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.
Going to Full of Life in Los Alamos has always been a daunting task. It’s a 45-50 minute drive, they’re only open on weekend nights, and the drive through windy San Marcos Pass is little incentive to go. I know their food is good, I know this! But it’d been several years since I went. Here comes Tracey, who’d taken the week off for a staycation and one of her local activities is spending an afternoon wine tasting in Los Olivos, then having dinner at Full of Life. I was in.
The meal was the perfect way to wrap up the day with my friend, and some of her friends, who are now my friends. And also Francesca joining, making for a big party of food-crazy women, each loving food in their own special ways.
On this night, I had an avocado pot de crème, with a wobbly soft-cooked egg in it, provided by the chickens of chef/owner, Clark Staub. More accurately, it was wild caught Morro Bay King Salmon tartare, with the avocado and farm egg pot o’ cream, red onion, caper, tarragon, and Dylan’s crackers. It was two appetizers in one, making it seem like a full meal, and it rekindled my love of the restaurant and the ethos of local, seasonal fresh food that Staub has been striving for years. It resulted in me going back several more times with friends throughout the summer. Of course, not as many times as I would have liked.

Uni and ikura rice porridge, Izakaya Sakura with Rob and Valerie.
On a visit to my friends in San Diego, they’d heard so much about my favorite izakaya in Santa Barbara, they wanted me to try their izakaya. It was a lovely meal. One of the joys of bringing new people to a favored place is that it brings fresh eyes to the menu and we may pick things outside of the routine of the usual favorites. I was the lucky newbie for this meal and I selected a rice porridge of uni and ikura. God! So good! Rice porridge has always been a comfort food of childhood, but this was elevated beyond a simple porridge of rice and ginger. It was thick and decadent, filled with urchin and salmon roe. We all loved it, and I hear that my friends have ordered it numerous times since then.

Seagrass – the night of the amazing pork belly.
2011 was a whole new discovery of food in Santa Barbara. I stopped feeling obligated to produce food content for sake of generating something new. I started going exactly where I wanted to go, over and over. Seagrass was a place that I gravitated to often.
The night Seagrass imprinted on me came from an evening of adventure eating with Tracey. This is how I love exploring food best: taking the whole evening to get a small plate of something at numerous restaurants. It started at La Tour for a sip of wine, it progressed to Cadiz for tapas, and this was where I first saw Joshua. He stood out because he sat at the bar, alone and satisfied to be in his own company and enjoying his food. He also had a mohawk.
We ran into him again at Café Luck and this time started conversation and shared dessert. More precisely, I forced my dessert on him. I learned he was the sous chef at Seagrass. From that point on, it became a pleasant game to figure out what dishes he made for me when I ate there. One night I had the most amazing pork belly, beautifully prepared and presented with green beans, beluga lentils, ramps, and duck jus.  I found out later he’d made it, garnering him the nickname of Pork Belly Boy.
Even after he’d left town, I still went to Seagrass. The restaurant has a legacy of being high-end, but I’ve found it to be comfortable and approachable. Go during the off-peak days of the week and the prix fixe menu is a treat, and affordable at $35 for a starter, main, and dessert. Sometimes I go just for a bowl of soup, or I’ll go for a crazy food feast, but that pork belly with ramps was a pinnacle of perfection, eaten in the company of a local chef I highly respect who also loved the meal.

Snails at La Tour Wine Merchants.

This was one of those synergy moments, where the outcome became more than the sum of its parts. When La Tour first started, it was a charming and very tiny space tucked away downtown a block off State Street. Those lucky enough to find it could sit for hours with the owner and his fiancee, sip wine, listen to vinyl, and make new friends with the few others clustered around the tiny bar. I joked that I felt out of place, because I had no tattoos or piercings, but damn it, I was going to hang out there, hide there, and enjoy a few sips whenever there was an open chair. Graham opened my eyes to the dynamic world of European wine, and also to a fact I’m still struggling to accept: I am perhaps not that apeshit crazy about California wine. I know, it’s embarrassing! But my low alcohol tolerance is a problem, the popular flavors are too robust, and I’ve never ever liked that “buttery” taste of California chardonnay.

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.
Aside from petite La Tour being seriously tiny, its alcohol permit did not require food to be served, and how could it in that small space. But I need food to help absorb the alcohol. The day I felt the owners had accepted that I was going to be one of their loyal customers was a day I fretted about being hungry and Graham went over to Pacific Crepes to get me some bread and butter, and snails for himself, and then let me eat the snails too. The snails were delicious, served in shells with a hot garlic and parsley butter. They were tender and juicy and perfect for that moment when people realize they are comfortable sharing their food with someone else.

Figs and prosciutto, Ca’Dario with Matchoo

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

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.

Sashimi with Gordon at Kobachi
Gordon flew in for the weekend on a whim, just before the summer solstice (again, one of my best ever). It had been too long since we’d seen each other in the Bay Area. The goal was to have a massive food feast, where I’d take him to all my favorite places, then rush down to Hollywood for a show and more good food. Upon picking him up at the airport, the first stop naturally was Kobachi izakaya, and naturally omakase with a focus on sashimi. Gordon, a British Columbia native and SF bay area local, has prided himself on understanding and appreciating very fresh, very good seafood. He was stunned by Kobachi’s quality and attention to detail. We feasted on an assortment of sashimi, and each was a delectable bite of the best Ken-san and the ocean could offer. Like Santa Barbara uni, and premium hamachi. To see Gordon this surprisingly pleased with my favorite Japanese restaurant pleased me as well, and it was the start to a lovely weekend with a good friend.

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

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
My friendship with Nicky blossomed this year, and I’m grateful for this. It started out as a weekly rendezvous at the Saturday morning farmers market, and evolved into weekend afternoons and weekday evenings lounging and eating together. Her style of cooking tends towards very fresh, very local ingredients, mostly vegetarian, sometimes vegan, sometimes raw. It’s a wonderful balance to the rich foods I often eat at restaurants, and very wholesome. She’s a great cook and it’s been an honor to be her guest at the dinner table. One night, a few of us sat around the kitchen counter while she developed inspiration for a dessert and then spontaneously put together a raw vegan dish using fresh market dates, pistachios, sesame seeds, and sweet little strawberries from Shephard’s Farms. She worked the pistachios, sesame seeds and dates together into little cakes, and topped it with strawberries and basil. Delicious. It was a beautiful night.

Oysters – San Francisco, with Andy, Lisa.
2011 was the year of the oyster, and I ate more this year than all other years combined. In fact, there were months or even weeks when I ate more than all other years combined. I loved oysters and so many places had good ones. I have to give a special shout out to the oysters I ate in the last week of October, when I was San Francisco. I let my old college friend Andy take the lead on lunch, and we dined at Zuni Cafe. It was a fabulous meal, and it started with half a dozen kusshi oysters. I have to give credit to Pork Belly Boy for mentioning kusshis to me enough times that I immediately ordered them when I saw the menu. It even got the smug nod of approval from the waiter. These were like glittering gems, sweet and crisp, with the tart mignonette spooned over.
Later in the week, after tootling around town with David on his motorcycle (another first, and I loved it!), he dropped me off at Lisa’s office, and we walked down to one of her favored spots, Bar Crudo. Unsurprisingly, this little restaurant specializes in crudo, or raw seafood small plates. It was crowded, and we ate standing by a little perch on a wall, and started with a platter of oysters. It was a combination of the rush of busy-ness inside, the rush of the end of the week, and looking forward to a fun evening of scotch tasting with friends that we didn’t care about eating up against a wall. The oysters were good, the crudo was good, and it was nice to spend some girlie time with Lisa. So many meals this week in San Francisco were great, but this one-on-one time felt special, and I walked out in such a stupor that I left my phone behind and didn’t even realize it until we were nearly in Noe Valley. Bless Billy’s heart that he was willing to drive us all the way back to the bar to pick up my phone, which had been found and held by the front desk. Serendipity!

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!