Serious Sausage
Justin Severino is an old-fashioned food maverick. The former chef - Bernardus, Manresa - is currently into handcrafted charcuterie and traditionally butchered meats. Primarily pork, which he gets from pastured, free-roaming pigs raised on TLC Ranch. What Severino...
New Italian Kitchen coming to Soquel Ave – Lillian’s
It turns out that longtime Santa Cruz foodie Dan Dickmeyer was right. There is going to be a new Italian place on Soquel Avenue, where the old Malabar was, and it's scheduled to open in July. If you're like me (and I truly doubt it) you don't immediately think...
Brownie Scout
And who isn't on the look-out for some chewy, tender, deeply rich, barely sweet chocolate brownie? Even in a field littered with killer brownies, one stands out bigtime. Yes, I do mean the heavy, yet tender, intensely dark chocolatey brownie from River Cafe (also...
Sesnon Gallery: Irwin Scholars – May 30th
Come up and see what talent, hard work, great instructors and an Irwin scholarship, can create. The annual Irwin Scholarship exhibition - opening Wednesday, May 30, 5-7pm at UCSC's Sesnon Gallery — is entirely packed with some of the best from some of the brightest....
Garden Party to Thai For!
This year's New Music Works Avant Garden Party is seasoned - both musically and culinarily - with the complex spices of Thailand. This Sunday, June 3 from 3-7pm, the mysteriously tropical island and lagoon located in a mythic corner up the upper yacht harber, will...
Film Review: “Away from Her”
Don't even think about seeing Away from Her unless you're prepared to 1) cry your eyes out and 2) have your cultural stereotypes about marriage shattered to pieces. As beautiful as ever, and radiantly no-longer-young, Julie Christie illuminates the broken heart of...
Cursed Locations
You know the ones I mean. Locations in which well-meaning, hard-working entrepreneurs keep trying to set up a restaurant business, and which keep resisting any success. Locations whose ill-fated feng shui, or abyssmal karma, bodes against every effort to achieve...
Art Troika
Boris Tyomkin, Dylan Morgan and Dag Weiser are showing some fresh paint on canvas - an experimental mix full of attitude and gusto - at the Michaelangelo Gallery on River Road, at the edge of Santa Cruz, starting June 1. Not what you expect. Check it out.
Chocolate Chronicles
Cocoa d'Arriba is yet another designer chocolate bar, priced at just under $3 and situated near enough to the check out lanes to tempt even the St. Anthony's among us. We succumbed. At 77% cocoa and inflected with orange liqueur, this elite treat is ultra smooth and...
Last Week @ Avanti: Read the comments!
Grilled sea scallops on a bed of Israeli cous cous, with ultra fresh snap peas and fava beans, micro bits of Meyer lemon all tossed in olive oil and Meyer lemon juice, with nano-strips of fresh basil. It is literally the month of May on a plate. Thanks to Avanti chef...
Hog Heaven
How unfair that we compare gluttonous humans to pigs! Pigs are absolutely sensational creatures — playful, intelligent and curly-tailed. I love pigs and I love pork. So that means I was curious to see TLC Ranch, home to a hundred free-spirited, free-range pigs. TLC...
Fieldwork 101
If you've never indulged in the exquisite sensory array of one of the "Outstanding in the Field" farm dinners, you have missed something wonderful. Imagine dining at a long, linen-draped table, placed out in the open next to a swath of atmospheric fields. Now add a...
Pulitzer Playtime!
A mighty creative team comprised of some of UCSC's most sparkling theater talent collaborates for San Jose Repertory's current production of Rabbit Hole, by David Lindsay-Abaire. Following the bittersweet fortunes of a couple on a journey through the highs and lows of...
Summer Wine
It was my friend Mateo who came up with the perfect description for this fine young Sauvignon Blanc. "It's the perfect summer gardening wine!" And it is (though let me take a minute to acknowledge the only-in-California phrasing of that line.) He referred to the Santa...
Soup Beautiful Soup!
I’ll be dishing it out this Thursday. Literally. Soupline Supper, to benefit the Santa Cruz Homeless Services Center will serve soups from the area’s top restaurants, from 5:30-7:30 p.m. Thursday, May 17, at Holy Cross Parish Hall, 170 High St. in Santa Cruz....
Journey to the East
Despite my motto, "The East has ceased," it was a delicate springtime that greeted me in Pennsylvania and New Jersey last week. Dogwood in bloom, azaleas purple through the tracery of pale green just beginning to burst into sight - really lovely. That's the grey-green...
The Wild Soif
Downtown Santa Cruz' impossibly chic and appealing boite, Soif, continues to make us happy. Wine-wise, we've been having lots of fun with whites from Slovenia, and reds from Sicilia. Food-wise, the Soif kitchen — under the guidance of chef Chris Avila — references...
Fracture: Film Noir for Dummies
Even the eloquent face and supple voice of Anthony Hopkins can't save this Absolut vodka commercial masquerading as a cinematic thriller. Even though Ryan Gosling, as the rising legal star assigned to prosecute the murderer, has done his homework at the Don Johnson...
Curry on King Street
Steve Spill is an ace photographer, bon vivant and, as it turns out, can whip up some mean curries when he wants. And he wanted to last week, in the professionally equipped kitchen of the King Street bungalow he shares with his Sylvia. Munching pappodoms and an array...
Mouth Feel
In our house, Green & Black's preternaturally intense combination of dark chocolate, currents and hazelnuts, is considered the ne plus ultra. It rules. Granted this is a chocolate experience with so much gravitas that you really cannot multi-task while you experience...
Chocolove
Another one of my addictions - Chocolove's 55% cocoa-rich dark chocolate bar laced with a secondary layer of bitterness in the form of orange peel. This beautiful indulgence ($2.99) is consistently bittersweet all the way through, from intense-yet-accessible start, to...
Another Thing about Avanti
Think of the Manet painting - the Barmaid at the Follies Bergere - as you consider this view of Katie Cater, sommelier and oenophile at Ristorante Avanti. With Cater's guidance, I chose a soft, ripe Fuentespina Ribera del Duero 2001 to accompany a recent dinner of...
Wine of the Week
Take a careful look at this label. Memorize it. Now go out and find one just like it and bring it home. This is your new best friend, oenologically-speaking. It is Bonny Doon Vineyards' 2004 Syrah Le Pousseur, loaded with meaty tones of spice, cassis, some indefinable...
Getting Doon
Vitiphiliacs and Bonny Doon Vineyards wine club members gathered at the winery last Saturday, for a dinner of rustic elegance wrapped around some sensational wines. Convened by BD founder Randall Grahm, the dinner helped to introduce the latest oenologic from the...