Full Belly Files | Tahoe Time, Potter Memorialized, Boar for Dinner, and Wine Dinner with Me

The Glory Hole at Homewood | Credit: Matt Kettmann

This edition of Full Belly Files was originally emailed to subscribers on March 8, 2024. To receive Matt Kettmann’s food newsletter in your inbox each Friday, sign up at independent.com/newsletters.

Stressful situations of varying sorts are becoming a regular part of my travels as of late.

There was that trip to Ecuador I planned with my son in the summer of 2022, when the country’s political turmoil exploded into riots, leading me to shift our trip to Panama. There was last summer’s Hawai’i trip, when we decided to stick with plans to visit Maui from Kauai following disastrous wildfires. And just last weekend — coinciding with my last stretch of free-ish days until June — our trip to my cousin’s house on the west shore of Tahoe was threatened by a massive blizzard that closed Interstate 80.

It was an adventure we desperately needed. For my son, who broke his wrist snowboarding on January 1 and had Monday off school followed by a half-day Tuesday, it was his best last chance to slide down a mountain this season. For myself, I needed a change of scenery to shake a rather sad and taxing series of weeks from my head.

The previous weekend had been a three-day toast to our friend Chris Potter. We golfed at Sandpiper on Friday, February 16 — Chef Peter did the Potter Plunge on hole 11, triggering a teary walk up 12 — and followed that later in the evening by too many drinks at the Breaktime in Goleta.

[Click to enlarge] The Chris Potter Memorial Golf Squad. Left: Chef Peter completes the Potter Plunge. | Credit: Matt Kettmann

The memorial itself was on Saturday at Dos Pueblos High, where more than 500 gathered. We moved on to the Timbers, and then to storm-closed Winchester Road for a sunset salute, and then to Potter’s Point on the Ellwood Bluffs for the moonrise. Sunday morning’s brunch for about 70 of Potter’s family and closest friends at Convivo was an epic affair, featuring donations of meats, drinks, produce, and more from Santa Barbara’s finest purveyors. For no real good reason, other than to keep the Potter party going, a few of us spun that brunch into a sunset soiree on a boat in the harbor.

It was a weekend celebration fit for a “fucking legend,” as Zenia Potter correctly described her dad during the memorial. But come Monday, I was spent on all fronts — emotionally, psychologically, and physically, given that my 46-year-old body doesn’t bounce back so fast from three-day parties anymore.

A scene from the Chris Potter memorial on February 17. | Credit: Matt Kettmann

Yet I was facing an overwhelming pile of imminent deadlines, both expected and sudden: 200-plus wine reviews to write in two days, the Indy’s upcoming Burger Week to organize, two big freelance articles plus two more that were total surprises, a junior college class to guest-lecture, and so on. I had no choice but to power through my post-Potter haze to finish as much as possible by Friday morning.

That’s when I was due at the Bacara for World of Pinot Noir, where, for the next 12 hours, I would run a lunch tasting for Santa Cruz Mountains wineries, wander around the grand tasting (German and Australian wines were my highlights, plus my conversation with Ray Isle), attend the Friends of Adam Lee dinner, and then have drinks in the bar talking shop with barrel bro Ryan Render, sommelier Jenna Congdon, and winemakers James Ontiveros and Thomas Houseman.

By Saturday morning — when my son and I were preparing to leave for Tahoe, originally thinking that there may be a window in the storm to make it to the lake that night — the outlook was dramatic and dim. Tahoe was leading the national news cycle, and people were actively warning us about not going into the storm, though they didn’t seem to have any more information beyond the media and weather reports I was already tracking.

We decided to drive up to my cousin’s primary residence in San Carlos, stay the night, and see what happened. (Competing pork chops by Market Forager and Campo Grande were for dinner; I gave the award to Market Forager, but I thinly cut then overdid the Campo cuts.) When we woke up on Sunday, I-80 was still closed with no signs of opening, and I started to think of other plans, like seeing more Bay Area friends or going to my mom’s in Aptos.

My pork chop technique on a Market Forager cut. | Credit: Matt Kettmann

Then my cousin mentioned that Highway 50 — a route we both know well, having traveled it at least annually since we were kids — was somehow open. A much smaller and usually more precarious road than 80, 50 comes in from the south, dropping down the steep slopes of Echo Summit into South Lake Tahoe. The problem is that my cousin’s house in Sunnyside south of Tahoe City is on the complete opposite side of the lake, but the apps suggested that it would only take five and a half hours to make the drive. Less than 15 minutes later, we were packed up and ready to go, excited that snow was once again in our forecast.

[Click to enlarge] Sporting my Potter shirt while traffic stopped on Echo Summit and digging out a buddy’s car near Sierra-at-Tahoe. | Credit: Matt Kettmann

Birria ramen at Shadyside Lounge | Credit: Matt Kettmann

Not surprisingly, given the ongoing weather, the drive was longer than advertised. We dropped my truck at a relative’s house in El Dorado Hills, where we had a lunch of spicy burgers and crispy chicken sandos at Brickyard Counter & Bar, and powered on until getting stuck in the chain control line for about 90 minutes near Kyburz. We briefly stopped (one beer) to see friends stuck in a cabin near Sierra-at-Tahoe, helping them free a car from the snow, and got caught again in the blizzard as a semi truck blocked the way in front of us just below the summit for another half-hour.

After just missing the dinner service at Alibi Ale Works in Incline Village, we convinced the crew at Shadyside Lounge near my cousin’s house to serve us their last dinner of the night. (My we-just-drove-for-hours plea probably helped, as did my son calling earlier and having them confirm they’d be open ’til 8 p.m.) I slurped up up my birria ramen as bluegrass versions of “Ooh La La” and “Atlantic City” came through the speakers, all three of us pleased to have made it that far.

By the time we pulled into my cousin’s house around 9 p.m., it had been more than 10 hours of traveling, with another eight-plus hour travel day awaiting us less than 48 hours later for our ride back to Santa Barbara. And it was totally worth it.

Aside from the meaningful time spent cracking jokes, telling stories, dealing with too much snow, and otherwise connecting with my son and my cousin, who’s become more like a brother as we’ve gotten older, Monday morning promised fresh and deep albeit slightly heavy powder with very few others at Homewood Mountain Resort. A smaller spot away from the crowds of Palisades and Heavenly, Homewood is where I first learned to ski because my aunt and uncle had a cabin nearby, and he worked as ski patrol on some seasons. I hadn’t been back in probably 35 years, but was comforted to see that an older Tahoe vibe manages to survive, despite the constant pressure to evolve.

[Click to enlarge] Powder day at Homewood | Credit: Matt Kettmann

Shanghai lettuce wraps at Auburn Alehouse | Credit: Matt Ket

We hit Homewood for a few more runs on Tuesday morning, and then headed home. After another delicious road lunch at Auburn Alehouse — Shanghai lettuce wraps, tacos (being Tuesday), house-made pretzels, and a Reuben — the rest of the drive was uneventful, and we were home just before 11 p.m.

Risk-benefit ratios direct most of my decision-making, and that goes for travel too, where the pleasure-pain analysis asks how much fun can be had versus how much hassle (travel time, price, etc.) will be required. In this case, we were gone for about 84 hours. Minus sleep time, that leaves about 33 hours of actual fun, but that fun took 23 combined hours of travel time to make happen.

Is that a worthwhile ratio? By most measures, including my own, not really.

But sometimes numbers don’t tell the whole truth. If this trip reminded me of anything, it’s that the hours spent building memories are worth far more than the more idle ones that dominate our days. In other words, always choose adventure. It tends to pay off.

Convivo x Stolpman Boar Dinner

Farm-raised boar will be the star of the Convivo menu alongside Stolpman wines. | Photo: Courtesy

Before opening Convivo Restaurant in Santa Barbara almost eight years ago, Chef Peter McNee spent a lot of time in Italy, where the culinary culture surrounding wild boar, known there as cinghiale, is quite robust.

“It’s an ingredient important to the peasant cuisine of central Italy,” said McNee, explaining that it is usually braised with red wine and cacao there, served atop polenta or pasta. “It was also one of the dishes I learned to prepare while living in San Gimignano 20 years ago and tasted for the first time in a tiny osteria in the walled city of Lucca. Those culinary memories are often called upon cooking at Convivo.”

So when he was approached by Arroyo Grande farmer Jesus “Chuy” Mendez about whether he’d want to buy a farm-raised boar, the chef jumped at the chance, excited to use his butchery skills to respect every edible part of the animal. Then he enlisted the wines of Stolpman Vineyards to develop a one-off “Wild Boar Dinner” for March 21.

The menu is deep in the meats, from boar and porcini arancini served with Stolpman sauvignon blanc and boar tonnato and boar liver mousse crostini with Stolpman grenache to a sangiovese-paired smorgasbord of boar that’s been roasted, made into sausage, and slow-cooked into a pasta accompaniment.

Tickets are a hair over $100. Click here.

Join Me at the Just 8 Supper Club

I’m busting out wines from my own collection to serve at the Just 8 Supper Club series at Clean Slate Wine Bar in Solvang, where chef/co-owner Melissa Scrymgeour will pair them with eight dishes.

The March 21 dinner includes smoked salmon mousse with cucumber-citrus crème fraîche; country pâté with onion jam; seasonal greens in her “Sensation” lemon-Romano dressing; roasted red pepper bisque with parmesan-herb gremolata; seared diver scallop with cauliflower puree; wild mushroom lasagna; braised short ribs with goat cheese polenta; and a flourless chocolate cake with raspberry coulis.

Tickets are $250 each. Click here for the March 21 event and here for the rest of the series, which includes dinners on April 11 and May 9.

From Our Table

Drizzled with pesto pizza at the Nook Pizzeria | Credit: Ingrid Bostrom

Here are some stories you may have missed:

Rebecca Horrigan wrote about the new pizza menu for Nook in the Funk Zone.

She also tells us about Chef Efe Onoglu and his Aegean cuisine.

Here’s my feature about how Justin West went from celebrated chef to a door-to-door meat salesman.

I also wrote a short article about these new elderberry gummies called Eldie, which were developed by Katie Reneker, one of my sources for this December 2023 elderberry cover story.

And lastly, I recorded a Wine Enthusiast podcast with Vahe and Aimee Keushguerian about their father-daughter wine label in Armenia and the Cup of Salvation film that shows how he made wine in Iran.