Ecology, Elixirs, and Six Courses of Uni

When I first tried uni, the pricey bite went all too quick. It made the night’s not-inexpensive wine — much more easily plucked from its terranean cellar than the urchin from its ocean floor — seem everlasting by comparison. But Kimpton Canary’s Finch & Fork turned the tables the other night, when approachable Santa Barbara County wines and fresh, locally inspired cocktails were paired with course after course of salty, creamy Santa Barbara uni.

This isn’t a routine thing — for me or the restaurant. Welcome to National Seafood Month in Santa Barbara. As a participating restaurant, last week Finch & Fork served six courses of what can only be called a veritable uni feast. Uni and tuna poke with barrel-aged shoyu and fresh seaweed — check. Uni pasta accented by parmesan, furikake and bottarga, or cured tuna roe — you got it. Uni shortbread with apricot marmalade? Here’s something for the road, tucked into a little branded box. The kicker? Just one dish will go public at a time.

This isn’t some big, oceanic ostentation, though. In honor of National Seafood Month, throughout October, Finch & Fork is donating 10 percent of sales of their uni pasta special to the Surfrider Foundation (surfrider.org), a nonprofit dedicated to protecting and preserving the waters these critters call home. And, in a reversal of the general story surrounding seafood consumption, eating the uni of purple sea urchin — the echinoderm gobbling up our kelp forests — is a sustainable act, encouraged by marine biologists. And, of course, chefs.

A native of Camden, Maine, Finch & Fork Executive Chef Nathan Lingle is familiar with purple urchin — he grew up finding the spiny, alien-looking orbs under rocks and innocuously stacking them atop one another for fun. “It wasn’t until I was an exchange student in Japan that I had urchin for the first time, and went, ‘Wait, people are eating this stuff?’” he laughed. An urchin diver himself, in recent years, Lingle has also discovered the benefits of harder-to-find, often meatier red urchin, acknowledging, “It takes some work, but it’s great.” Lingle is now doing his part to spread that gospel, as the night would attest.

Course after inventive course showcased the diversity and sui generis flavor and textural combo of uni. The meal featured everything from brown-butter toast with caviar — for me, the bite of the night: crunchy, moist and delightfully Maillardic — to risotto with prime New York strip, to even an uni panna cotta accented by cara cara orange and citrus caramel corn. Local sparkling, white, and red wines were pitch-perfect pairings, with the Ventura prickly-pear-brandy-based “Down with OPP” cocktail and even a local amaro bookending the beverage experience.

Finch & Fork will be extending their uni specials to benefit Surfrider Foundation through November and maybe even December, so there’s still time to stop by, eat up, and wash it down with a cocktail or local wine. Considering November’s special will be the brown-butter toast, maybe budget for multiple trips.

Finch & Fork, Kimpton Canary Hotel, 31 W. Carrillo St., (805) 884-0300, finchandforkrestaurant.com