Christina Waters

Sean Baker has created a short menu of flavor gems at Le Cigare Volant cafe. The new tasting room for Bonny Doon Vineyard wines offers items like this supple hiramasa crudo, unctuous with fennel olive oil and garnished with pungent cress and shaved fennel. This is truly take-no-prisoners cuisine. Open from Thursday through Sunday, 11:30 - 5:30pm, the cafe will turn you on to Baker’s culinary metaphysics partnered by the exact, perfect, spot-on wines.

Here’s another reason why I love to visit the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The museum’s restaurant invariably offers gorgeous lunch dishes for excellent prices.
This salmon tartare, served on a bed of transparent zucchini ribbons and topped with shaved fennel and a long wedge of house-made sesame cracker, was a knock-out with a glass of bubbly.

Everybody loves cheese, but few of us get to hang out with someone whose cheese lore is deep and pungent. That someone would be fromagiere Andrea London who can talk époisses and cabicou ’til the cows come home. How exciting it was to discover last week that London will be part of the new multi-tiered wine, food and biodynamic delivery team at Bonny Doon Vineyard’s new tasting room. Every Friday from 11-5:30, London will be on hand at the tasting room to demystify dozens of fine domestic and imported cheeses.

The array of fromages du jour will be set out along the wine bar that faces The Cigare Volant Cafe, inside the new tasting cathedral. London is an accessible woman who loves talking cheese, and she’ll provide copious tastes to “illustrate” her talking points. Yet another reason to stop by the new attraction at the very busy Ingalls Street depot on the Westside of Santa Cruz.

Choose a favorite restaurant and patronize it. It will feed your soul, and help make sure that your dining place of choice weathers these rocky economic times. I was reading an article on-line yesterday about a family that excels at living within their means. Here’s the key quote: “Instead of spending too much money on things, we just make choices.”

What a concept - actually chosing what you want, rather than just mindlessly spending, spending, spending. Instead of mediocre meals that supply only calories, and nothing in the way of spiritual renewal and joyful flavor - chose to eat out only at places that matter to you, that provide genuine value for the money.

Dining out doesn’t have to be a budget destroyer. Limoncello, one of our downtown dining treasures, offers authentic Italian lunches weekdays, starting at $7. That’s worth making plans for. I strongly urge you to resist the temptation to slip back into such destructive default habits as fast food and generic to-go meals.

Diners of the world - visit your local bistros, cafes and restaurants now. You have nothing to lose but your chains!

My recent response to the recession was “Let them recalculate my APR!, the greedy scoundrels!” Having said that, pax Marie Antoinette, I have discovered the joys of dining small, but well, on some of the terrific appetizer dishes created by our top chefs. At Avanti, last Saturday we made dinners of our salads of roast brussel sprouts and cappellini beans ….A few days later, Ava and I shared one of those terrific scallop small plates offered at Soif. This one involved absolutely perfect scallops on top of a bed of ripe apple, tart arugula and toasted pumpkin seeds. Paired with a flight of sauvignon blancs from France, New Zealand, South Africa and California, it was big indulgence for about $30. . . .Then on Wednesday, I joined wine writer Laura Ness for lunch at Gabriella, where Sean Baker continues to outdo himself in terms of culinary exploration. An immense platter of housemade salumi included a variety of prosciutto, salume, coppa and pancetta accompanied by a head of roasted garlic and some grilled baguette. Incredible. Ditto my trumpet mushroom fritatta served along with a fluff of infant lettuces.

It’s entirely possible that my earthy egg dish was inhanced by a glass of Storrs Chardonnay Stu Miller Vineyard 2007, filled with ripe peaches and impressive structure. The knowledgeable Ness provided vivacious wine lore and the food, wine and Gabriella ambience did the rest.

And that would be the new, cavernous Bonny Doon Vineyard tasting room, aka The Cellar Door, open daily until 5:30pm. It’s architecturally sexy, flaunting its biodynamic Weltanschauung by means of such flourishes as a spiralling multi-tiered waterfall swirling out of a cow’s horn (one of the major instruments of ritual used in biodynamic preparation.)

Your $7 will get you copious tastes of BD’s latest oeno-wonders, poured and articulated by a skilled tasting crew. The cafe, with menu designed by chef Sean Baker (of Gabriella), has fired up its ovens for a chic little selection of small plates — sophisticated foods to accompany deeply interesting wines. The cafe serves sensuous foods paired with wines, from 11-5:30 Thursday through Sunday.
Get on over to the new tasting room, and welcome the dooning of yet more action at the exciting corner of Swift & Ingalls, on Santa Cruz’ Westside.

What is it about winemakers? Are there any who aren’t intense, attractive, and somehow super-charged with the same stuff that Daniel Craig’s got? Well, if so I haven’t yet met ‘em.

Take silver-haired Jerry O’Brien, from Silver Mountain (hmmm, did he name the winery after his hair? must remember to ask).

Here he is pouring ridiculously fine chardonnay and pinot noir from his brand, and telling tales about the origin of the Tondre’s Grapefields name, at last weekend’s gala Great Wine Escape at the very plush new Inter-Continental Clement Hotel on Cannery Row. And O’Brien was only one of the attractions at this smartly organized excuse to sample the wares of over 40 Monterey County Vintners and Growers.

This beautiful plate of pork, tropical fruits and mashed purple potatoes was whipped up by Kevin Boyle of the Hyatt Regency Maui Resort, and served to grateful wine tasters at the Monterey event. Tasted even better than it looks!

One of my favorite lunchtime getaways involves a book - say, something by Charles Dickens - a private nook at The Bagelry - and The Duke. I know a lot of you out there are nodding in solidarity. The Duke is arguably the best non-traditional bagel creation yet devised ($3.55).

This is my version.

Sesame seed bagel, lightly toasted.

Cream cheese - the more, the better.

Apple butter. You heard me.

A fistful of cashews all over the top.

OMG. Add a gigantic cup of green tea, and Bleak House practically reads itself.

Voluptuous, citrusy and muy potente — this is the incandescent Blood Orange Martini, at Hula’s. Made by Marisa.

Slurp slowly.

And according to co-owner Eric Lau, we’re talkin’ weeks. “The goal was for us to be open on the 15th of this month,” Lau told me today. “We’ve got all the big stuff done. But now it’s just the details — furniture, glassware, that stuff.”

Lau went on the record as determined to re-open the restaurant, at the Corner of Soquel and Front Streets in downtown Santa Cruz, “definitely before the first of the year - and hopefully before the first of December.”

That means that within three weeks or so, fans of chef Damani Thomas‘ supple seasonal cuisine will be able to not only enjoy an Oswald dinner, but a cocktail beforehand, thanks to the restaurant’s full bar. “It’s a great space,” Lau agreed. Eighty seats, and eventually lunch and dinner. And after over a year and a half, Oswald’s fans are mighty hungry.

See you there - soon!