Beautiful Santa Barbara

Last weekend, TC and I drove down to Santa Barbara to visit N & M, two good friends from my grad school days. When N & M moved to Santa Barbara 5 years ago, I promised to visit. Well, 5 years later, I still had not made the trek down to see them. With my POU in full swing, I finally had the time to make good on my promise. And I’m so glad I went. We had a great time visiting with N & M and seeing all of the beautiful sights that Santa Barbara had to offer.

Our drive down to Santa Barbara was going very smoothly… so smoothly that we were ahead of schedule. We decided to stop by the super weird town of Solvang, 35 miles north or Santa Barbara. For those who haven’t heard of this, er, quaint? town, all of the buildings have a traditional Danish influence: there are windmills, a Hans Christian Anderson library/museum, and horse carriage rides. Needless to say, the Danes are probably horrified that this tourist trap is marketed with their country as its theme. After walking around for about 10 minutes, we were both bored. I suggested we go get a beer and TC heartily agreed. So we used my Yelp app (which has come in SO handy, btw) and located the Solvang Brewing Company.

A couple pints of refreshing beverages after a long drive

According to Yelp, their house brews are not great. However, according to a flyer I saw in the women’s room, they hired an award-winning brewer to come in and improve the brews. One other thing they could change is the ambience. The place looks like a 70′s style brew pub (e.g., lifted straight out of Three’s Company), which is cool if that’s what it is, but it’s not. It was built in 2010. Usually, I like this kind of kitsch, but something about it seemed weird. But whatever — a beer is a beer, and this one satisfied our needs.

After finishing our beers, we headed to our destination: N & M’s place in Santa Barbara. They live close to Old Goleta, a low-key, diverse area with ethnic restaurants and shops. We had dinner at their favorite Thai place, Pattaya. My vegetarian pad kee mao was just so-so, but TC’s shrimp and pineapple curry was delicious. Also, M’s pineapple fried rice came in a pineapple!

Our gracious hosts!

On Saturday morning, after a breakfast of pancakes, TC and I went off on our own to tour downtown Santa Barbara. We walked along the beach and down Stearns Wharf (the pier). It was cloudy and gray but still quite beautiful. One important thing we did was to stop by the Tourist Information Center. There, we got some valuable coupons for wine tasting (see below).

Goofing around in downtown Santa Barbara

Wine tasting is a popular thing to do in the area, as made more famous by the movie Sideways. Since neither of us had done any research on the area wineries, we picked our first place, Gainey Vineyard, based on the “2 free tastings” coupon we got from the Tourist Info Center. $20 saved! Ch-ching! I wasn’t impressed by any of the wines we tasted, but the tasting room was quite nice, with huge wine barrels lining the walls. Our pourer was also very friendly and generously asked us if we wanted to re-taste anything (we passed). Oh, and there were bread sticks! Very helpful for staving off the wine buzz.

Next up was Kalyra Winery, started by an Aussie ex-pat. We had a 2-for-1 coupon, saving us another $10. Ch-ching (again)! Also, we got to keep the wine glasses. Score. The wines here were better, and they even threw in a couple of dessert wines, totaling 8 tastings in all (I think). We ate a bunch more breadsticks but the wine buzz was inevitable, so we went to sober up with a late lunch.

For the second time, the Yelp app came to the rescue. We had a great lunch at Dos Carlitos, a nice sit-down Mexican restaurant in Santa Ynez. Since we were supposed to sober up, I skipped the hibiscus margarita and went instead for the grilled vegetable tostada. TC ordered a chile relleno. We were both exceedingly pleased with our food. My tostada was super fresh, tasty, and healthy! Unfortunately, it was also gigantic, so I only ate about 2/3 of it.

The chile relleno at Dos Carlitos.

Grilled veggie tostada, with avocado dressing. Nutritious and delicious!

I surrender!

For dinner that night, I made BBQ noodles with assistance from N. It was one of his favorites from our grad student days. I gave N the recipe years ago, but he had a lot of trouble recreating it. Now that we’ve cooked it together, hopefully he’ll have lots of successful noodle ventures in the future.

Sunday morning, the four of us headed to Camarillo, about 45 minutes south, to get dim sum at Peking Inn. No photos, unfortunately, but trust me when I say that the food was good and the drive scenic. After lunch, we went with N to UCSB campus. While he worked, (A postdoc’s work is never done!) we took a brief walk around campus. Whereas we weren’t impressed by the buildings or the layout, the beach adjacent to the campus took our breath away.

Such a beautiful beach, only a few minutes from campus. Ah, to have such distractions...

We finished off the afternoon by revisiting downtown Santa Barbara. First, we had to go see the world’s biggest fig tree. It supposedly shades up to 1000 people at noon. Our assessment: yes it’s huge, but we were skeptical that it would shade that many people. Then again, I’ve always been terrible at estimating volumes and areas, so I’m probably wrong about this too.

me and the giant fig tree

Next, we strolled along State St, the main thoroughfare. It’s very upscale and reminded me of Palo Alto, only bigger and prettier. For dinner, we relied on our friend the Yelp app, yet again, to point us somewhere delicious. And again, it came through! We had dinner at Zaytoon, a cute Lebanese restaurant that doubles as a hookah bar. Even though we were there before sunset, it was easy to imagine going there with friends for a relaxing evening of drinking wine, smoking hookah, and staring into glowing warmth of the fire pit in the middle of each table. Alas, we wanted to get a quick dinner and get on the road, so no meandering for us. Both TC and I ordered the vegetarian choice, which was a platter of hummus, baba ghannouj, falafel, grape leaves, tabouli, and fatoush salad. So yummy! And just the right amount of food to satisfy without sending us to food coma.

Vegetarian Choice at Zaytoon

All in all, a wonderful trip! I’m thankful for the fun time, good food, beautiful scenery, and great friends.

A Gastronomic Tour of Seattle, part I

A beautiful view of Downtown Seattle from Kerry Park

A couple of weekends ago, I decided to get out of Berkeley for the weekend and visit friends J & B in Seattle. Having lived there for 3 years now, J & B were awesome tour guides, especially since they love to eat and drink (and be merry!) just as much as I do.  I have many photos, so I’ve divided them into two posts for easier consumption. Enjoy!

Friday, 19 June
I awoke (at the very late hour of 10:30am) to the delicious smell of sausage and eggs. J whipped up breakfast: a delightful scramble of eggs, sausage, avocado (yum!), tomato, and onion, served with ripe peaches and toast. The contrasting textures and flavors, especially the sausage and avocado, were so delicious — definitely one of the best scrambles I’ve ever had.

A great start to the day!

After breakfast, J took me downtown to do some sightseeing. First stop: Seattle’s famed Pike Place Market, home of fish-throwing fishmongers. We didn’t witness any fish throwing, but we did walk the seemingly endless rows of stalls selling fresh produce, fish, flowers, and other goodies. EF tipped me off to a tiny donut stand that makes miniature donuts, selling for $2.70 for half a dozen.  Despite the grunginess of the stand and of the dirty, apathetic punk rocker who worked there, we were delightfully surprised by how good the little fried treats were. Thanks for the tip, EF!

Not Krispy Kreme, but pretty good nonetheless!

"Fancy Jumbo Grilling Scampis," where Jumbo is an understatement.

A beautiful bouquet for the bargain price of $8. One thing I loved about the market was the abundance of affordable, beautiful flowers. If I lived close to this market, I'd definitely have to set aside a monthly flower allowance!

One of the top Seattle tourist stops: the very first Starbucks.

For lunch, we met up with B near his work for Mexican food at the Agua Verde Cafe (and Paddle Club!). Because we had been nonstop eating, J and I shared the Bacalao, fried cod in a coconut beer tempura with shredded cabbage and creamy avocado sauce. B also ordered fish tacos, but went with the Dorado, grilled mahi mahi. I have to say that, while both were good (especially the avocado sauce), the fried cod was definitely superior.

Fried cod with avocado sauce. Yum.

Grilled mahi mahi soft tacos.

Lunch must have triggered our appetites for more fish, because we headed to Kisaku for dinner, one of J & B’s favorite sushi restaurants. To start, we ordered sunomono, cucumber and seaweed salad, with octopus (my choice), and tofu dengaku, fried tofu with sweet miso sauce (J & B’s choice).  Usually, sunomono is a fresh mix of sweet and sour, but this particular salad was watery and lacked flavor.  However, the tofu was really good (as are most fried foods).

Disappointing sunomono. I really wanted to like it.

Fried tofu with delicious sauce.

For the main course, we went with a mix of nigiri, rolls, and fried shrimp heads! All of the fish was fresh and tasty, and the portions were generous. I really enjoyed Kisaku!

The rolls: the Wallingford roll (top left), Alaska roll? (bottom left), spicy tuna (middle), and Green Lake (right). The Green Lake was my favorite -- I loved the marinated seaweed on top.

Nigiri (from top to bottom): sweet shrimp, tuna, salmon, and scallop.

Eating fried shrimp heads: 3 portraits. Despite my expression, it was actually really delicious. Again, you can't go wrong with fried food!

My very gracious hosts and tour guides, B & J.

Jury’s Still Out

This is the first repeat review ever on this blog. In December, I wrote about the delicious tamales from Casa Latina. Since then, I’ve been meaning to go back with a Mexican so that s/he could provide expert advice on the huge assortment of authentic Mexican baked goods.  Luckily for me, my very authentic Mexican friend MA picked up my broken-ankled mess last month to get dinner and sweets at Casa Latina.

Just a third of the baked goods at Casa Latina

Before I get to the sweets, let’s start with the savory. Last time I had the tamale plate with one chicken and one pork tamale, served with rice and beans. This time, to save room for dessert, I got one pork tamale and one chicken (soft) taco. Very important note: I (wo)manned up and got the hot sauce this time.  And it was GOOD. So much better than medium.  MA said that no real Mexican would get the medium salsa.  (She didn’t actually say that; I inferred it from the quizzical look she gave me when I said I got the medium sauce last time. Her look said, “Why the hell would any sane person ever get the medium salsa?”)  At $2 a piece for the taco and tamale, dinner was not only delicious, it was a bargain.

Yummy tamale!

Chicken taco. The garnish was onion-cilantro deliciousness.

MA went straight for the carnitas tacos. What can I say — she doesn’t mess around. She gave it two thumbs up (thumbs not shown).

Carnitas tacos with a bottle of tamarind soda.

After dinner, it was onto the baked goods! I bugged MA to tell me about every single pastry and bread in the case, and we put our selections on a big metal round tray.

Now here comes the hard part: selecting the pastries.

I don’t know why I think this, but I almost always assume that, in a pastry wrestling match, any non-American baked good will kick an American baked good’s ass.  I just assume foreign bakeries are superior.  That said, I am still undecided on the Mexican baked goods. I really, really, REALLY wanted to like what I got, but I have to be honest: I really disliked 2 of the 3 items.

From top left, clockwise: custard thing, pineapple empanada, chocolate molasses bread.

1. Custard thing. I love custard in many forms: flan, Chinese egg custard, custard pie.  But this thing, I did not love one bit. The filling caught me off guard, as it was not really pudding like, nor was it thick and egg-y.  It was more like cheese danish filling, except stringy. Gag. However, the crust was pretty good — a lemony, cookie crumbly thing, which I ate sans filling.

2. Pineapple empanada. This time, I didn’t have any issue with the filling, which tasted like your standard dessert fruit filling.  The crust, however, was dry and not a good texture.  It sort of reminded me of cardboard or construction paper. Sorry.

3. Chocolate molasses bread.  This one took me by surprise, because I was initially VERY scared. It weighed, like, 3 pounds, and was half the size of my head.  Basically, it was a dense, sweet bread made out of molasses and covered with chocolate.  MA said that it is usually much smaller and traditionally made into the shape of a pig, which I thought sounded really cute. (Casa Latina also bakes the pig-shaped ones, but they were already sold out that day.) Initially, I was overwhelmed by the density of the bread, but then it really grew on me.  I would definitely buy this one again.