Cumbre @ Cafe Mare
Lunch last week at downtown Santa Cruz' Cafe Mare knocked me out - in two ways. First off the kitchen had just received a huge harvest of fresh porcini mushrooms and was busy turning out a gorgeous variety of daily specials involving the sweet, earthy funghi. My...
Limoncello!
Yes, chef Giovanni diMaio did deliver what we expected last week at a wonderful Limoncello lunch. I like to use the holidays as an excuse to take my mom and aunt out for lunch, and Limoncello surpassed our hopes. Manicotti with a dreamy ragu, veal piccata with...
Jewelry Sensations @ UCSC Holiday Craft Sale – Dec. 5
These sensational designer earrings fashioned of hammered gold-filled wire with freshwater pearls and crystals — made by Kate Coburn — are among the gorgeous handmade items available at this Friday's noontime sale. Coburn's earrings and necklaces, crafted of...
Unconventional Feast
We did Thanksgiving our way this year, and shared a small, informal, but luxurious meal - with no turkey in sight. The menu: fresh cracked Dungeness crab with three dipping sauces creamy polenta topped with parmesan reggiano braised bitter greens - mixed sorrel and...
Handmade Luxury
Another sample of jewel queen Kate Coburn's consummate earring designs. These elegant earrings of chrysophrase in matrix, suspended from gold-filled findings, will be on sale at the upcoming Women at Work Holiday Craft Sale, Friday, December 5 from 11:30-1:30 at...
Small Plates, Big Scene
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...
Philly Tartare
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...
Cheese Whiz
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...
Dining Out When it Matters
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...
Cafe Confessions
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,...
The Cellar Door Opens
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...
Great Wine Escape
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...
Guilty Pleasure #47
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...
Great Cocktails of Santa Cruz
Voluptuous, citrusy and muy potente — this is the incandescent Blood Orange Martini, at Hula's. Made by Marisa. Slurp slowly.
Oswald IS Opening!
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...
Rome – A Few More Reasons
Our late September art walk through Rome included lodgings at the very old Palazzo Cardinal Cesi, a 15th century papal residence. Housed a few feet - literally - from St. Peter's, we were able to stroll to a lifetime's worth of great artwork, every day. (That's me in...
Food for the Soul
Worth a 13-hour flight, and then some.
Florentine Finish
The last day of September, we ended our trip in Florence, with dinner across the Arno at Mama Gina's. Fresh porcinis were all over the menu, so we didn't resist. This beautiful plate of thinly-sliced, grilled beef was arranged across a bed of peppery arugula, topped...
Bresaola at La Campana
Fractal Frenzy
Don't miss the chance to see UCSC's own cosmological mathematician Ralph Abraham demystify fractals on a fascinating documentary, Tuesday Oct 28, 2008 at 8 pm on PBS-Nova. The name of the program is Hunting the Hidden Dimension, and if you miss it you can still see...
Randall Romances the Tube
Witness the awesome spectacle of Bonny Doon Vineyard President for Life Randall Grahm trading oeno-wits with vine geek Gary Vaynerchuk on Wine Library TV. This gonzo behind-the-scenes foray into deep tannin-speak is so big, so bold, so over-the-top that it requires...
Open Studios
Here are a few of my picks for this weekend's Open Studios art crawl. In Bonny Doon, the studio of Ray Gwyn Smith is filled with prints, new landscape paintings and spectacular views of the redwood forest. Stop by Oct. 18-19, from 11am-6pm and savor. Smith's studio is...
Wild Greens, Roman-style
Entrees at la Campana followed an amazing salad of that curious wild celeryesque vegetable, puntarelle, bathed in an addictive anchovy sauce.
A perfect bistecca in Rome
The magnificent Ristorante la Campana — so old that Caravaggio surely dined here — continues to provide clear, bold dishes amidst the narrow warrens of medieval Rome. We were overcome with the perfection of this buttery filet in balsamico reduction.