Four Favorite places in Santa Barbara

There is a German saying, “Happy as God in France.” In California we don’t think He would prefer France, but as a writer once put it, “God would live in Santa Barbara, if he could afford it.” When the town was devastated by a major earthquake in 1925 the city fathers decreed that in rebuilding they would do it in a Spanish Colonial Revival style and so we have the city we know today, a west coast Williamsburg where even McDonalds and KFC’s look like 18th century Mexican bodegas and the courthouse looks like a Viceregal Palace. Hundreds of Mexican revival villas and haciendas dot the landscape. Montecito is home to millionaires and Oprah Winfrey with oak trees, stables, formal gardens and the musty smell of old money or barely dry ink aroma of crisp new money.

Far beyond what you might expect in a city its size, Santa Barbara is a center for innovative and traditional restaurants, food stores and bakeries. This is not a review, just quick a summary of places my family likes a lot. There are at least a dozen more I could and should mention. They will get their turn later.

The Summerland Beach Cafe is a small Victorian house with terraces around it. Only open for breakfast and lunch, it does very well thought out California dishes and serves them cheerfully in a welcoming ambiance. Organic, pretty much. Vegetarians are welcome, but they also make a near perfect club sandwich on whole grain bread and make a huge selection of sandwiches, hamburgers, salads, omelets and egg dishes. Even the side dishes like their potato salad, onion rings, cole slaw and garnishes show imagination and nice but not fussy flair. Breakfast or lunch here is our customary first stop on a long weekend or mini vacation in Santa Barbara where sitting in the sun looking over the 101 freeway at the Pacific begins our decompression.

Another favorite is Anderson’s on State Street, a Danish bakery and restaurant that serves breakfast, lunch and dinner. The bakery is exceptional and has wonderful breads and then pastries that show what very gifted mortals can do with butter, marzipan and skill. They make their own off the chart good orange preserves and raspberry preserve too. They even offer a real Danish breakfast -- no eggs, just a platter with two kinds of rye bread, a huge slice of homemade liver pate, a pile of sweet and salty Danish ham, slices of dill Havarti cheese and some garnishes and samples of their breakfast pastries. Phenomenal. This is usually our last stop where we buy bread, pastries or tubs of fresh fruit preserves to take home.

Not far away is Ca Dario, a small Italian restaurant with a Venetian accent. Lunch there can be a celebration of life. A soup of local shellfish in a briny broth, a platter of homemade zesty Italian sausage & peppers with fried polenta. At night, they serve a striped bass that is magnificent.

Above, the striped bass, below the artichoke salad. Photos by Mara Kelly

Take your time, it is small and often jammed. It is not a red check table cloth ItaloAmerican cafe, but very very much like a cafe in the Veneto, the most cultivated and orderly region of Italy. You would do best to eat a bit later than usual to avoid the meal time tides. Ask the servers about the menu and the day's specials, Ca'Dario is full of unexpected and authentic surprises like their cold artichoke appetizer which is unique and the best salad that doesn’t look like one since the Spanish invented gazpacho.

Finally, there is Cafe Buenos Aries (It originally occupied the small place where Ca Dario is now). My late wife loved this romantic place, especially at night when latin music and tangos were playing and candles and tiny lights lit the courtyard. This is a large restaurant you enter through a courtyard with arcades on two sides and outside fireplaces. The dinning room is tile floored and feels like it has been there a hundred years. They mix all the great national cocktails of the Americas (mojitos, caipirinhas, pisco sours, margaritas and more). They then serve steaks that are either flown up from the Pampas or cut locally in the Argentine manner. These are served with perfect fried potatoes and chimichurri, the herbal tangy national condiment. Romantic is the only adjective.

Andersen's Danish Bakery & Restaurant

1106 State St

Santa Barbara, CA 93101

(805) 962-5085

www.andersenssantabarbara.com

Ca' Dario

37 E Victoria Street

Santa Barbara, CA 93101

(805) 884-9419

www.cadario.net

Cafe Buenos Aires

1316 State Street

Santa Barbara, CA 93101

(805) 963-0242

Summerland Beach Cafe

2294 Lillie Ave

Summerland, CA 93067

(805) 969-1019

In Glendale, tastes from the Balkans & Buenos Aries

Elena's

One hidden away gem is a little place on Glendale Avenue called Elena’s. Run by a couple of Armenian ladies, this little place serves what my Bulgarian friend Boiko says is real Balkan soul food. The style is a mix of Greek, Turkish & Armenia staples that is not dumbed down for American taste. A great favorite with the LAPD from the near by Northeast Station and the local Glendale cops too, Elena's offers wonderful simple healthy food in a combination of Greek, Armenian, Turkish and Lebanese styles. All the dinner plates come with either a bowl of soul filling lentil soup or a very nice salad of lettuce tomatoes, onion, herbs and a vinegar lemon juice dressing that is just sharp and zesty enough to set off the vegetables. The following dinner plates are a large serving of rice pilaf with a grilled Anaheim pepper and a grilled tomato with onions and a side dish of pickled cabbage and other vegetables that is sort of mild Balkan take on kimchi. On this generous plate you can get various kabobs: chicken, lula, beef, lamb or a combination of them plus felafel, stuffed egg plant, stuffed grape leaves and a few other meatless dishes. The meats are well seasoned in the tangy Balkan Levantine way and full of zest without hiding or distorting their natural flavor. For myself, I almost always get a combo plate with one stick of lamb kabobs and the other of herb dusted chicken. While there is no beer or wine, a wide variety of soft drinks are available including the house made yogurt drink which is the prefect drink to go with the food. Finally some more good news about Elena’s is that almost all the dinners are less than ten dollars. They also have take out and also make pita sandwiches.

El Morfi

Another little place that I enjoy for its honest ethnic focus and direct simplicity is El Morfi, a block south of Porto’s Bakery on Brand across the street from the Alex Theater. An Argentine place, El Morfi (BA slang for a snack or quick bite) serves food in the unique Italo-Latino style of Buenos Aries. For example on the menu you will see “ñque” which really puzzled me until the young waiter explained it was how you spelled “Gnocchi” in Spanish. "¡ñque, ñque, ñque!" It is that kind of place.

What I particularly like there is their salad, an Argentine version of a chopped salad in a clean vinaigrette, papas Provenzale -- great french fries salted then tossed with garlic and parsley and their milanesas. The Neopalitana is a wide thin breaded beef cutlet topped with a herby marinara sauce and melted provolone and a few strips of roasted red pepper. (You can get chicken milanesas if you prefer.) There are many other dishes including pasta, pizza, empanadas and other Argentine specialties. They carry a good selection of wine and beer from “BA” and make a very flavorful house made Sangria that is not too sweet but very full of red wine character. Prices are quite fair, cheap by those used to the West Side and Santa Monica. It is a simple little place popular with both English and Spanish speakers.

And then there is the real reason to enjoy El Morfi, their home made Chimichurri. This condiment is addictive, it sings with herbs, teases with the smoothness of olive oil, it enchants with herbal complexity, and pinches your tongue with a tang and a zing. I dip bread in it, and spoon the green and golden elixir over the papas provenzale. I think I could eat cardboard dipped in. It is made in house and can be bought in mason jars and taken home. Don't miss it.

There is a story the the name Chimichurri comes from the name of Irish soldier who fought with Argentine rebel army in their war of Independence from Spain, Jimmy McCurry. Who knows? I suppose you could even say El Morfi is Irish too, a phonetic spelling of Murphy. I had an old nun when I was a child who said whenever you have a good story, there usually was an Irishman as the bottom of it.

Other places you should know about in Glendale are Damon’s, which has been there since the 1930’s. It looks like a local take on the Trader Vic’s, Don the Beachcomber school of Tiki restaurant. While it serves a wide variety of Tiki Room rum and fruit juice drinks in the grand Dorothy Lamour, Hope & Crosby “Road” pictures style, the menu is very much old time LA steakhouse. Near by is Jax’s, a bit more up scale but also long time LA steak house.

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A few words about Glendale.

Glendale does not make it that often into the food blogs, however occasionally a local place gets attention. For example, not long ago the food writer of the LA Weekly discovered Billy’s Deli on Orange Street. He liked it and was surprised it had slipped his attention since it has been there for over 50 years and has been used in movies and TV series as the interior for a New York deli or old fashioned Italian restaurant depending on what ethnic decorations replace the photo murals of pre-WW II Glendale. Billy’s makes all the New York Jewish Deli standards and have well priced daily specials. When many deli’s are drifting farther and father away from their traditions Billy’s stay close to the old ways. On the hottest day of summer the year at an outlet of the Jerry’s Deli’s chain, a Latino waitress tells me that don’t served cold beet borscht because nobody but a few old guys ever ordered it. That was as shocking as finding an Irish saloon that didn’t served Jameson’s or an English pub that didn’t have Fuller’s London Pride. What is the world coming to?

Billy's, how authentic is it? One example, they serve a breakfast special of fried baloney & eggs. It is quarter inch thick slices of Hebrew National Baloney fried until there is a scorched crust. You can't get much more old time authentic than that. My daughter says it is too disgusting to even think about. Hey, but does she know about real food. I have it on good authority that President Obama likes Spam Fried Rice just like everybody who grew up in Honolulu.

Another place that I feel is unfairly omitted from most food blogs is Mario’s Italian Market on Broadway. Mario’s is an old fashioned Italian market like there used to be all over San Francisco, San Jose and the rest of the Bay Area and many other parts of the country. My daughter last year had a problem with her foot and went to see a specialist recently moved to the San Fernando Valley from New Jersey. During one appointment the Doctor said that he had not been able to find a real old time Italian Market. Mara told him he should try Mario’s in Glendale. The next time she saw him he told her, “Thanks for telling me about Mario’s. Ya’ know, I opened the door and it smelled just like I was back in New Jersey.”

At Mario’s they make dozens of Italian hero sandwiches with a wide variety of salami’s, sausages, and other cured meats on their own torpedo shaped rolls. I always ask for no mustard or mayonnaise but extra olive oil and vinegar dressing. Mario’s carries a wide range of Italian and other Mediterranean imports, anchovies, canned fish, dozens and dozens kinds of pasta, cookies, candy, olive oil, vinegar's, spices, olives, etc., etc. Personally I would rate their hero sandwiches as good or better than those at Bay Cities in Santa Monica, but that is just me and doesn’t mean that I don’t think Bay Cities is a fine place.

Billy’s Deli & Café

216 N. Orange Street, Glendale, CA 91203

Phone: (818) 246-1689 | Fax: (818) 246-3210

Mario's Italian Deli & Catering

740 East Broadway

Glendale, CA (818) 242-4114

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At meal at Jack's in San Francisco in 1965.

If there is one restaurant that I wish could visit again it is Jack’s in San Francisco. It had a long run, almost a century and a half. Some people miss other fine places, my parent’s loved the Blue Fox. In Los Angeles Scandia would head the roster of fondly remembered places. In New York there are many restaurants people recall with nostalgia. These special and favorite places keep passing on, this month the famous Cafe Des Artistes closed after almost a century. It is cherished as much or more for its pastel murals of delightful carefree arte deco nudes as for its food, a unique blend of French, American and Hungarian dishes. It was if nothing else, a deeply romantic place.

The first time I went to Jack’s in San Francisco was in August 1965 when a few of us got together to treat a friend who was about to report for duty in the Army. Even then Jack’s was a very very old place. The building was a weathered shabby three story brick building put up right after the 1906 Earthquake and Fire. It was just up Sacramento Street from Montgomery Street, at the point where hill began its climb. Sacramento was a narrow side street that marched straight up and over Nob Hill. It was August in San Francisco, the weather lived up to Mark Twain's famous comment, “The coldest winter I spent in California was my summer in San Francisco.” This night was cool & foggy. When you turned off Montgomery Street, you caught a blast of misty air right off the Pacific. You entered through double beveled glass doors into a brightly lit room with a hand laid black and white hexagonal mosaic tile floor, dark wood paneling with beveled glass mirrors on the walls and a very high ceiling covered in sheets of patterned pressed tin. The dinning room was long with a bar across the front window. There were large round tables on the far wall and smaller square ones in the center and near side, all draped in stiff white table clothes. The staff was as elderly as the surroundings. After standing at the bar, without bar stools just a dinged and tarnished brass rail to rest your feet on, we were led to a stout table against the near wall and hung our rain coats on dark metal hooks screwed into the paneling. We were two or three decades younger than anyone else in the dinning room, although like them we all wore dark suits and white shirts and ties. The waiter handed each of us a menu, another relic from the nineteenth century, it was printed daily on stiff white legal size stock. It was all small black type, no art work and not even simple prose describing anything, just the names of items in French or English, a long long list of what was available printed on when inked metal type pressed directly on the paper on an antique letter press. In the 19th century Jack’s had begun as a French restaurant and still had some very old french dishes on the menu, although it was very much an American restaurant that didn’t go in for fads or much else that had not been listed since the place was reopened after the 1906 earthquake.

An oddity of Jack’s was the way drinks were served. Due to the very advanced age of most of its waiters, simple drinks and cocktails like Old Fashions, Gin & Tonics, Martini’s and Manhattans were made at the bar then poured into tall water glasses, put on the waiter’s tray with an empty cocktail or old fashioned glass for each drink. When he got to the table the elderly waiter set down stemmed cocktail glasses and then poured the cocktail into it, leaving the depleted water glass beside it. The same for whiskey, whiskey & soda and gin & tonics which arrive in the bottom of the glass with a few pieces of jagged ice chipped off a ice block at the bar. The waiter then topped off the glass with a small bottle of club soda, quinine water or with water from the pitcher of ice water on each table. This added an extra layer of ritual and intensified the antique aura and slow tempo of the restaurant.

In the evening Jack’s served a set dinner that hadn’t changed in decades. Indeed this Edwardian meal continued to served into the 1980’s. An appetizer course was followed by bowl of soup, then a salad, followed by a fish course, the entree and finally a dessert. In progressed in the long accepted sequence of a proper meal at a very traditional restaurant. You began with a cocktail while your read the menu, then ordered a bottle of white wine with the appetizer and perhaps another with the fish, then a bottle of red wine with the meat entree, and finally cognac with the coffee at the end of the meal. Since you were in San Francisco you knew when you left the restaurant sometime between nine and ten you would step out the door onto Sacramento Street and a sharp blast of foggy cold air right off the Pacific Ocean would hit your face like punch.

You chose one item from each course on the list. The appetizers included shrimp or crab cocktail, home made pates, pickled pigs feet, marinated tongue, and other items rarely if ever seen on menu’s today. Then there was a choice of soups, beef or chicken consumes, vegetable soup of some kind, scotch broth (lamb and barley -- my favorite) and a cream soup. The salad was a straight forward mixed greens and sliced tomatoes in a white wine vinaigrette with or without Roquefort crumbled on it as you prefered. That was the only salad dressing offered. The Fish Course presented a choice of local fish like petrale, rex sole, hatchery trout, and sand dabs served “dore” or “mineure.” Finally you reached the entree, the red meat course. It was a choice of that evening's roast meat & fowl or their house special marinated rump steak. The rump steak was long marinated and cooked medium rare. Dense solid meat , no fat, bone or gristle. This steak was chewy with a zippy tang from the spices and vinegar and a deep base baritone beefiness. It was served in a rich bordalaise sauce. The potatoes and vegetable were served from small platters. Desserts were simple enough: ice cream, sherbet and apple pie. A cheese platter was also available.

It took at least two hours to march through this menu. A century ago, before radio or television, it was considered civilized to spend two hours at the table for an evening meal. Each course was like a round at prize fight with a ten minute intre’act between to savor it and clear the palate for the next. The sequence of courses was that of a proper 19th century French meal with the appetizers acting like the overture of an opera: tasty tangy salty items to wake up your taste buds. A large basket of sliced crusty sourdough bread and a bowl of salty butter stayed on the table. The size of the courses was appropriate to the meal, with portions smaller than we expect today in a two or three course dinner. The appetizer was served on a leaf of lettuce and only four or five savory bites. Next the soup was served in a small bowl, but it was more than the little cup you often get today. This warmed you up. A California restaurant, at Jack’s salad came next following the Iberian custom, not the French. All the salads except Crab Louis (a favorite local lunch dish) were served with a classic white wine vinaigrette. At Jack’s it had a good sprinkling of Roquefort cheese crumbles. Next came the fish course. Here again this was one whole fish or two or three fillets of a larger one. The fish was not accompanied by a starch or vegetables. Finally came the entree or main course. While most people had the marinated rump steak in bourdelais sauce, others had roast beef or lamb or half a roast chicken. Pork was sometimes offered, also roast mutton -- a rich manly dish rarely served at all today since the flavor is a bit like game and it is chewy and earthy. Finally came the desert course, but most of the time I ate there we would get the cheese platter. One of the cheeses was a strong soft cheese and a sharp hard cheese plus a large slab of fresh creamy Monterey Jack where the middle of the slab was so fresh it was spreadable and sweet and salty. I seem to recall a few apples or pears on the platter, but that be an error. At this time the old time family Italian places offered one dessert, a slab of fresh Monterey Jack cut from a large wheels, not rubbery square blocks from a supermarket. At Jack’s sliced sour dough bread was available through out the meal.

The wine list was large, ranging across the dozen or so important California wineries of the day and a selection of mainly French imports. This was years before the wine boom and establishment of dozens and then hundreds of small ”boutique” wineries. If my memory is accurate, we usually drank a Livermore Valley Sauvignon Blank from Wente or Concannon with the fish and a Cabernet Sauvignon from Beaulieu, Chas. Krug, Louis Martini or Inglenook or perhaps a reserve Pinot Noir with a bold red stripe diagonally across the label indicating its rare status from the long gone Almaden Winery in the Santa Clara Valley whose vineyards have disappeared under today’s Silicon Valley. If we drank French wines it was usually a white Burgundy followed by a velvety Chateauneuf de Pape from the Rhone Valley. Even if we could pronounce their names we were too young to appreciate and too poor to afford the great reds from Bordeaux and Burgundy.

All this food, drink and wine for four people might cost $60 including a tip, all laid out in cash on a small white plate with green stripes around the rim. Credit cards were a new thing then and the older San Francisco restaurants were slow to adopt them. At good San Francisco restaurants full dinners were five dollars at this time and the huge set piece dinner at Jack’s was around eight dollars, the same for bottles of good local wine. At this time three dollars would buy a hearty meal and house wine at the family places like the New Pisa, La Pantera and the San Remo. At fine Italian restaurants like Paoli’s, dinner began with a vast antipasti spread that cover the entire table with small plates and platters, then soup, a light salad, a small pasta course and finally the main dish. Cocktails were less than a dollar in San Francisco back then and our larger coins were still minted in real silver and a new VW beetle sold for about a thousand dollars and a brand new Ford Mustang for $2,000.

Jack’s dated back to the Gold Rush, I believe it was officially founded in the 1850’s. It was a French Restaurant which at that time meant it not only offered food in the French style, on it’s second and third floor it also provided “les chambres separees.” That is private rooms where meals were served to discreet couples. In addition to the main entrance through the bar and dinning room on the ground floor, a separate side entrance allowed ladies and gentlemen to enter and leave the second floor unobserved by the dinners in the ground floor restaurant. When my mother was a student nurse in San Francisco in the late 1930’s she and her classmates were given stern warnings about French restaurants and their private rooms, specifically Jack’s. When I first went there in the 1960’s the upper rooms had long since been converted into private dinning rooms for business meetings. Seduction and adultery had been replaced by tax avoidance and sales meetings while “the pill” had loosened up sexual mores for my generation.

The principal reason for Jack’s unchanging menu and a dinning room that looked as it had in 1910 was that it was owned by a real estate tycoon who ate lunch there almost every day into his nineties. His heirs continued on for a couple decades after his death. Today it has been modernized into a more or less authentic French bistro and the main dinning room only has hints of it’s former Edwardian look. A perfectly respectable place, it retained the name, but it is not in any way the old Jack’s of fond memory. It was a miracle that it survived as long as it did.

As I wrote at the beginning of this chapter it was widely acknowledged to be a historic anomaly when I first went there in the early 1960’s. It was like eating and drinking in a museum where the menu was authentically as archaic as the decor and aged waiters, all of whom were at least seventy even then. Time passed very slowly at Jack’s and it had a large following who liked it that way. It had great gravitas and an almost preternatural longevity.

On the a la carte menu it offered a wide array of fish, steaks and chops and it’s signature dish, Chicken Jack’s: a sauté of half a chicken in pieces with mushrooms, onions, garlic, artichoke hearts and flavored with fresh herbs,spices and finished with sherry. Before the 1960's and large poultry companies like Foster Farms and the others, chicken and turkey were relatively much more expensive than today and most menu's reflected this. At that time fish was much cheaper than today and since Catholics and many other denominations had to eat it every Friday or on designated Lenten and fast days, fish was a far less exalted main course than today. Jack's was also famous for asparagus with hollandaise sauce, celery victor and leaks vinaigrette. It served entrees accompanied by their traditional classic french sauces, mushrooms in a Madeira sauté, Lobster Thermador, and California’s unique and now all but unobtainable beloved specialty, the essence of simplicity and the sublime, a ten inch wide Abalone steak d’orée. Today when culinary innovations and unexpected if not eccentric transpositions of Asian and European cooking are almost required at better restaurants, Jack’s seems to be a time warp. It was in many ways. It carried on far longer that anyone could have expected but not as long as it’s loyal diners might have hoped.

There was an almost antiquarian liquor store not far from Jacks on Montgomery Street that was my university for learning about wine. It is still there, John Walker & Sons. They carried a solid collection of the leading California wines and a wide selection of European wines. There I discovered French and German wines, especially the great reds from Burgundy and Rhine wines, in particular the great Rhinegau wines like Steinberger, Schloss Volrads, Schloss Johanisberger. I also found the Gewertztraminers of Alsace from the French side of the Rhine. These wines at their best were and still are like bottled sunlight. The legendary 1959 vintage were still available when turned 21 and could buy and drink them. That was the year of the century, annis mirabilis, as far as the Rhine and most French wines were concerned. The French reds of that year were big round and had wonderful rainbow of tastes. Both 1964 and 1966 were fine years also. I also discovered fine Ports and Madeira's from Portugal and the Gran Reserva Rioja reds, then aged at least until they were 10 to 15 years old, and Sherries, real Sherries including the bracing dry clear slightly salty Manzanillas from Sanlúcar de Barrameda. Because of the high post WW II dollar, the Rhine wines were not much more than their pale California counterparts while first rate, not grand cru but very good, French reds were not much more than very good California wines. The dollar fell from it’s pedestal at the end of the decade and fine European wines became a stretch for those of modest means.

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Smoke: right & wrong kinds of Smoke.

On Sepulveda Boulevard near San Fernando Mission is one of LA’s oldest yet surprisingly little known barbecue houses. Opened shortly after WW II, the Bear Pit is the only Missouri style BBQ joint in southern California. As it states proudly on the sign, it cooks country Missouri Barbecue on an Oak wood fire. For me and many others, this gives their meats a distinctive, deep subtle flavor lacking in most commercial BBQ places. Oak is the wood of choice for great grilling and barbecue. Period.

At the Bear Pit they put on a dry rub, not overly aggressive and then cook the meat in their big brick pit. That’s it. No gooey sauces. They let the oak fire and the rich smoke do the rest. You can taste this most clearly on their chickens. They have rich and subtle flavor under the tangy skin, the oak smoke flavor goes right to the bone very much like real Chinese smoked chicken or duck. They put a bottle of a mild and a medium sauce on each table, a middle of the road tomato, brown sugar, vinegar sauce for those who like and need it, but most of there meats are delectable just as they come on the platter: pulled pork, two kinds of pork ribs, beef ribs, brisket, tri-tip, ham, chicken and hot links. They also slow cook Turkeys and Ducks in their brick BBQ pit, both rarely seen in Southern California. In an old fashioned touch, when you sit down at the Bear Pit you get a bowl of what we call today crudités: Spears of salt cured kosher pickles, carrot sticks, hot little chili peppers and some other vegetables to munch on. This is as authentic a period 1950's touch as the housewives in “Mad Men” stuffing celery ribs with a cream cheese filling of some kind or another. They serve a tart southern style vinegar based cole slaw, not the creamy mayonnaise slaw usually served.

You can plot the dominant BBQ wood on a map, like the maps of Italy where they draw lines across the Boot at various places indicating where butter replaces olive oil as the principal cooking fat or where the pasta shifts from flat kinds to round or tubular ones (i.e. tagliatelle vs. penne, linguine vs. spaghetti). Well in the USA you can do a similar map indicating where and what kind of wood is use for a BBQ.

In California traditionally, but often ignored today, oak wood was fuel of choice in Northern and Central California all the way down to LA County line. It still is the only fuel for a classic Santa Maria Barbecue, the standard for judging any California BBQ. From Los Angeles across the southwest and at least half way across Texas Mesquite is firewood of choice. From somewhere east of Dallas north American hardwoods become the fuel of choice. Moving north into the Ozarks its is Oak like at the Bear Pit but crossing the Mississippi River Hickory becomes the favored wood, some times alone, other times mixed with Oak or other local hardwoods. This is clearly and easily tasted in the flavor of meats just as the material of the aging barrels is in wines. White wines aged in glass tanks have a fresh and strong varietal fruity taste. Redwood aging gives a slight cinnamon edge to red wines and used to be common, especially for Zinfandel's and Petite Syrah’s. White wines aged in American oak have a clear tannic edge and oak in the nose, while French oak barrels impart a more light and subtle oak edge.

Only certain woods burn well and slowly enough and give off the required heat and scented smoke that give character to any serious BBQ. For example, Eucalyptus burns very hot and gives off a very oily smoke that would quickly make anything it touched taste like it marinated in Vic’s Vapor Rub. It is far and way too aggressive. (Australians may strongly disagree if only because Down Under it’s gum tree wood or nothing.) The same heavy handed quality would apply to walnut, orange or other citrus woods which are oily like Eucalyptus and would overpower any meat. Soft woods like Pine are too quick burning and would coat food with a foul taste of pitch and a heavy smell of resin.

In New England maple wood is used to smoke bacon and for BBQ’s while apple wood is used in the upper Midwest. However the principal BBQ fuels are Oak in Central and northern California, Mesquite from LA across the Southwest and then Oak or Oak and Hickory in the lower Midwest and South. Better restaurants often use either Oak charcoal or a blend of Oak, Hickory and other hard woods to fire their grills. This blend of hardwood charcoal is available at many restaurant supply houses, but it comes in 50 pound bags which make it impractical unless you have the necessary storage space or grill a lot of meat.

The Bear Pit

10825 Sepulveda Boulevard

Mission Hills, CA 91345

(818) 365-2509 info@bearpitbbq.com

A Basque meal at the Noriega Hotel in Bakersfield

Saturday night five of us drove up to Bakersfield for dinner at Noriega’s Hotel. It has been there, near the Union Pacific (formerly Southern Pacific) Railroad Station, since 1893. A time warp, it is pretty much like it was then and has an authentic feel like few other places. There is a large bar with the dining room behind it. Unlike the three or four other Basque places in Bakersfield, Noriega’s is very much a traditional place serving one set meal like country places in Europe. There are three very long tables with stout “jury room” chairs for about 200 people. Diner is served in one sitting at seven. Parties are seated up and down the tables more or less in the order they checked in. On this saturday night there were half a dozen birthday groups and many family celebrations and a group of jovial middle aged middle class motorcycle warriors who had rolled up from Ventura County.

The food is basque style home cooking, cooking as it was in my grandmother’s day. It is good, but not serious four star basque cooking. For that I recommend the showcase Orosko Dinning Room at the Nugget Hotel Casino in Sparks Nevada.

At Noriega’s dinner is a homey and authentic meal provided by the Elizalde family as they have since 1931. When you enter the dinning room the smell is welcoming like a country farm house kitchen fifty years ago or more, like my grandmother’s kitchen on a Sunday afternoon with a mix of American and Portuguese dishes cooking. The Basques are generally recognized as the best cooks in Iberia and while not the same, their cooking shares many things with Portuguese and regional Spanish styles.

Waiting on the table when you are seated are a large salad bowl dressed with a blue cheese based variation on Caesar dressing and a large steaming tureen of cabbage and vegetable soup seasoned to the point and very much homemade. Placed around it are a large platter of thin slices of marinated tongue, a bowl of stewed pinto beans, a large basket of sliced french bread, butter, a bowl of herbed seasoned cottage cheese, a plate of homemade potato salad and a bowl of red tomato and pepper basque salsa picante, just this side of very hot. The salsa is added to the pinto beans to bring them to whatever level you prefer. Cuidado, it is muy picante. There is also a bottle of full bodied red house wine.

After first course were cleared away, the meal went on with a platter of spaghetti marinara eavily dusted with parmesan cheese that was as good as any I’ve ever had. After this a plate with a large slab of blue cheese was served with bowl of steamed Broccoli florets in a white hollandaise and then the oxtail stew. It was very much like my grandmother made in winter time, the meat and vegetables in unthickened cooking juices and not a heavy gravy. Finally, we were served platters of very crispy fried chicken heavily sprinkled with sautéed garlic cloves and platter of crisp hot french fries. “We don’t have to worry about vampires,” was my daughter’s comment. The pungent sweetness of the sautéed garlic on the chicken cut through any greasiness and made it a savory rustic dish. After this was cleared ice cream was served.

At dinner coffee is not put on the table, you have to ask for it. The bar has some interesting basque liqueurs if you want to try one. Les Fleurs des Pyrenees is very good as are others. The meal was large and simple in a traditional way. It took a convivial two hours and was well worth the drive to Bakersfield. What is telling is that a traditional country meal originally served to the men staying at a Basque boarding house a century ago seems to us today to be very special and festive dinner.

The meal is served for $20 per person, childern up to 12 are charge a dollar for each year of their age. A simpler meal is served at lunch for $14. A country breakfast is served daily from 7:00 to 9:00 for $10 with basque sausages, eggs and a slab of Monterey Jack cheese like my grandparents ate every morning. The Noriega Hotel is open everyday except Mondays. The dinner is served in one sitting at 7:00 pm. Reservations are suggested.

Noriega Hotel

525 Sumner Street

Bakersfield, California

(661) 322-8419

A great burger doesn't always come in a bun.

Hamburgers have become not just the great American fast food. Lately they have like cupcakes become a foodie obsession. Some are just made with care and the best available ingredients like those at Oinkster in Eagle Rock, the place that kicked off this fad locally. Now Oinster set out to prove that if you took care and skill, you could produce a perfect hamburger. They do and at a price not that much higher than ordinary fast food places.

Since then the foodies have swarmed and now we have ultra burgers for ten bucks each or more or hyper burgers for twenty or more bucks. The ultra burgers tend to be big, too big, often half a pound of beef. The hyper burgers are tarted up with special buns, exotic kinds of meat and lily gilding “gourmet” extra ingredients like fois gras, exotic bacon, rare mushrooms and so on and so forth. For me, I think what the Oinkster does is commendable and a revelation of what care and skill can do. For the ultra and hyper burgers, while sometimes interesting, even amazing, I find them decadent at best, just for show at worst.

Some off beat and different burgers come to mind. Trying to recapture them might be a much more useful thing than lily gilding and hyping the whole idea of hamburger sandwich. Three of the best burgers I’ve ever eaten all came with out the common hamburger bun. Yeah,they came on bread of one kind or another and were all the better for it.

USS Camden AOE-2 in South China Sea

The first is the US Navy “Midrats” burgers and cheese burgers. By old custom at sea around midnight the ship’s galley prepares a light meal for the on coming and off going watch. The “eve” watch runs from 8:00 pm to midnight, the “mid” watch from midnight to 4:00 am. From eleven thirty to twelve fifteen, the galley has a light meal for those about to take the watch and those coming off. Every couple days my ship served burgers, on the other days they had grilled ham and cheese sandwiches or cold roast beef from the evening meal. The burgers were grilled with or with cheese and slapped between slices of ship’s bread. This was not fluffy store bought bread, but chewy home made bread that didn’t go mushy or fall apart. Basic condiments were available including lettuce and pickles, tomatoes ran out a few days after we left port. These were great direct simple burgers that tasted rich and satisfying after four hours on deck in the dark, the wind and salt spray.

In the San Francisco Bay area many places served larger burgers (a third or half a pound of beef) on flat French or Italian rolls. This gave you something to hold onto and something to soak up the meat juices. Larry Blake’s on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley had a great savory burger they served with a big helping of garlicky Caesar Salad not fries. It was ambrosia and salty enough to make sure you ordered another beer. The same was true of many places where you had a choice of a a hamburger or a linguiça, Italian, Polish or Louisiana Hot sausage sandwich. The sausages were split down the center and grilled until crusted then dropped into the big chew rolls and dresses with the usual condiments and garnishes. They were so big they came already cut in half. Great manly food.

The Joe’s restaurants around the Bay Area served and still serve their hamburgers in a long piece of sour dough baguette. Some hallow out the inside to fit the oblong burger, some don’t. Some mix raw onion into the meat before cooking, others give you grilled onions if you ask for them. None of the usual condiments outside mustard and catsup are provided, but honestly these high quality burgers really don’t need any extra flavoring.

California tastes & memories: real food.

This blog is about food and eating in California, both today and over the years. There will three contributing writers and we will write about the taste of California both today and over the past fifty years or more. We will offer memories and some recipes from our grandmother's kitchens and from our kitchens today. We will write about meals at restaurants both today and a long time ago -- in the next week we will put up posts about a dinner at Bakersfield's Noriega Hotel last month and a dinner at San Francisco at Jack's in the summer of 1965.

We have some biases. We are not foodies although we respect young cooks who have the imagination, skill and vision to try something new, even radical, if they respect their ingredients and our taste buds. We like and revere the ethnic traditions of California. We enjoy good restaurants like Campanile, but we also like red check table cloth Italoamerican family places and family run Mexican places that remember their roots in Jalisco or Sonora.

The three of us went College near San Francisco in the early 1960's and still have golden memories of the time, when San Francisco still had a strong local flavor and there were wonderful restaurants across the spectrum from great restaurants like Paoli's, Jack's, the original Trader Vic's in Emeryville to the cheap homey places in North Beach like the New Piza, La Pantera, the San Remo. All of them are only memories.

Your comments and your take and your memories are welcome.

Shopping in LA

Where I shop in Los Angeles and why.

For me, grocery shopping is a bit of hobby or at least a challenge, in addition to being a necessary errand and often a chore. In this post I will outline the places where I often shop and a few others that I visit from time to time, especially when I’m looking for ethnic or out of the ordinary food and ingredients.

Von’s (as Safeway stores are known in Southern California) is my main local supermarket. I live in an old neighborhood between downtown LA and Hollywood. I shop a Von’s once a week. At least at my local Von’s I like the meat department and appreciate the quality of their “house” brand products, and I commend their organic “O” brand to you, especially the catsup which is very good with a zippy tang and fresh tomato taste. While there is a sameness to all the Von’s/Safeways there is a real variance between individual stores, for example, my regular market gets at best a C+ for its produce and a B- for its in store bakery. There is one Von’s store that is far above the rest in service, wide selection and quality. That is the Montecito branch in that very special suburb of Santa Barbara. I’ll write about that one in a separate post.

Trader Joe’s is a place I go primarily for dairy products and light shopping, averaging not quite once a week. TJ’s has very good prices on dairy and bakery items and has a great selection of frozen fish.

On a monthly cycle I hit Costco for paper goods, pet food and pantry staples like pasta and canned goods. Then I also recommend Smart & Final for some meat items, restaurant grade coffee, especially high quality Peerless Coffee from Oakland, imported vinegar's and condiments, restaurant brand salad dressings, cleaning goods and occasionally bread. The gallon cans of chili, tomatoes, gravy, beans and pickles come in handy if you are having a barbecue or a big dinner.

When I want a lot of fresh produce I shop, two maybe three times a month at my local Jon’s Market, part of an Armenian owned chain with a very good large produce section and a wild selection of ethnic food: Armenian & Middle Eastern, Latino, and Eastern European items. They also have a particularly well selected and large Deli section with fifty kinds of ham, sausages and cold cuts, a lot of smoked fish and ethnic dairy items including Moskowskaya Smetana -- a Russian Sour cream that is to American Sour Cream like turkish coffee is to a watery vending machine cup of joe. They now carry Bobak’s traditional Polish sausages and cured meats from Chicago. The veal sausages are a revelation in how rich and subtle sausages can be when made when made with care and pride. Polish immigrant friends assure me Bobak’s products are authentic and z’dobsha -- it’s good. They also tell me that in Chicago they still make many traditional things that haven’t been seen in Poland since WW II. This is not surprising when you consider that more Poles live in Chicago than in Warsaw.

At least once a month or more I also shop at one of the two former Mayfair Markets, long been part of the Gelson’s chain, but in Hollywood they long maintained their original name. Gelsons is a high end market chain, like Raley’s in the Sacramento area. The Silver Lake store has a spectacular if expensive produce section while the Franklin Avenue Branch has a better Deli take out & Bakery section and a wider variety of up scale frozen items including frozen meat from wild game and some very special desserts. The store on Franklin Avenue is always full of faces you see at night on your TV set. Some other places I shop on an irregular basis are very ethnic stores like the Latino Vallarta Markets which have a very good panderia (Latino Bakery) and in summer super prices on a huge selection of local and tropical fresh fruit.

For Chinese and Vietnamese products of all kinds I have been going to 99 Lucky Ranch Markets. My favorite today is on Atlantic Blvd. in Monterey Park, but they have branches all over southern California. Started by a Vietnamese Chinese family that ran markets in Cholon, the Chinatown of Saigon, they came as boat people in the 1970’s and began with a small market on the edge of LA’s Chinatown. In addition to a large produce department with a huge selection of Asian fruits and vegetables, they have a large collection of tanks with many kinds of live fish and shell fish including lobsters, crabs, carp, catfish and often Striped Bass, a great tasting fish otherwise only available if you have a lucky day fishing in the San Juaquin Delta. It is known as “Rock Fish” in the Chesapeake Bay and a specialty of fine restaurants in Washington and Baltimore.

Other places I like are Filipino bakeries that make traditional products like Pan Espanol and the island nation’s specialty Pan Sal -- it is a chewy bun somewhere between a Mexican Bolio and a very big American Biscuit. They are sold hot by the dozen and locals wait for them. They also make buttery cinnamon pull apart “Monkey Bread” and custard and pineapple tarts that are a nice treat.

Three or four times a year I will drive down to the Alpine Market in Torrance which is a gold mine for German & Central European meats, sausages, cheeses, breads, Dutch, German and Norwegian packed herring and pickles. It also carries Scandinavian, Polish, Czech, Hungarian, Balkan and Baltic meat, cheese, bread, pickles, beers and schnapps, aquavit, vodka and many fruit and herbal liqueurs . The market has a very good if spartan lunch cafeteria with wide variety of “Old Country” dishes and sandwiches at very fair prices: Weisswurst with sauerkraut and german potato salad, big roll mop herrings, fat juicy knockwurst, spicy paprika flavored hungarian sausages and very good liverwurst on rye. You get a choice of yellow American mustard or a sharp European brown mustard with real zip.

Porto's Bakeries in Glendale and Burbank are a bit of old Havana, with great Cuban sandwiches. My favorite is Ropa Vieja -- a tangy Cuban take on Beef Pot Roast on half a loaf of Cuban bread. They serve Cubanos, Medianoches and other traditional Cuban sandwiches and a huge selection of cakes and pastries, many of them with exotic tropical fruit charlotte or pudding fillings. They have “Cubanos” -- a wide circle of puff pastry with a layer of cream cheese and intense guava preserves in the middle, the traditional Cuban Breakfast special eaten with strong coffee. They also make wonderful ham and potato croquettes and serve them with plantain chips.

In my neighborhood is a small Mom & Pop Japanese Market called Fuji-ya that carries Japanese items and beautiful Japanese cuts of beef and pork plus some Hawaiian products including Maui Onion pickles and brewed in Hawaii Aloha Soyu and their line of their low salt and teriyaki sauces and marinades.

For Indian cooking there is India Sweets and Spices, a chain with stores in Los Feliz and across West Los Angeles and the South Bay. They carry a huge selection of Indian spices and food items and most have a cafeteria serving simple vegetarian food at modest prices. My Hindu friends tell me it like a second rate Indian Railway station buffet, but they all go there for a authentic cheap lunch. For me, their Tikka, a potato and onion pancake is a standout. I also like their lentil or bean soups (Dal), curry chickpeas & various vegetable stews especially their curried cauliflower. Indian sweets are for me hit or miss, you will like some of them and not others depending on your own taste. They also make something that is like an Indian take on a Chili Relleno, only hotter than the Mexican one.

Finally, I will tell you about a place that is worth a visit. Super King Market on San Fernando Road just south of the 2 Freeway and the Glendale city line. They also have markets in Altadena and Anaheim. This is “diversity central” and far and away the most multiethnic multicultural food store I have ever seen. It serves Gringos and Latinos, Chinese and Armenians, Vietnamese and Pakistanis, West Indians and East Africans, Koreans, Filipinos and Eastern Europeans. Everybody shops here -- from right off the boat immigrants to proper “ladies who lunch” from very affluent La Canada-Frintridge a few miles up the 2 Freeway. The produce department is huge and covers everything from topical fruits and vegetables like plantains and yuccas, all sorts of citrus including varieties I’ve never see before like sweet lemons and three kinds of limes.

The cooking oil section carried various grades of olive oil from France, Italy, Spain, Greece, Turkey and Lebanon. I think they also had some from Argentina too. The pickle section had jars of cucumber and other vegetable pickles from the USA, Canada, Mexico, Germany, Poland, Russia, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Turkey, Lebanon, Israel, Iran and India. These include the red pickled turnips that come with falafel, okra, green tomatoes, peppers of all sorts including the long “pencil” peppers form Turkey and short very hot Turkish “Fefferoni.” They also carry Balkan Ajar which is puree of peppers used in cooking. It comes mild or spicy.

The deli and meat section is huge and as wide ranging as the rest of the store. Domestic and imported cheese, Bulgarian Sheep milk Feta, Polish Cheeses, Swiss and Dutch cheese, English and Irish cheeses, hams from France (the Parisian Jambon is ethereal in its subtle perfection), Poland, Romania, Hungary, Spain, Italy and domestic ones. Also cold cuts ranging from twenty or more kinds of salami, baloney's, mortadella's, head cheese and many once common but rarely seen American items like German style midwestern hard salami and old fashioned veal and pork “Olive & Pimento” loaf. This was a favorite of my father and I had not seen it in a long time. I bought a sliced pound and my daughter liked it, “It’s like an American mortadella.” She had never see or eaten it before.

They also carry Mexican and other Latino meats and sausages. One thing to remember is every Iberian region and Latin American Republic makes its own unique kind of chorizo. Basque or what the Cubans call Bilbao Chorizo is a kin to Portuguese Linguiça while Argentine chorizo is very much like semi spicy Italian sausage. Mexican Chorizo is a spicy soft sausage that makes a great breakfast of Huevos con chorizo. In Mexico little hard chorizos are common but for some reason almost never seen here anymore. In Central America they make chorizos that are more like American pork sausage than the Mexican variety. Morcella is a hardy blood sausage like French Boudim Noir or English and Irish “Black Pudding.” The Argentine blood sausage like much Argentine food is close to an Italian original with pine nuts and raisins.

In the fresh meat department Super King has all the usual cuts of meat plus “butcher’s offal” including tripe, liver, kidneys, the tongues of various animals, beef shanks, lamb shanks, fresh hams and picnic hams, and ground beef, pork, lamb and mutton. Mutton is available, either mature sheep or goat and is popular with Mexicans and with Indians and Pakistani’s for Mexican Birria (goat stew) or curries of every kind.

The freezer cases are as eclectic as the rest of the store with frozen Pirogi’s and gyoza, peleminy, ravioli alongside meat cheese and fruit blintzes. The fruit and vegetable selections that include many varieties rarely seen in American supermarkets. It is worth a visit, if you have patience and avoid the weekends when the place is thronged.

Super King is worth a trip and I can guarantee you will find things you have never seen before, a lot of stuff you will not like, like sheep and pig heads, and a lot of things you will love. A deli counter with over two dozen kinds of ham and the same number of salami’s is worth a close look.

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