Full Belly Files | Goleta Menu Gems and My Ayoh! Mayo Adventure

---

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

A recent victory in this regard came at Masala Spice, the Indian restaurant that opened six years ago on Calle Real in Goleta. (They opened a second location on the Mesa in Santa Barbara this month, though it sounds like the menus are different.)

I’ve eaten at Masala Spice many times, both in the restaurant and as takeout, and have always thought the food was great. I’ve enjoyed the Indian standards on the menu as well as the dishes I knew less about, many of them reflecting a Sri Lankan influence in the kitchen.

A few Fridays ago, with both kids at sleepovers, my wife and I joined a couple of friends for an impromptu night out, and settled on Masala Spice. I was immediately drawn into ordering a Curran rosé of grenache gris, which is one of the better pink wines around. It was made by the recently passed Kris Curran, and Masala’s price is extremely attractive at just $33 a bottle.

I’m all for ordering reliable favorites at restaurants, and I’ve even got a few of my own. I’ll never stop by Convivo without some of that za’atar flatbread, I don’t see why ordering anything other than the Super Deluxe from Tino’s Italian Grocery makes any sense, and, up in Capitola, the crunchy chicken tacos, eaten speedily, are my regulars after a lifetime of eating at El Toro Bravo. (I hope they recover from the recent explosion and fire in time for my next visit.)

Such standards aside, I’m typically more inclined to explore menus beyond what I’ve already had or am familiar with, pushing into the unfamiliar corners in hopes of unlocking new favorites. That can lead to disappointment at times, like when you know you love the pho at Noodle City, but order the broken rice for a change, and then wind up staring forlornly at others as they slurp their broth. On the whole, though, menu exploration is the smart strategy, at least if you see eating as an educational adventure that exceeds just required sustenance.

Then we dove into ordering things we’d never had before. First was the papdi chaat, six sour-sweet-lightly spiced panipuri-like puffs of dough filled with more crunchy things. Then the Karavali shrimp, a stir-fried dish flavored with a robust spice mix known as gunpowder. And then the most exciting of all: the Soufiya paneer tikka, in which large chunks of cheese are coated in ajwain seeds and turmeric, tossed with bell peppers and onions, and roasted in the tandoor. It came out crackling and steaming, much like a fajita plate, bringing sonic and visual flair to the already colorful dish.

We finished our ordering on a more familiar streak — Sri Lankan chicken curry, baingan bharta (one of the better uses for eggplant, in my opinion), and a couple orders of naan — but those first three dishes were most thrilling. We felt like we’d discovered a bit of edible gold at a place we thought we knew well enough, and committed to ordering even more unknown dishes the next time around.

A few days later, I was at the Santa Barbara Fish Market Café in Goleta, which has been one of my favorite places to eat since even before I wrote about it a year ago. They launched a 2-5 p.m. happy hour a few months ago, and we happened to roll in there just after 2 the other day.

That lower-priced menu made it a little easier for me to not order the petrale sole sandwich, which I tend to usually crave when I don’t order it. Instead I opted for the beer-steamed mussels with toast, spicy tuna on crunchy-crisp rice squares, and uni croquettes.

I’d had the first two dishes once before, but the third was new to me. They’re just as they sound: uni lobes liquefied into a creamy bechamel, then flash-fried into a plump, brittle blob, served alongside a Japanese tartare sauce. They took awhile to come out, but I was, again, very happy I tried something new.

You should do the same. Your favorites will be waiting if you need to order them the next time.

My Ayoh! Mayo Adventure

When we bought a new Samsung TV a few years ago, it was preloaded with a bunch of TV channels that constantly broadcast completely for free. I’m still not sure how that even works, but my whole family likes watching the food channels.

One of our favorites is Bon Appétit, which is where I came to know — okay, maybe develop a bit of a foodie crush on — the chef/influencer/cookbook author Molly Baz. She left the channel awhile ago, but Molly’s face kept filling my Instagram feed, eventually getting married and pregnant and then becoming the face (and nearly bare chest) of breastfeeding on Times Square digital billboards.

Last year, as an avowed sandwich lover, she launched a mayonnaise brand called Ayoh! I’m a big sandwich fan as well and the flavors for her “Sando Sauce” sounded great: Hot Giardinayo, Dijonayo, and Dill Pickle Mayo, as well as the “Original” mayo.

So on December 5, I ordered a bunch, intending to give them to my mom, brother, and friends as Christmas presents. And then I waited.

On December 17, an email came through, signed by Molly Baz herself. “Holy smokes, guys,” she wrote. “When I launched Ayoh, I hoped you would all love it and want it and share all the yummy ways you use it but I did NOT expect the demand to exceed our expectations this greatly. Things are taking a little longer to ship than we anticipated due to the surplus of orders and we are scrambling to keep up!”

She offered 10 percent off of my order retroactively. A second email came that same day, anticipating a January delivery. No biggie, though I needed to get a couple of new Christmas presents.

I emailed at the end of the year to check in. On January 9, I was offered a full refund if I wanted to cancel the order, or 10 percent off. I still wanted the damn mayo, even more now, so I took the $11 refund.

Then more waiting, and a few more emails, including one on January 17 trying to sell me more mayo since mine had arrived. But my mayo had not arrived, and I was again complaining about as much to my friends when an email came through saying it would arrive on January 21.

In fact, it arrived a day early, on January 20, with a little card — signed “XO Molly” — indicating I would get 10 percent off for life! I’m very happy to report that the mayos are quite good, especially the decently spicy Hot Giardinayo. Expect to see some of that in my social media feeds to come. Maybe even Molly will notice.

There’s a sad twist to this tale, though. Molly and her husband, Ben Willett, lost their Altadena home in the Eaton Fire. I guess waiting for mayo isn’t such a big deal after all.

---

From Our Table

Here are some stories you may have missed:

• If you’re not hungry now, read this roundup of breakfast sandwiches by Rebecca Horrigan, and you’ll be ordering one soon.
• This story came across our desks as a press release, but it was cool to learn about UCSB’s Club & Guest House Chef Hayden Dozier.
• As you may have noticed last week, I really like the new Little Dom’s Seafood outpost Bar Lou, and here is my feature on this Coast Village Road restaurant.
• I wrote a feature about the two new golf simulator experiences in town, one of which is inside the new Validation Ale on De La Vina Street.
• I had the pleasure of hanging out with Paula Tabalipa a couple months ago and found out that she is the new steward of the historic Hampton Vineyard.
• I screwed up the first version of this story about Lompoc opting out of Santa Barbara wine country because I was on a ’round-the-clock schedule visiting Paso Robles, so I had to redo it.