Ca'Dario In October 2010 I had the time to attend a number of epicure.sb events. Not so for 2011, and I’m sorry for that. But near the end of the month, Matchoo and I determinedly set aside the time for the prix fixe lunch from Ca’Dario. It was so good last year, with specialty house-made pastas and salads. This year, we were riding the bliss of attending the wedding of two close friends, the good weather, each others company, the list goes on. We met on a Saturday afternoon and shared a beautiful meal. I had the best prosciutto wrapped figs I’d ever had in my life. Heated until molten and melted together, but cooled to a comfortable eating temperature, all the flavors of the cheese, fig and cured meat had merged into a succulent mass, a sweet and savory ambrosia. The whole meal was great, but this was the unexpected treat. An old friend I hadn’t seen in years walked in during our lunch, she was there for the epicure lunch as well. Afterwards we both agreed the figs had been extraordinary. Polenta from the Spare Parts Bistro  Garlic sausage, mushrooms and polenta from Spare Parts. I was lucky enough to be an early adopter of the whole La Tour concept, when it was in that little supply closet downtown, and attended the inaugural supper club that combined the wine and new space of La Tour, and the food of Spare Parts. On this night, a group of us had no idea what to expect and were treated to a night of simple perfect food, the meal went on for hours. Tonight, I had the best polenta ever in my life. It was creamy, but firm, nutty and flavorful. It was the fourth course of the night. It had been served with house-made garlic fennel sausage, wild mushrooms and madeira. Then paired with 2008 Confuron-Cotetidot Bourgogne-Rouge. The whole meal was delicious, but the polenta in its simplicity stood out for me. Banh mi with my mother and Matchoo I took my parents to a food truck that served banh mi. While we all agreed it was tasty, my mother confidently declared that it was not proper banh mi, and set about making her own at home. At the beginning of the year, I received the Momofuku cookbook as a gift from her, and a year later it has yet to make it to my house – the book has been commandeered by my mother and I fully admit: she has made much better use of it than I could have. It helps to be retired and have a culinarily adventurous spouse, no? Her food truck “banh mi” experience sent her straight to the Momofuku tome and by next weekend I was invited over for a session of preparing and eating her version of banh mi. Matchoo joined in the fun, and we chopped vegetables and sliced SPAM while my mother grilled pork and toasted the bread rolls. The result was a pile of magnificent Vietnamese sandwiches, filled bursting with grilled meat, marinated crunchy goodies, nuts, and that heavenly nuoc cham that makes me salivate at the memory of it all. Then we had sticky rice and mango for dessert! There was a time I had some cooking skills that was on pace to match my mother’s skills, but man, I just don’t have the time for it anymore. I defer to the awesomeness that is my mother’s kitchen powers.  Grilled pork banh mi. Sashimi with Gordon at Kobachi  Sashimi from Kobachi Izakaya. We went all over town to events, running into friends, sharing the best cocktails here, and the best dive bar there, then lounging at an adorable bungalow in Hollywood, wandering Koreatown, getting Shpongled, then lingering over the raw bar for oysters and a bloody mary at the Hungry Cat. It all ended with an excellent meal at Seagrass, but the highlight was starting the weekend on such a positive note with Chef Ken’s exquisite sushi. Sushi Tsune –tuna nigiri  Tuna nigiri from Sushi Tsune. Mai Tai Guy and I kicked off a whirlwind roadtrip to LA by pulling over in nowheresville in north Los Angeles county to a hidden gem in a nondescript strip mall. I was able to defer to Mai Tai Guy’s experience with the sushi chef and received an outstanding lunch of Japanese nibbles. It was my first time having orange clams, served first as nigiri, and a second course sauteed with sesame seeds and vegetables. The star of the meal was fatty blue fin tuna belly, and it was unlike any tuna I’d had before. I’m sounding like a broken record, but this marks yet another morsel that’s been the best I’ve had so far in my life. The chef was nervous when he saw my camera, and I think that this restaurant’s most loyal fans want this spot kept a secret, so I don’t talk about it much. But it deserves some year-end attention. Many Meals with Nicky
Oysters – San Francisco, with Andy, Lisa.  Oysters from Bar Crudo. Thank you, everyone, for listening to me, putting up with me swatting your hand away from the food so I can get my photo, letting me pressure you into checking out some new place or odd menu item. Thank you for playing with steamed buns, picking fruit together, dragging you up to some food or wine event in north county, or dividing up the entire dessert menu with me. It’s been great. Happy new year! Props to an acquaintance, Jonathan, who had given me some details about Cielito that got me excited to eat here. He spoke of high quality, well-sourced fresh ingredients. That, I can get behind. My friend Eric was in town for the holidays, we were in the mood to splurge, so we came here a week or two after its opening and really enjoyed it. The chef comes from Arigato, so I was expecting a stylized interpretation of Mexican cuisine, with good plating. Expectations were met on that level, and then exceeded by tapas style dishes that reminded me of higher end Peruvian tapas. Eric and I agreed that the prices were reasonable if not slightly underpriced for seasonal, locally sourced fresh ingredients and housemade everything, including the tortillas and chips. We ordered 5 dishes, 1 dessert, 2 margaritas, and the bill was just shy of $100 after tax, before tip, and we brought home leftovers. Loved the ceviche, which is prepared at a special raw bar that folks can walk up to and watch. We got the sampler ($18), which came with a basket of corn and plantain chips.
* Coctel de Atun Tropical - yellowfin tuna, mango-grapefruit salsa, citrus broth. Pictured far left. * Ceviche Verde – local halibut, olives, avocado, red onion, pickled cabbage, tomatillo-serrano sauce, plantain chips. Pictured in the back. * Ceviche Peruano – sea bass, aji amarillo pepper, red onion, red jalapeno, cucumber, crispy choclo, sweet potato, lime-ginger sauce. Pictured front right. Also from the raw bar, a half dozen oysters, which came with tomatillo-habanero salsita, jalapeno minoneta and lime wedges, $14. Our server struggled a little remembering the names and origins of our oysters, but we were really grilling her on them. I wish the oysters came with little spoons, the forks it came with made it hard to get some of the juices of the accompanying sauces.
Moving onto “artisan antojitos,” we got these items: * Empanadas de Jaiba y Camaron – two crispy corn turnovers, sauteed Mexican white shrimp, fresh crab, Mexican cheeses, tomatillo-avocado sauce, mango-habanero glaze. $12 * Sopesitos de Costilla - four crispy corn mini-boats, Negra Modela guajillo-braised short rib, black beans, avocado, fresh cheese, tomato broth. $11. We were sitting in an area of 2-tops and the tables on both sides of us ordered this as well, and everyone seemed to be enjoying them.
* Cazuela de Chorizo con Rajas - homemade Mexican chorizo, roasted poblano rajas, Sonoma jack, Manchego cheese, queso cotija, tomato broth, $10. This was the most “comforting” of all our dishes, really hot and bubbly, and came with fresh tortillas. I took some of this home and it reheated to make an awesome rajas-style taco.
For dessert, we shared the opera cake, $8. Layers of chocolate almond cake, soaked in tequila. It’s a dainty portion, but very rich and we were happy to share this between the two of us. There’s an impressive selection of tequila, and a range of cocktails. The signature margarita is just $8, while the more mixology ones range from $10-$13. I really liked that the small plates came with morsels that easily divided for two people, like two empanadas, and four sopes per order. Really great for sharing. If you want something faster and more casual, there’s a separate taco and tamale counter. You can’t order from this menu in the main dining rooms, counter service only. I’m most curious about the tamales on this menu, but haven’t yet tried any. The atmosphere was also very enjoyable, perfect for one of those dress-up nights on the town where, for a moment, we can pretend we’re dining in a bigger, more cosmopolitan city, then walk outside into our quintessential Santa Barbara tile and terracotta arcade. Not all was not perfect! Some whingy bits: * The ceviche assortment, while beautifully presented, was a structural disaster waiting to happen. It’s served in long-necked glasses which are top-heavy. These are then placed in a bowl of chipped ice, supposedly to hold the glasses sturdy, but the bowl itself is rounded, it’s not sturdy at all. We leaned our glasses against each other to keep them from toppling over, re-arranging them every couple minutes because once the glass tips over, there’s no saving the fish that’s fallen into a bowl of melting ice. Best to simply put the ceviche in small glass bowls nested in the larger iced bowl, then they won’t tip over and the ice may actually keep the fish chilled. * A 2-top is not big enough for two people ordering a meal of small plates. Once two dishes were on our table, it was full and plates started overlapping, stacking and felt like a messy kitchen counter. For a place that has a strong focus on small plates in a sleek, elegant surrounding, this is constantly going to be an issue. My solution is simple enough, I’m going to ask for a bigger table next time. Overall, very enjoyable! Loved the interpretation of central and south American food, going beyond the standard street-food style fare this town primarily offers. Cielito It was a mellow night, and I met with a friend for a catch-up chat. He’d not yet been to La Tour, so I insisted. He tried a flight of wine under Graham’s recommendations, and I had my usual splashes of whatever was good. Some European stuff. But what I *really* wanted was a charcuterie plate. It’s hit or miss whether the plates are available. All the charcuterie is made locally by a chef who does it as a side job under the name Spare Parts, and when he’s slammed with his regular work we go without yummy charcuterie. I was in luck and here’s what was available. * rabbit rillettes There was also a little wedge of some soft creamy cheesy thing that I ate a lot of, but forget the name. I ended up sharing with my friend and another fellow sitting at the bar. Extra crackers, please. $12.
La Tour (@ The Pub) On Wednesdays the special of the day is banh mi. They use curry-marinated chicken, shredded daikon (radish), sweet peppers, carrots, cabbage with a Vietnamese-style dressing on a granary baguette. It included side portions of sweet tangerines and apple slices. The apple has a light turmeric dressing, which makes them derishous. The meal is $9.
This is Corey’s lunch. I didn’t have as much stomach real estate and asked for a half sandwich. Mine was $4.75 and still came with tangerines and apples. The filling is yum, but the bread is a bit tougher than I prefer for banh mi. However, later that day a friend send me a picture that stated: people who eat white bread have no dreams. So perhaps today was a good day to have granary bread. Goodland Market October is epicure.sb month, and while I didn’t have time to sample much of all the town had to offer, I did make the effort to return to Ca’Dario. It had been a while year since my last visit, for the same prix fixe lunch the restaurant had put together for 2010′s epicure.sb. I dined with Matchoo, always an excellent companion. It was a Saturday afternoon, and I’d finished the morning marketing. The atmosphere was quiet and happy, with older couples and young families also sitting at tables. I even ran into an old friend who was likewise returning after sampling the prix fixe in the previous year.
The prix fixe is bread and olive oil, and choice of an appetizer, choice of a pasta, with a glass of Brander wine, and dessert of coffee and biscotti. It cost $25 for lunch, and $35 for dinner. We started with the roasted figs, stuffed with goat cheese and wrapped in prosciutto. It was the best I’d ever had, with the figs and cheese melted until warm and swelling, merged into one entity and wrapped up in charred smokey pig goodness. My friend at the other table said this was a favorite from last year and she was not disappointed with it this year. I agree. We also got the warm octopus and potato salad, doing an encore from 2010′s lunch. It was as good as ever with thick generous pieces of octopus, a sensible meal in itself. For our pastas, we both tried something new. I got the orecchiette in a walnut pesto sauce. Delicious! The pasta was perfectly soft yet sturdy and the sauce was wonderfully creamy and nutty. We some of this leftover and it made a fine dinner reheated, even if the emulsion of the sauce had separated a little.
Matchoo got the spaghettini with bottaga, or maybe I did? Doesn’t matter, we all shared. I first had bottaga and spaghettini at another restaurant in town and loved it, and had to have it again. The bottaga was nice shaved pieces, and the pasta al dente, even for its fine size. We loved it all. One item wasn’t mentioned in the menu, the copious amounts of garlic used in the dish. Wow. Seriously lots of garlic, I sopped some of it up with my bread, but there was still much leftover. Did not take home.
There is an option to order dessert, for additional cost, but we were fine with coffee and biscotti. With lots of cream and sugar.
Ca’Dario does it again, with a wonderful epicure.sb lunch. I hope to make it again in 2012. Ca’Dario Epicure SB website: www.santabarbaraca.com/epicuresb
It’s been ages since I’ve been here for a meal. I’ll guess about six years. Back then, people loved the poached eggs and I recall having a suspiciously perfectly shaped poached egg on toast for breakfast with my friend Michael. Times have not changed, the poached eggs here are still a highlight, and they are still prepared in some kind of capsule that makes them perfectly symmetrical eggy objects containing liquid gold. I had work stuff taking place downtown all this week, and on this day there was actually time to get breakfast. After a six year hiatus, here I was. It’s not that I dislike the place. But seating is limited, my time downtown is limited, why play those odds. I ordered the French toast with poached egg. It is a single slice, cut very thick and served with butter and syrup, with the ever-popular poached egg sitting on top. Upon breaking the egg, the yolk oozes forth over the toast, making life wonderful.  French toast with poached egg.  Bam! We have golden oozy yolk. All for the low low cost of $10. Views of the post-yogied, dog-walking elite, and work-from-homers free of charge! D’Angelos Bakery
This was a very opportunistic visit, and I was caught without my good camera, or even my average camera. All camera phone, so sorry about the crummy pictures. Still! Rudy’s has moved into a bigger space in that fine stripmall known as the Calle Real Shopping Center. Just next door to a shop I was doing errands at, and it was around 11:30, i.e. lunchtime. So why not? We walked in for a bite. Immediately we were greeted enthusiastically by the bartender, and although I would have loved to sit at the bar, my dining companion wanted a booth so we could talk amongst ourselves. That’s fine too! Rudy’s has always been more of an occasional lunch spot for me, although I do have friends who favor their burritos and breakfast burritos with great devotion. The atmosphere has always been very casual, a little nondescript. Meaning, it’s perfect for a strip mall. But not anymore. The new space is way bigger, decorated quite nicely to feel more like a comfortable restaurant with dark wood paneling and big booths, and a lovely full bar as the centerpiece. Strikingly different for a strip mall in Goleta, no? There is full wait service and a friendly man came round several times to greet us and take our order. He also brought a fancy basket of chips and a dish of salsa. We loved the chips, as they were very light and crisp. The dish of salsa was rather shallow, and I wished it could have been deeper to better enable salsa scooping, but no big.
My friend ordered a simple burrito of beans, rice and cheese. She gawked at the size of it on the plate, and immediately split it in half to take home and ate the other half. She said it was good. It cost $5.
The bill was about $13.50 after tax, before tip. Pretty reasonable. Now, about those cocktails. I didn’t try any, but I did peek at the menu. There are specialties with a focus on margaritas, and do you know what I like best about this menu? There looks to be smaller portions for a few dollars less. Great for pipsqueaks like me who can’t drink very much. So thank you for that. I took a photo, and it’s pretty crummy, but better than nothing.
Rudy’s Today’s lunch was with Tom, who is vegetarian. I’d been talking up the dolsot bibimbap and he was okay to give it a try. The normal dish comes with thin sliced meat, and I requested this to be omitted. The woman at the counter offered to take it one step further and suggested tofu instead of meat. Well, okay! And thank you. We also ordered a round of spring rolls and she said this normally came with pork and shrimp. I asked for no pork and again, she offered to replace all meat with tofu. That sounds okay, too! So tofu in place of both the pork and shrimp. Here are the results.  Tofu spring rolls by special request The spring rolls were just fine! To me, perhaps a little bland but this wasn’t from any lack of meat, but because I happen to like fish dipping sauce and I don’t think we got any. Or maybe that’s not what is normally served with spring rolls. Who knows. Like I said, they were fine and were totally vegetarian.  Dolsot Bibimbap with tofu Ok, I have shot myself in the foot on this one. The first time I got the dolsot bibimbap, the egg was lightly fried, sunny side up. The yolk was wonderfully oozy into the hot rice dish, but the white was cooked. The second time I went in, I tried to request the egg be completely raw, so it would all scramble into the hot bowl, but instead the dish arrived with the egg completely cooked, although slightly scrambled. Now, it seems to be my fate to have the egg always done the latter way. Still, it was good, and we got a nice crust to the rice dish and we totally ate every last grain in the bowl and it was a first time eating it for Tom, so we’re all happy. Remember: dol sot bibimbap is NOT on the printed menu. If, and only if, it is not too busy in the restaurant, they can make it by special request and it costs a dollar or two more than the regular bibimbap. New China  The bar at Meat n' Potatoes. Simple by design. I was sitting at a popular blue-collar bar a couple weeks ago, and the friendly woman next to me started chatting about food. She mentioned that the restaurant spot next to the Creekside (RIP JR’s BBQ I still miss you!!) was soon going to reopen, and the place would be called Meat n’ Potatoes, with a comfort food theme. Well, she was right, so thank you for that, Friendly Bar Woman, and not only did it open, but the fellow who does the pizza there is none other than Rudi, the fellow who used to make the Deanos pizza. Y’ALL remember Deanos, right? That campaign to save the pizza shop on the Mesa from closing? Regardless of where you stood on the issue, and regardless of the quagmire it’s still in (apparently the owner skipped out on the lease and left a couple other holding the bill and a lawsuit, ouch), there’s a segment of town that loved the pizza there. And it’s here! I should note that Rudi has been making pizza at the Creekside for some time, serving it out the back window of the bar’s patio. But nobody seemed to be talking that up. Now that the restaurant portion is open with a larger menu, there’s more reason to pop by for a bite. So now we have Meat n’ Potatoes, where the concept is simple, blue collar comfort food in a simple environment. It’s part of a suite of Red Star Restaurants who also have Alcazar on the Mesa and Milk & Honey downtown, the now-closed Chilango’s downtown, and the soon-to-be Pub in the Funkzone. They have a “full” bar, in the sense that you can order cocktails and such, but do not expect to have a delicately muddled mojito. Think simple! Gin and tonic, vodka cranberry. But yeah, they’ve got a proper liquor license, and while I was there people wandered in and happily sat the bar to have a basic cocktail. I was also there when the Creekside was having some kind of cowboy night, so people came in all dressed up as well. And you know who else walked in? Friendly Bar Lady, who’d first turned me onto the place.
Foodwise, think sliders, pizza, steak, potatoes in assorted forms, basic salads. I got an order of sweet potato fries, because I missed the ones from Chilango’s. They came out piping hot with a side of chipotle mayo, just as I remember them. They cost about $5. Then I had to try the pizza and see how much they were like Rudi’s when he was making them on the Mesa. I got the pizza with bacon, caramelized onions and sauteed mushrooms. Sure enough, the crust was the signature style where it’s rolled many times to have a crisp flaky texture, and the pizza was baked on parchment so the cheese that fell off the sides of the dough got browned and crispy. Uh, yum? The onions on this pizza, btw, were super caramelized, making the whole pizza rather sweet tasting. I sat at the bar chatting with my dining companion long enough that our pizza got cold and the crust lost its cripsness. That’s okay! They offered to throw the pizza back into the oven and warm it up again. Perfect!  Pizza made Rudi's way - crisp flaky crust and cheese "crunchies." Bonus: it turned out there was a Facebook promo going on, and the pizza that night was just $10! Normally this combination is $16. So, if you like deals like this, consider joining their facebook page where the offers will be pushed. The final item on the simplicity concept: CASH ONLY. None of this nampy pampy plastic stuff. For someone like me, who has trouble faffing around with smelly green pieces of paper, it’s potentially a nuisance. But there’s an ATM in the restaurant and the fees are more reasonable than most others, at $1.95 for a transaction. ‘Sco. But no matter the concept, Meat n’ Potatoes faces the same issue as all the places before it: parking is ass. If the Creekside is hopping busy, you’ll be hardpressed to find a place to park. So get there early, and carpool! Meat n’ Potatoes |
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