Wine Notes from the Trail
As always, providing crucial melodious background for the Alfaro Tasting room festivities during Corralitos Wine Trail weekend, was attorney Joe Haselton, whose operatic pipes regaled the pinot-samplers with the entire oeuvre of Elton John, with sprinklings of The...
The Great Pumpkin & the Night of Samhain
As a Celtic-American, I like to research my ancestral roots, passions and rituals. What a terrific find! Samhain, aka Halloween, is actually a pre-Christian, distinctly pagan, AND Celtic celebration of the change of the seasons. During this astronomical moment between...
Wine Trail Discoveries: Part I
Like many inquiring wine-lovers, I found myself in the gorgeous back country of Corralitos last Saturday, tasting wine at a quartet of impossibly scenic wineries. Yes it was hot! At Pleasant Valley Vineyards, the grapes were within hours (HOURS) of being harvested,...
Kelly’s Harvest Block Party – Oct. 24, 4-7pm
Back by popular demand - the Westside's largest block party will happen once again in the parking lot of Kelly's (Swift & Ingalls). You know the deal. Local restaurants, farmers and purveyors will set up food stations. You bring all of your plates, stemware and table...
Kawabunga!
Kawa Sushi - two words that spell instant oral gratification. Spacious interior, pristine, high-quality sushi and sashimi, friendly service, and a user-friendly sake happy hour for those who like to dine early and often. Here's our dinner last Tuesday - including our...
Wine Deal of the Week – make that “former”….
You bet I absolutely believe that $7.99 is a true deal for a better-than-decent bottle of refreshing, low-oak French Chardonnay. So I loaded up at New Leaf last week on my new favorite easy-sippin' late summer white - a 2007 Loire Chardonnay from Domaine Roc de...
R.I.P.
Tapas @ Mundaka
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...
October 1 – 8 . . .
Fall Harvest @ Big Basin Vineyards
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...
Eduardo Carrillo @ MAH
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...
Meder Street Sunday Market
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...
Birichino Malvasia Bianca
The best white wine you've never heard of. The initial opening of jasmine and mineral salts, continues into a center of golden delicious apples, green and crisp. The piquant finish offers hints of tangerine and lime. At 13% alcohol you could drink this all day long....
Meryl Does Julia – Bon Appetit!
Nora Ephron's new film is just a trifle. A mere bon bon. An amuse bouche for baby boom nostalgics. But for providing the cinematic feast that is Meryl Streep playing Julia Child, Ephron deserves our unrestrained gratitude. Streep is as joyous in her over-sized...
Journey to the West
It wasn't simply a long week of long, sumptuous operas. It was a pilgrimage. A spiritual journey, in which — thanks to the power of music so beautiful we mortals don't deserve it — the haunting fact of mortality was made thunderingly clear. The four operas...
Truly Adorable
Fire Cruz
Eloquent feet, observed at a stoplight on Mission Street. Exhaustion in day-glo yellow, to which we say "thank you."
The “Ring” Devoured
Refreshingly non-multi-cultural, resoundingly mythic and visually ravishing - the Seattle Opera's "Ring" cycle invaded my consciousness last Sunday and didn't let go until six days, four operas, and 17 hours of music fit for the gods had elapsed. Here's baritone Greer...
Designer Pork-Out
My homecoming dinner, after a week of opera in Seattle, involved chorizo and Bellwether Farms ricotta pizza, Roman-style thin and delicious, from The Cellar Door. The long, long communal table was filled with prix fixe clients, headed by Bonny Doon Vineyard winemaker...
Soif’s Still Up
In addition to sampling two charming - really, that's the word - examples of Spanish mencia varietal, we split a small plate of tender, tangy calamari salad on a float of micro-gazpacho. Soif still owns the island of intriguing off-the-beaten-track wines. Go...
Hot Deal @ New Leaf
Ode to a Newer Leaf
Dear Westside community partners in the natural food game: I love New Leaf. I love the very idea of New Leaf. But since expansion into the Big Store, the delivery system seems to have bogged down. Sandwiches are now made in slow motion, even at the obviously busy...
Starters
Gabriella Cafe. Lunch for four. After we ordered, our host Paul Cocking came by with a few small plates for us to try until our halibut and opal basil salads, kampachi crudo, and gnocchi Bolognese arrived. Olives in oil with a branch of thyme. Chef Brad Briske's fresh...
Tart & Creamy Gizmo
Calm down, I'm talking about a full-bodied frozen yogurt creation — the Gizmo – that combines dense barely sweet frozen yogurt plus your choice of fruit — and turns it into enlightened soft serve creamy dessert. I am (but you probably guessed this already)...