by Christina Waters | Sep 9, 2009 | Food, Home, Wine |
No longer just a gorgeous place in Spain, Mundaka is also the name of a hot new tapas restaurant in the center of Carmel. Gabe Georis and his partners have worked interior design miracles with burnished, distressed and time-worn recycled materials, all of which give a distinctive patina to the two spacious dining rooms of this chic new spot.
Last week, armed with graceful tumblers of Spanish varietals — a white Txakoli and a mighty Rioja from M. de Legarda crianza, both loaded with minerals, fruit and a perfume of sea salt — we worked our way through several rounds of $2 pintxos. These tiny tastes, maybe three bites each, included a brandade on sliced potato, stacks of salmon, pink beets and caper berries, an outrageously garlicky baguette topped with fresh tomatoes and (I know, I just said it) garlic, plus duxelles topped with air-dried beef. Major flavor intensity in every bite.
The central room, with its upright piano, steep stairway to a mysterious (more…)
by Christina Waters | Sep 8, 2009 | Food, Home |
by Christina Waters | Sep 8, 2009 | Wine |
Big Basin Vineyards celebrates the crush of 2009 this weekend, September 12 & 13, from noon til 5pm at the scenic winery property above Boulder Creek.
Join winemaker Bradley Brown for the annual celebration of harvest at Big Basin Vineyards, famed for its Rhone varietals and earth-shaking Syrahs.
A variety of Big Basin’s new releases, along with library wines and barrel samples, will be available for tasting – seven syrahs, three pinot noirs and a few select blends! Plus taste treats from Vino Locale.
The Harvest event is free for Friends of the Vineyard (up to two passes), $10 for those picking up wines and $20 for others. Everybody gets a 22 oz. crystal Big Basin wine glass.
Music by 3hree Bro’s Down. Contact Big Basin Vineyards, or call 831-621-8028, for all details.
by Christina Waters | Sep 4, 2009 | Art, Home |
Paintings by the late Eduardo Carrillo are currently on display through November 22, in the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History. Carrillo was a true shaman of light and color — prepare to be dazzled.
A bravura practitioner of magic realism in hallucinogenic large-scale oil paintings as well as subtle watercolor miniatures, Carrillo cast a long shadow in his ancestral Baja, his early Los Angeles stomping grounds, and ultimately in the Bay Area. Two dozen of his major works – including his neon-hued masterpiece of mythic time travel, Los Tropicanos — fill the main Solari Gallery of MAH. Even the final unfinished painting — a searing self-portrait — is on display, next to his studio table, chairs, easel and palette, in this retrospective of one of California’s path-breaking, multi-cultural iconoclasts.
Public reception will be held this coming First Friday, September 4, from 5-9pm.
by Christina Waters | Sep 2, 2009 | Food, Home |
If you’re like us, you live for August and September — dry-farm tomato season! The best, the most intensely-flavored, the juiciest – tomatoes the way the Great Mother intended them to be.
And there are lots of terrific tomatoes out there at our farmers markets. But now I know the source of the very best.
Meder Street Market is a boutique stand open at the bustling (ha!) crossroads of Meder & Western Drive on the Westside.
Sundays from 10am until 3pm, you can find neighbors hanging out over bins of brilliantly-hued flowers, basils, onions, tomatoes, squashes, beans. It’s a charming, laid-back scene where the best tomatoes in the area go for a mere $3/lb.
Organic, home-grown, yeah baby!
