Full Belly Files | End of Summer’s Edible Escapades

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I’ve always been fascinated with our perception of the passage of time, but have come to believe that time truly does speed up, at least in how we experience each year..

When young, one run through the calendar is a considerable chunk of our life. Semesters feel long, and summer vacation seems like it will never arrive. As we age, each new year is a smaller fraction of the whole of our lives — thinner and thinner slices, if you will, of the perceptual pie, making every season feel like a shorter stretch of time.  

Coming to grips with this quickening helps to alleviate the shock that comes sooner each year when spring becomes summer, summer becomes fall, and suddenly it’s Christmas again. It doesn’t slow anything down — remember, it’s always speeding up — but recognizing at least helps me focus on other things to be surprised (and perhaps dismayed) by. There’s no shortage of those these days.

This is a convoluted way to express my relative surprise that, yet again, we’ve moved from summer to fall. (I said it “alleviates,” not “eliminates,” the shock.) And as the days jet onward, what better way to toast the end of summer than to remember what I’ve been eating over the past two weeks?

T.I.N.P. by The Rochers: This Is Not Pizza — hence T.I.N.P — is the daytime takeout service offered by The Rochers at the Ranch House in Meiners Oaks. (My colleague Leslie Dinaberg covered their epic dinner service here.) We picked up a full picnic pack to eat in the park before seeing the Hermanos Gutierrez show at the Libbey Bowl. (Jack Johnson was the last-minute special guest.) Based on a style of crunchy, airy bread developed in Valencia, Spain, T.I.N.P.’s “pizzas” and sandwiches are extremely flavorful, satisfyingly rich, and fascinatingly textural. The salads were zesty and the desserts were dense, especially the Basque-style cheesecake. Pro tip: They set up milk crates outside of the Ranch House if you want to eat in the parking lot.  

Gracie at the S.B. Harbor: I checked out Gracie for the first time for lunch with a French wine importer, and loved the view — though I knew that, having eaten at the old Breakwater many times. (It was one of my late dad’s fave spots.) The food was also solid, as was the Storm sauv blanc. I had the tuna melt, she had the fish tacos. The only issue came when the check arrived promptly, and we found out there was no dessert. So we did starters of burrata and croquettes as our dessert, and two more glasses of Dragonette rosé.  

Rideau x Sushi Teri in My Backyard: My good friend Sao Anash — who’s a primary reason I write about wine at all — coordinated a Sushi Teri lunch in my backyard with Rideau Vineyard’s winemaker Adrienne Rule, who I hadn’t caught up with since this 2018 article. We talked about Rhône-style wines and much more for two hours over mouthfuls of uni, sashimi, and sushi.

Hawaiian Food x Walt Keale’s Ukelele: The Santa Barbara Outrigger Canoeing Club’s fundraiser concert with ukulele wizard Walt Keale from Hawai’i featured a great plate of Hawaiian food with the ticket price. It was a magically pink and blue sunset show over shoyu chicken, mac salad, and Walt’s soul-warming tunes.

Lunch at Dom’s Taverna: By now I hope you’ve seen my love letter to Dom’s Taverna, which I predict will stand the test of time on East Victoria Street. I stopped there for lunch the day I was finishing the story, and was wowed by both the classic shrimp cocktail and the inventive Spanish-style grinder called the Submarino Espanola. The txakolina and citrusy gin cocktail didn’t hurt either.  

Spirit of San Luis: My uncle Mike was a Top Gun in the Navy decades ago, and still flies a Cessna. He picked me and the kids up for a flight up to the San Luis Obispo Airport, where we lunched at the very popular Spirit of San Luis restaurant that overlooks the tarmac. I figured I’d run into someone I knew there, and was happy that it happened to be vintner James Ontiveros, who I profiled earlier this year.

Pyramid Burger @ Trixy: Expect a more explanatory story on this from me soon, but I stopped by Revolver Pizza on the Westside during one of their Monday night Trixy takeovers. Trixy is the fine dining pop-up of Revolver owner-chef Nick Bodden, lubricated with Scotty Boy and Large d’Oor wines by Scott Sampler of Central Coast Group Project. (I wrote about Scott back in 2018, but for updated intel, check out Patrick Comiskey’s recent and great profile in the L.A. Times.) The star of the Trixy show is the Pyramid Burger, a collaborative, Italian hoagie–inspired triangular treat from the imagination of Scott and execution of Nick. I’ll save the details for later, but the next rounds for Trixy are October 20 and 27.  

Pasta, Pasta, Pasta in Pismo and Paso: Last week’s romp through S.L.O. and Paso to catch up with winemakers old and new became one of my best pasta performances ever. I ate noodles three days in a row: the namesake spinach-riccota tortellini at Giuseppe’s in Pismo with the Scar of the Sea and Outward Wines crew; the wild boar pappardelle at Il Cortile with Copia Wines; and then, for lunch one day, Etto Pasta Bar’s alla gricia. Oddly, I lost a tiny bit of weight on the trip somehow. Maybe that’s because I broke up the flow one day with a Vietnamese salad at Kitchenette in Templeton.  

Eats at the Ava Hotel: I’ll write a more proper story about the new Ava Hotel in Paso Robles soon, probably when the flagship restaurant Emre — by Julien Asseo of Les Petites Canailles and the new S’Aranella — opens later this month. But I did try their two existing restaurants: Pine Street Bistro, where I had soft boiled eggs for breakfast one day and a heaping avocado toast the next; and Esperanza on the Rooftop, where two wine friends and I enjoyed the sunset over the carnitas fries, ahi tuna tostada, chicken mole tetela, shrimp burrito, and Rooftop salad. Many margaritas ensued, but not too many.

Home-Cooking: I’ve been burning through mounds of fresh produce from Local Harvest Delivery lately. That means weekend morning frittatas, bowls of salad at every meal, and multiple sheet pans of roasted potato, red onion, and purple carrots. When a massive amount of tomatoes showed up one morning, many turned into a shakshuka, with slightly overcooked eggs. (Though I like that better than undercooked, at least in that dish.)

Another recent highlight were the pork coppa steaks I picked up from Motley Crew Marketplace in Buellton. I followed a four-hour brine with a basil-lemon mop sauce over the grill, then sliced them into tacos that I topped with fried shishito peppers. The next night they became part of a quick chili verde with a homemade tomatillo salsa, which got wrapped in bean burritos.

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From Our Table

Here are some stories you may have missed:

• Ella Heydenfeldt reports that Los Padres ForestWatch hosted another Wilderness Table, this time at Earthtrine Farm.
• Hana-Lee Sedgwick writes that the Santa Barbara Vegan Chef Challenge is back this month.  
• The Santa Barbara Cheese Shop has launched an insider’s subscription club, and they told me all about it.
• I got to meet Chris Hines and taste the wines being produced by his family under the labels The Set and William Hines Wines. (The only bummer is that I first published his dad’s nickname as Buddy, when it is, in fact, the much cooler Bubba.)
• I also touched base with Koehler Winery, where the next generation is taking over and keeping things exciting.
• And again, here’s that ode I wrote to the cuisine and culture at Dom’s Taverna.

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