Mamma Gina
Mamma mia! is what we thought the minute we walked into Mamma Gina a smoothly-run, casually elegant series of dining rooms housed inside a 15th century palazzo across the Arno. Heavy beams and stone arches — pretty much standard issue in Florence — form the...
l’Ultimo Giorno
Since there has to be a last day of any visit to Florence, we spent ours enjoying the warm weather, sampling one more straciatella gelato and visiting the Casa Buonaroti. The house was purchased by Michelangelo, but he never lived in it - instead leaving it to his...
Rivoire & the Piazza della Signoria
In the heart of old Florence, home to the power brokers (the signoria), the Palazzo Vecchio, the Uffizi and the outdoor sculpture garden organized by Georgio Vasari and Medicis — the Piazza della Signoria offers some of the finest people-watching, cafe-sitting and...
Best Museum Cafe
The outdoor terrace overlooking the Palazzo Vecchio on the second floor of the Uffizi Gallery.
Dessert of the Week
Black Mission figs are given new glory in a fabulous end-of-summer dessert from the feverish mind of chef Sean Baker. You may need to sit down for this. Four pillows of lemon and cardoon-honey-laced mascarpone were each topped with a ripe fig, sliced open to reveal...
On a Roll
Are these the best dinner rolls in town? Very likely. The small, elegantly-shaped francese rolls from Gayle's — not those enormous sandwich francese rolls, but the neat, oval babies with crisp edges, gossamer crust and soft, fragrant interiors. They are good beyond...
Star of East Cliff Drive
Giovanni's back, and Star Bene's got him! The chef/owner of the former Caffe Bella Napoli is now the starring attraction at the cozy (and hard to find) E. Cliff Drive dining room, where Ceil and I feasted last night. We started with excellent focaccia to dredge...
Dish of the Week
Thank you Ben Sims for making my new favorite dish — Avanti's weekend special of braised pork shoulder in white wine and tomatoes. Thank you for your exquisitely sensitive touch with the pork, so that it falls effortlessly into bite-sized shreds. The succulent...
Batik Cafe: The Prequel
Just returned from lunch at the new Batik Cafe - and while I had a few issues, the cafe is only a few weeks old so there's lots of time for fine-tuning. Sabrina - an Indonesian cuisine veteran- and I worked our way through several plates of traditional items involving...
Gabriella Gets Fresh
Chef Sean Baker is mad for tomatoes this time of year, and who can blame him? Especially since he's gotten down and dirty, so to speak, with the growers of Lindencroft Farm who create exciting fresh veggies and herbs for Baker's experimental menus. The garden gurus of...
World’s Greatest Cookie?
Yes, this just might be the world's greatest cookie - right here - at The Buttery. It's the mighty, two-fisted Pecan Sandie. Buttery shortbread cookie, three inches in diameter, rimmed with crushed pecans and topped with the most sinful rosette of chocolate ganache in...
The Doors of Perception
Side by Side: New Work by Jenny and Geoff Morten — opening September 7, at the Santa Cruz County Bank, 325 Soquel Avenue. The Mortens, Jenny - she's the porcelain sculptor - and Geoff - he's the painter, came to California from their native England just a few years...
Journey to the East
Here's what you're looking at. A wine label written in Chinese. That's interesting all by itself. But what's even more interesting is that this is the back label on a bottle of River Run Vintners 2005 Carignane. Blond, bearded and eternally boyish winemaker...
Plant This!
UCSC Farm & Garden's Annual Fall Plant Sale — next weekend! — offers gardeners a major selection of organically raised vegetable seedlings, perennials, and California natives. Sponsored by the Center for Agroecology & Sustainable Food Systems, the sale takes place...
Top Wines
The Santa Cruz Mountains Commercial Wine Competition for 2007 awarded its medals once again — thanks to the hard work of 50 judges sampling a field of 171 wines from 34 of our premium wineries. This definitely comes under the "hard work, but somebody's gotta do it"...
Au Midi in Aptos
One of the joys of wine judging each year at the Santa Cruz Mountains competition, is getting to meet some of area's top restaurant owners and managers. But this year offered something special — Michel and Muriel Loubiére, natives of France, who have just completed...
First Thursdays @ Theo’s
The first Thursday of every month, Theo's hosts a Brown Bag Wine Dinner beginning at 6:30pm. A specific wine varietal is featured each month and Chef Nicci Tripp prepares a 3-course meal to complement the chosen wine. The price is only $45 per person, all inclusive,...
Summer Tempest
Wrapping up our tour of this year's SSC festival, we bundled up for a nighttime performance of The Tempest, an atmospheric bit of surrealism-in-the-redwoods. Thanks to ingenious visuals by costume designer Brandin Barón and lighting design by David Lee Cuthbert, this...
Bourne Again
Hot and fast enough to pierce full body armor, The Bourne Ultimatum locks on and doesn't let up for almost two hours. Utterly jet-propelled, this flick delivers rock solid movie licks and then some. Don't even think about waiting until it's out in DVD — you gotta...
Quickies
Attic View: Interesting news about The Attic changing hands. It's high time the place got spruced up a bit. It's so, well, listless. And hopefully someone will toss the revolving display case with all that plastic-wrapped cake. . . . Went to May's at the former Takara...
Picnic with the Bard
Get ready for some shameless self-endorsement. I created a sandwich so good I have to share it with you. And yes, you can try this at home. Well, just like every year since the beginning of time, I got ready for the SSC Festival Glen production - in this case, the...
The Playboy’s the Thing
Along with being the Playboy of the Western World, Cody Nickell can count himself the current ruler of the Central Coast. As the eye of J.M. Synge's dramatic storm in Shakespeare Santa Cruz' production of Playboy, Nickell is a hyper-kinetic bundle of intelligence, sex...
New Wine — Old Techniques
Of course we all know Ca' del Solo, the amusing line of vins ordinaire created by the feverish mind of über-winemaker Randall Grahm of Bonny Doon Vineyards. But forget about what you thought you knew. BD has gone bio-dynamic. That's right. The Rudolph Steiner...
Sweet
The pastry case at Kelly's - a delicious argument in favor of almost anything.