Christina Waters

Applying some spin to his perennially avant garde branding instincts, Doon-meister Randall Grahm has brought in a new chef, and ushered in a new name for his tasting room restaurant.

Gone is the fairly tame “Cellar Door” and in comes the dashing “Le Cigare Volant” named for the winery’s celebrated flagship Rhônesque creation. The culinary team at Le Cigare Volant will be headed up by chef Ryan Shelton, who joins Bonny Doon from the two star Michelin ranked Baumé Restaurant in Palo Alto. The new name, according to Grahm, represents “a commitment to a more refined…level of cuisine and service.” (more…)

A very attractive Latin Fusion retaurant, Estrella, has just opened in Paso Robles, in one of the old Victorians lining the central zocalo on Spring Street.

The brainchild of Chef Ryan Swarthout (of Roberts restaurant fame) and Travis Borba, the restaurant surfs a culinary wave from South America, to Mexico, and the Caribbean. What we found, last Sunday evening, in addition to a gorgeous vermillion wall next to the old brick, was a menu loaded with intricate spicing and some of the finest black beans this side of Oaxaca.

A dish of Veracruz snapper, for example, gave us a peek inside the kitchen’s mind. (more…)

All You Need is Love - one of the finer memories provided by the Beatles - and also the title of the next museum-wide exhibition scheduled for downtown’s Museum of Art & History, opening for a Member’s Preview on Friday, March 30 - and then to the general public starting March 31.

Running until July 29, the show is dedicated to love in all its forms, as explored by over thirty artists, including Joan Brown, Frank Galuszka (detail shown here) and Raymond Saunders. In addition to the extraordinary artwork, historic love letters, wedding gowns and other sentimentalia will be on display in all of the galleries within the museum.

MAH is open Tu-Sun 11-5pm, and is located at 705 Front Street in downtown Santa Cruz.

(detail, Coyote in the Kitchen, F.Galuszka

Finally, I came to the end of the labor-intensive process. The orange bitters had steeped, it had been crushed, it had been filtered, it had rested.

The last stage had involved mixing together the high-octane orange peel-infused alcohol with water and finally with sugar that had been melted into a brown, taffy-like goo.  When I added the hot molten sugar to the mother liquid, it sputtered like a mini-Vesuvius. The recipe warned that the sugar might turn hard, at first, but then would quickly enter a liquid state.

And it all came to pass. Except for one thing. The final liquid never became clear.

It tastes exactly like orange bitters. Exactly.  It is, in all ways save visually, an authentic orange bitters. Yet it longs for clarity, like a merlot longs to be a clear shade of magenta.

I will be calling on a few winemakers to find out about fining. Surely there is some remaining alchemy I can try. If not, I will need to turn my attentions to some other artisanal creation.

Ideas?

A youthful old master is showing his works in San Francisco’s John Pence Gallery through March 10.

The one-man show by Noah Buchanan fills a spacious room with a large suite of consummate realist oil paintings and drawings reminiscent of the work of Ingres, Odd Nerdrum, Vermeer and Lopez Garcia. Renowned among Bay Area collectors for his masterful nudes, Buchanan here shows himself every bit as adept with still life meditations and evocative interiors. A small study of red pears arrayed upon soft white linen, conjures some of the metaphysical works by Salvador Dali, replete with inner light suggesting the space of a private sanctuary.

A rare domestic interior, In Light of Solitude, is among the strongest paintings of this impressive group. Using the Northern Renaissance trope of an open doorway, leading through an empty, expectant space to yet another doorway, recalls both Vermeer’s spiritual suggestiveness and Carl Fabritius’ impossibly creamy light. Buchanan’s oil on panel interior is a clear invitation to enter into a sacred space, both transformative and yet utterly intimate.

Buchanan’s works have shown in London’s National Portrait Gallery and the Library of Congress, and are included the collections of George Lucas and Martha Mayer Erlebacher. Don’t miss the chance to enjoy vibrant new paintings in the finest modernist tradition. The John Pence Gallery is located at 750 Post St., San Francisco. Gallery hours - Mon-Fri 10am to 6pm, Sat 10am to 5pm.

After two weeks of slumbering in 100 proof grain alcohol, my alchemical mixture of Seville orange peels, coriander, fennel seeds, gentian and quassia bark was ready for stage two on the road to becoming orange bitters.

After pouring the alcohol—now tinged a pale orange hue—through cheesecloth, I put it back into a mason jar to rest. Then I took the dry ingredients and muddled them into submission with a wooden spoon.  I then added the orange peel mix to a saucepan along with 3 1/4 cups of water, brought it to a boil, let it all simmer (more…)

Last week I expected to find disarming French reds (wines, not commies) and inventive rosés, but I’m not sure I was ready for just how polished the kitchen at Soif has become.

New menu, new generously-proportioned attitude, and dishes loaded with comfort flavors and non-tricky presentation.

Here is a spinach and multi-beet salad, with infant turnips and a liberal crown of blue cheese. It was huge and great glorious eating. Ditto a scallop salad with black trumpet mushrooms, and another appetizer of lobster and bitter greens.

Soif — more than simply a stylish, welcoming wine bar. May I use the hackneyed-phrase, “better than ever?”  Thanks. I just did.

Pina Bausch was one of my heroes. Most of my life I tracked her conceptual innovations in choreography, and the creation of her Tanztheater company in Wuppertal Germany. Moving dance beyond the lexicons of ballet and even Graham’s modern dance tropes, Bausch used the body to explore the archetypes of animality. Her “dances” are in fact small narratives, riddles, myths and gems of erotic psychoanalysis. In the process she created nothing less than a poetics of pain.

In her pieces, at once expressionist, avant garde, and laced with angular angst, Bausch transformed dance into an emotional incantation in which longing and long-limbed velocity were employed to invoke something like redemption. (more…)

A preliminary stab in the highly-hyped dark.

Hugo and The Artist just might cancel each other out.

Which would leave The Help battling with The Descendants.

Will the George Clooney factor kick in?

Or will the tasty froth that is Midnight in Paris take home the gold statuette?

I am still throwing the i ching on this one, but I will bet that Glenn Close won’t be named Best Actress.  She’s the right choice, in the wrong film.

More soon!

Is this man the thinking woman’s opera star? the most heroically proportioned tenor currently plying the world’s Wagner circuit? or is he the Siegfried that launched the Metropolitan Opera’s current Ring cycle to mega-YouTube status?

Yes, yes and yes! Jay Hunter Morris is a big blonde Texan with voice, looks and intelligence enough to command the final installments of Richard Wagner’s opulent transfiguration of northern mythology into cultural gold. Gold, as in the ring itself.

Easily the most compelling artistic argument against postmodernism, The Ring is a fable whose moment is exactly now. The quest for eternal youth, power, and fathomless wealth, is what drives the Wagnerian epic, and never have its tensions or tragedies been so eerily reflected in political reality as at this moment of the early 21st century. Just sit quietly with this for a minute.

The gold that lives in the Rhine river, the property of the industrious underworld of the Nibelungen, has been won through trickery (more…)