Full Belly Files | Catching Up on My Memorable Meals

This edition of Full Belly Files was originally emailed to subscribers on July 7, 2023. To receive Matt Kettmann’s food newsletter in your inbox each Friday, sign up at independent.com/newsletters.

As I’ve been filling this year’s newsletters with stories about old vines getting official, golfing in Oregon, America’s indigenous grapes, artificial intelligence, the evolution of natural wines, and trips to the backroads of San Benito and culinary hotspots of Colorado, you’ve missed a lot of my everyday eating and drinking adventures around Santa Barbara County. So let’s take a trip through my most memorable recent meals in this week’s Full Belly Files.

As usual, some of these will be longer stories down the road, but many are just glimpses into the bites and bottles that were. I’ll write a more vineyard visit-focused roundup soon, which just didn’t fit here.

Linden Hall Speak Peek: This is not organized in any chronological order, but I will start with one of my most recent meals, because it was a total surprise. As I walked up to Satellite SB last Thursday for lunch with Wynne Sargeant, the winemaker at Peake Ranch (formerly Solomon — she just got married!), it didn’t look like it was open.

When I poked my head inside, proprietor Drew Cuddy recognized me and said, “Are you here for the lunch?” I was only wondering about lunch in general, but quickly learned that I’d walked into a five-course, omakase-style vegetarian test menu of sorts for Linden Hall, the Carpinteria restaurant-to-be from the Revolver Pizza squad.

Wynne and I obliged, smiling at our dumb luck as Chef Will Moon presented dishes that Cuddy paired with obscure-yet-fascinating wines: heirloom carrot and wheat berry salad in brown butter vinaigrette with a Bonnigal-Bodet Loire Valley rosé of pineu d’aunis; sugar snap peas in sauce gribiche, date, and breadcrumb with Spanish palomino from Muchada-Leclapart in Jerez; trumpet mushroom in a mushroom XO sauce alongside sansho yogurt with an Austrian furmint by Wenzel; butter bean atop onion soubise with a Cucamonga Valley palomino by Scar of the Sea; and, for dessert, a mango granita surrounding a sweet corn mousse atop pops of mochi with a Bordiga “Excelsior” vermouth from Piemonte, Italy.

Linden Hall won’t be a vegetarian restaurant — other popup test meals featured duck, crab. And beef tartare — but you can bet a few of these dishes will make their way to the big show. The crunchy-topped sugar snaps were especially tantalizing, and the sweet corn mousse could be an ice cream shop all its own. And I’m still looking for another bottle of that Wenzel furmint, the zippiest wine I’ve had in a while.

Happy with Hibachi: A haunt of my college years, it had been decades since I stepped foot in Something’s Fishy, which was officially rebranded a while ago as Hibachi Steak House & Sushi Bar. But my kids had never seen the teppanyaki style of performative cooking — I was reminded of its glory during this trip to Mexico, of all places — so we decided to check it out.

Everything was pretty much as I remembered, even going back to my adolescent Benihana days at the Vallco in Sunnyvale. The entertainment value was high, with plenty of flame and flipping, and the food was actually quite good, despite my assumption that it wouldn’t be the star of the show. The scallops, salmon, steak, and shrimp were solid, and we happily ate the fried rice for a couple days.

The only issue was the rushed speed of service, as they really try to move you along in under an hour as birthday and bachelorette parties filter in. But they forgot the corkage (or don’t charge?), so we’ll call it even.

Dutch Garden, Finally: I finally made it to the reopened Dutch Garden after riding eBikes to Ventura and taking the train back for this story. I was a huge fan of the original incarnation, even giving it one of our Foodie Awards before COVID killed that annual celebration. (We may one day bring it back.)

I watched intently as the new owners worked to clean it up a bit, and reached out multiple times via email (and once in person) to set up a proper visit, tasting, and interview, though never got any response. I’ll keep trying, and assume I’ll just have to pop in in person a couple times, gumshoe-style, to get it done.

I was overjoyed to see exactly what I hoped: a patio that fully embraces the unique landscape with beer garden-esque vibes, and a menu that remained almost completely the same. I went for the schnitzel plate (how could I not?) and had a couple of crisp German beers. I didn’t venture into the strong Klokke Roeland ale from Belgium, but I’ll be back soon enough.

Convivo on Repeat: I’ve spent my usual good amount of time frequenting Convivo this year, tucking into beet salad with my wife while my son finished his last Cotillion dance, sharing a lunch of charred avocado salad, furikake eggs, and bolognese with Kurt Amman of Vina Robles (formerly Star Lane and Melville), and recently meeting with Chef Peter McNee and Brewer-Clifton winemaker Greg Brewer to taste roasted carrots and tuna crudo.

McNee and Brewer are teaming up for the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden’s Forage & Feast dinner on July 29, so we put our heads together to finalize the menu. Of course, these pros were essentially decided on the plans already, so it was mostly time for the two of them to meet. I think that dinner may already be sold out, but stay on the lookout for future Botanic Garden fundraisers down the road.

Early Weekend Dinner at Intermezzo: As Chubby Checker started his set on the Lobero Theater steps (more shut-down-street concerts like that please!) on that sunny Saturday in May, we scurried away for a quick bite at Intermezzo, where Chef Josh Brown spotted us on the way in. I’ve known Josh for years, most recently writing about him here, and he wanted to test out a new non-cheese flatbread on my son and his buddy.

Meanwhile, I ordered a French onion soup, which was super rich, erasing the memory of a previous onion soup I’d had at a fancy nearby club that was not good at all. The slightly spicy, super tangy pizza thing that Josh brought out was also on-point, though my son made a good suggestion of offering it on the appetizer menu rather than the flatbread so people know it’s really meant for sharing as you ponder what else to order.

The early dinner reminded me of how versatile Intermezzo can be in its current incarnation: go simple and light, go big and fancy, or just go somewhere in between. No rules.

Quick Bites: Just as a quick rundown before we leave my recent restaurant rounds, I recommend everything at Secret Bao; the bone marrow shooter at The Lark; the fried yuba sandwich (still) at Tyger Tyger; the dry spicy chicken (off the bone) at China King; the Taiwanese chicken roll (and, okay, everything else) during weekend dim sum service at China Pavilion; and, though its seasonal, a hot dog at either a UCSB or Santa Barbara Foresters baseball game, the latter of which is still a possibility.

Matt as Chef: At home, things have been cooking as well. Because I don’t rely on recipes — I will look at them online for ideas and techniques, but never really follow step-by-step — I rarely make the same thing twice. So when my kids like something, which is thankfully a lot, I tend to respond that I don’t even know exactly what I did. They don’t like that, but I prefer new-and-risky over old-and-standard all the time.

Recent successful one-offs include: chicken parmesan served with a 2011 Buon Anni blend by Doug Margerum; air-fried pork tonkatsu with a katsu sauce and trumpet mushroom stir fry and rice that turned into the next morning’s congee; spam musubi with proper sushi rice and seaweed sheets from Nikka Japanese Market; a spread of frittatas plus a savory, cheesy Dutch baby on Mother’s Day; crispy honey-soy-sesame salmon atop roasted garlic parsnip puree; breaking in my stovetop griddle (thanks Diamond Dave!) with grilled tofu served atop farro with fava beans and apricot; elote-style corn and linguica on July 4th; and grilled lemon-herb chicken on a tomato-herb couscous this past weekend.

For Father’s Day, I was given a proper smashburger smasher tool, which has seriously upped that part of my game. We’ve done smashburgers about three times in the past month, and there’s probably another round coming this week. American cheese all the way.  Maybe I do make the same thing twice after all.

From Our Table

Here are some stories you may have missed in the past week:

• Veteran investigative journalist Melinda Burns penned a detailed report on how water wars led by massive carrot farming companies are threatening everyday farmers, residents, and even poor school children in the Cuyama Valley. Great pics by Carl Perry too. A must read.
• Vanessa Vin checked out the Santa Barbara Wine Festival at the Museum of Natural History and filed this report with photos.
• Ryan Cruz wrote about the voting being open for the Latino Business Awards 2023, which celebrates the best taco, restaurant, and much more around Santa Barbara.
• My piece on the State Street tasting room for Longoria Wines came out this week. Check it out here.
• You may have already read my Full Belly Files report on our family trip to New Orleans, but here is a proper travel feature on the experience, complete with things to do beyond stuffing your face.
• I did a series of videos for Wine Enthusiast showcasing the new tasting room at Bien Nacido Estate. Here is one, and here is the other.