Let Me Eat Cake!

Let Me Eat Cake!

avanticake.jpgEspecially if it’s a tower of citrus chiffon cake with buttermilk gelato, as shown here during a celebratory lunch with my soul sister Rita @ Ristorante Avanti.

Feast your eyes…..

An Eyeful of Easter

An Eyeful of Easter

kellyseaster.jpgThe inviting pastry display at Kelly’s includes enough eye candy to help you channel your inner 5-year-old.  Or simply bring your own youngster to the Ingalls Street landmark and watch her smile.

Masterful Exhibition @ the Triton

Masterful Exhibition @ the Triton

cretara_400x287-2.JPGSanta Clara’s Triton Museum of Art has much to recommend itself, and a current show of Old Masters-style work by Southern California’s Domenic Cretara is a prime example.

Painting for many decades in the extreme chiaro scuro style of Baroque maestro Caravaggio, Cretara is a supple realist who moves deftly across his richly-conceived figures like the golden light grazing across his canvases. The subjects of many of Cretara’s pieces include vernacular gatherings of people—caught in mundane acts of reading, working, engaged in quiet conversation, all seemingly waiting for some impending epiphany. He captures the unglamorous themes that fill our days, often without being observed. But Cretara is a master of observation (more…)

Tuesday Tapas @ Soif

Tuesday Tapas @ Soif

tapassoif1.jpgOne picture is worth a thousand words!

Soif does small plates on Tuesdays. This little number ran me $3. Serrano ham, half a soft/hard boiled egg, a thin slice of cheese, a thin crostini, and a slick of mustard.

With an Italian red! (for a few $$ more).

Bonny Doon’s Latest Pivot

Bonny Doon’s Latest Pivot

rgrahm.jpgJust to review: yes, Randall Grahm has decided to move his Bonny Doon Vineyards tasting room to a new location in Davenport.  The old-fashioned white clapboard structure on Highway One (next door to the Roadhouse) that has been home to Davenport Gallery for the last three years, will become the new tasting headquarters for Grahm’s glittering array of varietals.

He’s thinking May might be the time of the latest transformation. And it makes sense.

The tasting room will be highly visible, unlike its current location tucked behind a bevy of other wineries. It will be free-standing and be able to announce itself unmistakably to inquiring wine seekers. And it will sit at the foot of Bonny Doon mountain, where a few years ago…..it all began.

We’ll keep you posted on specifics as they break!