Full Belly Files | New Year’s Resolution: Know, and Support, Thy Farmer

---

Sign up to get Matt Kettmann’s Full Belly Files, which serves up multiple courses of food & drink coverage every Friday, going off-menu from our regularly published content to deliver tasty nuggets of restaurant, recipe, and refreshment wisdom to your inbox

Though its popularity is no longer peaking, the winemaker dinner developed a tried-and-true format for hosting a meal that is both indulgent and educational.

The basic formula — for those who haven’t managed to attend one over the past three decades or so — is that the winemaker introduces each course by explaining the chosen wine for that dish, often with the chef also chiming in on the cuisine. Diners leave full of both food and information, often leading to lasting relationships with the wineries and restaurants involved.

(If that piques your interest, check out this “Soul & Soil” dinner at Finch & Fork on January 29 with Chef John Vasquez and winemaker Jessica Gasca from Story of Soil.)  

An auxiliary benefit of that format — which still works well for winemakers, by the way, so long as there are enough paying customers in attendance — is that restaurants are applying a similar approach to the farmers, ranchers, and fishermen who fuel their menus. In this age of ever-curious, sustainably minded eating, why not let these frontline food producers share some of the limelight and tell us more?

I’ve advocated for this myself over the years in this column. One call-to-action in my piece about the last farmers’ market in the old location even led to this Lotusland benefit dinner last year, when I was able to ask questions of the highly engaging Jacob Grant of Roots Organic Farm.  

It’s great to see more “farmer dinners” — for lack of a better name — pop up around our community. Doing them best right now must be Pico in Los Alamos, which launched their Know Thy Farmer lunch series in February 2022 with Motley Crew Ranch and Sea Smoke Wines.

Know Thy Farmer is driven by Pico co-owner Kali Kopley, who develops the connections and crafts the menus for these monthly events. She keeps them intimate, with a max of 40 people seated at two long tables, and affordable, at $50 for three courses, dessert, and pairings from Lumen Wine, which are made by Will Henry, Kopley’s partner in business and life.

“The inspiration for Know Thy Farmer was to create a gathering where guests could meet a local farmer and learn about their passion, story, practices, and about daily life on the farm,” she said. “These lunches are my vision to meet your neighbor and learn where your food comes from.”

Last year, we previewed last August’s Elder Flat Farm showcase and I mentioned December’s Luretik Olive Oil lunch, but the next two really caught my eye: Mighty Cap Mushrooms on January 18 and Winfield Farm on February 7.

Even casual readers of Full Belly Files must recognize my growing fascination with mushrooms, and Mighty Cap out of Paso Robles is the Central Coast’s most prominent commercial grower of edible fungi. (I’m long overdue for a story on Solvang’s Wolfe Family Farm, so maybe I’ll finally get on that this year.)

For their event next Saturday, Kopley plans to make a consomme of maitake — which is Mighty Cap owner Chris Battle’s favorite mushroom, she said — as well as a mushroom and bacon salad. She may also make a mushroom cassoulet with Lompoc beans or a lion’s mane fritter. “My head is full of tasty mushroom ideas,” she admitted.

The menu is even more adventurous for the Winfield Farm lunch on February 7. You may remember Winfield Farm from this newsletter I wrote about Bruce and Diane Steele moving from gourmet pigs to subsistence crops in November 2024, which was slightly expanded into this January 2025 cover story. The Pico lunch will highlight both eras of Winfield, including the succulent heirloom pork that Bruce pioneered and the hardy grains that he’s now championing.

“I was going to make cold soba noodles with my hand-harvested durum wheat and have Kali roll it out in her pasta roller,” said Bruce, who serves them with a dipping sauce. Added Kopley, “Bruce is going to teach me how to make durum wheat pasta, and I will teach him how to roll out pasta on a fancy Italian pasta machine. Mostly Bruce will be teaching me!”

For the main course, they are thinking about a sausage dish, either with polenta made from the hand-ground purple maize that Bruce grew or a black caviar lentil from Rancho Gordo. For dessert, Bruce may make a batch of Korean-style acorn starch jelly called dotori-muk to create a dark chocolate pudding that can fill with profiteroles produced from a mix of homegrown and store-bought flours.  

As guests enjoy the food and Lumen pours, Kopley and the Steeles will discuss Winfield Farm’s subsistence farming techniques and how they utilize native grains. She is fired up, exclaiming, “I think this lunch is going to be the best ever!”

For more tickets to Pico’s Know Thy Farmer events  — including Mighty Cap on January 18, Winfield Farm on February 7, and Figueroa Mountain Olive Oil on March 28 — click here. If you’re interested in learning about future Know Thy Farmer events — or about Pico’s 10-year anniversary party next month — sign up for their monthly newsletter at the bottom of this page. For more info on Pico, see losalamosgeneralstore.com.  

---

From Our Table

Here are some stories you may have missed:

• Leslie Dinaberg gets smoky at Que, the new barbecue joint in the S.B. Public Market.
• We don’t do a ton of travel writing, but we published three recent gems: Keith Hamm on winter camping at Lake Cachuma; Tiana Molony on canvas glamping in the Columbia Gorge; and Tyler Hayden on his own Santa Barbara staycation.
• And I was very happy to hear that Goleta’s Frinj Coffee has emerged from its bankruptcy and legal issues of 2024 to rise to the international stage as the first California coffee to ever be invited to a global auction. Their coffee will be vetted and sold January 18 and 19 during the Dubai Coffee Auction.