Full Belly Files | Tripping Down Memory Lane, Fiesta Included

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It wasn’t until I sat down to write this week’s Full Belly Files and looked through my recent photos — a common strategy for penning this newsletter — that I noticed how many different phases of my life popped up in my experiences and writings of the past two weeks. From reliving childhood haunts and remembering college days to celebrating birthdays and attending memorials, come take a ride on this nostalgic romp. There’s even a Fiesta tie-in, just to keep it seasonal. 

Childhood: Let’s go back to two weeks ago, when I was at my mom’s house in Aptos to hang with extended family on the sands of Capitola and golf courses of Santa Cruz. We decided to make last year the final year of the Big D Memorial Tournament that we hosted in my dad’s memory since 2014. That grew to be a much larger event than we ever imagined, raising tens of thousands of dollars for First Tee Silicon Valley youth golfers who needed financial help for college. And it also became a lot of work.  

But my family’s gathering in Capitola is a summer tradition that predates me, so we kept the spirit alive by throwing a more casual Big D Golf Week instead, playing Seascape and DeLaveaga with close family and friends. We also took out one of those orange boats off the wharf to fish one day, which we used to do as kids with my uncle. 

The culinary highlight was Capitola’s El Toro Bravo, which was damaged in a gas line explosion that blew up the back of its building on Christmas morning of 2024. It finally reopened this past January, so this summer marked my triumphant return.  

I once proclaimed El Toro Bravo as my favorite restaurant in the world, so I was nervous to return, fearing they’d use the forced closure to upscale or change the menu. They did nothing of the sort. The menu remains almost exactly the same as it was when I last ate there. I wound up eating there two nights in a row, and then having bites of other people’s food another once or twice that week. It is nothing super creative or unique, but it tastes like home and childhood to me.   

College Days: The knocking down of Santa Rosa Residence Hall in June happened seemingly under the cover of night. I walk my dog or hit the beach on campus quite often, and I’d heard the dorm was on the chopping block to make way for more housing, but suddenly it was just gone. 

That got me thinking of my time there, back in 1995 to 1996, when I was a UCSB freshman. I met so many good friends there, including a few I remain close to today, and made so many memories. That’s why I wound up at my computer instead of enjoying the weekend, typing away about my year there and what it meant.

We published that on Tuesday as “Saying Goodbye to Santa Rosa Dorm,” complete with pictures of my bleached blonde hair and admissions of things we did that weren’t altogether legal, at least then. I’ve gotten countless responses since, meaning many others have similarly warm feelings about the dead dorm.   

Early Wine Career: I started writing about wine at the Independent back in the year 2000, became our primary wine writer around 2006. That’s about when the free samples started flowing in, so many that I didn’t know what to do with them. 

I decided to start having Indy office tastings, in which staffers and some invited guests would gather to taste and talk about the wines I’d collected. (Here was one from 2012, but we started doing it earlier than that.) 

It was during one of these that I met Antonio Gardella, a legend in Santa Barbara wine circles. He died earlier this year, which I wrote about his passing in June, and we ran Dr. Blake Brown’s In Memoriam on him last week. 

His memorial at Shoreline Park on Sunday was a very thoughtful affair, with great speeches about Antonio’s life as a wine salesman and bob vivant. There was plenty of great wine, too, including outstanding bottles of the Compañeros wine that Antonio and his friends made, dating back to the 1990s. (I wrote about their home winemaking group here). But the 2003 petite sirah from Jaffurs Winery — poured by memorial co-organizer Craig Jaffurs, who said that was the winery’s first PS — was my fave of the afternoon. 

I was still moving a little slow at Antonio’s Sunday afternoon event because the Saturday night before was the 50th birthday celebration for my good friend Giuseppe Bonfiglio. I’ve known G, as we call him, for more than 20 years, but we really bonded when we made wine together from 2012 until 2020. I wrote about the party we threw to open all those bottles last year. 

For his 50th, we took over Live Oak Café and then after-partied at Cutler’s Public House, where a band kept the crowd moving till past my bedtime. 

Fiesta at My House: In 2013, we moved into our home off of Patterson Avenue, which has been an ideal spot for raising kids, with plenty of colorful neighbors who have become friends.

A most curious thing happened one summer about seven years ago, when a rustic sort of music came emanating over our backyard fence, and then returned weekly until August. I soon learned that it was the rehearsal for Flor y Canto, which performs traditional Californio music and dance during Fiesta every year. 

It’s been going on every summer since then, so much so that the first toots and twangs in late May or June mark the beginning of the season for me. It’s also a great example of how Fiesta isn’t just a five-day thing that happens downtown, but a spirit that can spread across time and place. 

I wrote a story about that for this week’s Fiesta issue called “Finding Flor y Canto in My Backyard.”

Encouraging Next Gens: Managing interns was a steady part of my job at the Independent for decades, but we stepped it up a bit a few years ago by partnering with SBCAN to create the Mickey Flacks Journalism Fund for Social Justice. 

Christina McDermott is currently our Mickey Flacks Fellow, and doing an amazing job. Check out her Isla Vista podcast if you haven’t yet. 

One of our first fellows was Vanessa Vin, who we hired to give voice to the BIPOC community specifically within the food & drink space. That was back in 2022, and she penned a number of those pieces from 2022 to 2024.

As we’d hoped, Vanessa moved onto bigger jobs, becoming a wine salesperson and writing for other publications, including Decanter, for which she still covers Santa Barbara County. Most excitingly, she moved to Paris and found a full-time job teaching English. 

We caught up on all that last Friday night over wine, burrata, and panzanella at Aperitivo, where Lindsey Reed’s vision for the space (explained in this sidebar to my Manifattura story) is really taking shape. 

The night before, I did a different sort of next-generation culinary cultivation: I finally brought my own kids to Dom’s Taverna, after months of leaving them at home while my wife and I went there for various, mostly work-related meals. Now they very much understood what all my fussing was about.

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From Our Table

Here are some stories you may have missed: 

• Nick Welsh’s excellent cover story on the piano bar on State Street, which ends with the line: “Do you know what the definition of magic is? It’s working your ass off and making it look easy.” I concur. 
• Bob Wesley recounts his days in France as the Lazy Acres wine buyer 20 years ago. 
• Well-known restaurant manager Pedro Rivera was run over and killed on Coast Village Road, reports Elaine Sanders. 
• Tiana Molony tells us about a bed & breakfast company doing all the right things. 
• Ryan Cruz learned that the World Cup gave a boost to Santa Barbara’s hospitality scene.