Full Belly Files | Brews & Bites at Botanic Garden

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This edition of Full Belly Files was originally emailed to subscribers on March 22, 2024. To receive Matt Kettmann’s food newsletter in your inbox each Friday, sign up at independent.com/newsletters.

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The whole point of the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden’s annual Beer Garden fundraiser crystallized while my wife, Joanna, and I were standing by Mission Creek beneath the shade of redwoods in the far corner of the garden. As Tarantula Hill Brewing’s co-owner and brewer Mike Richmond served us his Cali Coastal IPA, he explained that it was flavored with redwood tips.

“Redwood?” Joanna asked.

“Yeah,” replied Richmond, pointing to the other side of the trail, about five feet away. “From that tree right there.”

The Botanic Garden Beer Garden is not your usual beer or food festival. The breweries and restaurants are curated by an advisory committee — I’m a member of that — and then each participant must use a native plant as one or more of the ingredients in whatever brew or bite is being served. That’s led to an aura of friendly creative competition, and it’s not uncommon to see brewers and chefs checking in on the other booths to see which plants were used and how.  

Meanwhile, due to the attendance limitations of the Botanic Garden’s permits, the always sold-out event — tickets were gone in less than an hour this year — doesn’t feel crowded. There were many times when Joanna and I were walking from one booth to the next on a path with no one else around. Just the walking around part, past the popping poppies, aromatic sages, and colorful signs indicating which edible native plant is where, is a treat itself, especially compared to the usual beer festival setting of booths on a lawn.

Our day began at the Grand Cru reception, where Strange Beast — the Ventura restaurant collab between Santa Barbara’s Good Lion Hospitality and Sama Sama Kitchen teams — kick-started our palates with a refreshing beer-cocktail featuring juniper from the garden, Wilder Gin, Zirbens Stone Pine Liqueur, pomegranate, white vermouth, and lager. Their culinary team pumped out a savory array of Asian bites: taro dumplings, shrimp and pork dumplings with black sage, grilled chicken meatballs, salmon crudo with kumquat, crab cakes with yarrow, and a miso panna cotta with wood mint.

After stuffing my face full of dumplings and meatballs, we eventually made our way down the hill to the main event, where it was truly highlight after highlight: Lil’ Dom’s barbecued oysters; lemon/wood mint shrub and black sage cold brew with Mission Creek water from Dawn in the Drift Hotel; a “very bay-y” Juniper Bay IPA from Night Lizard (I didn’t try the 16 percent Grand Cru triple fermented with Inspiration Point yeast); spring pea and yerba buena hummus from The Lark; desert lavender and white sage in Figueroa Mountain’s rice lager; Rincon Brewery’s bretty saison with purple and black sage; black sage and brown butter risottino with last-minute chanterelles and purple sage by Convivo; and High Seas Mead/Single Fin’s Coastal Bloom cider with desert lavender and lemonade berry.

The most intriguing sip of all for me was BrewLab’s Botanicale, a kettlesour gruit with sagebrush, hummingbird sage, and jasmine fermented on elderberries. Fresh, tart, and clean, it was a compelling gruit, which is what beer is called when hops are not used in favor of other bittering agents, like sagebrush here or, traditionally, mugwort.  

I especially liked the pairing of Validation Ale’s Convalida pilsner with desert lavender alongside their pork belly bite with hummingbird sage BBQ sauces and rosebud slaw. But I heard most people openly rave about Barbareño‘s oak-smoked tri tip with sagebrush toum and wood mint chimichurri atop sourdough crostini.

While the brews and bites are certainly the main attraction for most attendees, the fact that the event is a fundraiser for the Botanic Garden that celebrates native plants seems to draw a particularly friendly and happy crowd: people who value nature and the great outdoors as much as they do great food and drink, and we’re just grateful to be in one place that’s connecting all of the above. That leads to a sense of camaraderie that’s not so common at other food and drink gatherings, just another reason why this is fast becoming my favorite fest of the year.

Joanna and I kept the fun going after the event, meeting up with friends for a night on the town. Drinks at Gala and Dusk led to dinner at Tamar, following by nightcaps at We Want the Funk. It was a Saturday very well spent.

Thumb Fun

A week ago, I decided to make some thick potato chips, and to do it the restaurant way, breaking out the actual oil rather than just air-frying or baking them. That meant I had to parboil the slices, dry them, deep-fry them at 320 degrees for a couple minutes, and then deep-fry them again at 375 degrees for more than five minutes.

But first was the slicing part, for which I busted out the hefty mandoline that I got for Christmas, a Swissmar Börner V-Slicer. It’s an intimidating device, more menacing that the OXO Grater & Slicer kit that I’ve used for years. I still use the OXO for minor grating and quick mandolining, but I opt for the Swissmar when julienning, trying to cut more food efficiently, or needing a thicker cut, which was the case for the chips.

For some reason, I did not use the safety device that comes with the mandoline this day. I started to cut a potato, checked the thickness (perfect!), and then went to town a bit quicker. Within a couple strokes, I felt that familiar pressure of blade interrupting flesh, and yelled something like, “Oh no!”

My wife hurried out into the garage. I looked at my thumb, which was not yet bleeding, but missing a significant corner. I fished out the chunk of flesh from the bowl that was catching the potatoes, and, of course, took some pictures of it and sent them to friends, who promptly responded with a series of jokes, images, and memes.  

I wrapped my thumb, which seemed to work, until I unwrapped it a bit later to find it still bleeding. My friend Dr. Drew advised how to stop the bleeding for good — ice, pressure, elevation — and that worked pretty well.

Despite the significant hole in my thumb, it hasn’t been too much of an issue yet. I can type and cook and taste wine and break down boxes without much extra hassle. It’s also quite a conversation starter, and a curious personality test on who wants to see pictures of the chunk and who does not. I’m definitely not recommending the procedure —  I did nearly faint when I changed the bandages Saturday morning before the Beer Garden — but I’m happy it hasn’t been worse.

From Our Table

Here are some stories you may have missed:

• Satellite S.B. founder Drew Cuddy and Lindsey Reed, who now teaches the UCSB intro to wine class, are bringing back the Natural Coast Wine Festival. Drew told me a little bit more about it here.

• I did a couple more tasting room roundups for Wine Enthusiast, relying mostly on the suggestions of other wine pros in town, including Indy contributors Sean Magruder and Vanessa Vin. Here’s the one on the Santa Ynez Valley, and here’s the other one on Santa Barbara proper.

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