Full Belly Files | Bear Down for Burrito Week!

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Unless you haven’t seen yesterday’s Santa Barbara Independent or looked at Independent.com recently, you’re well aware that we are now in the throes of our fourth annual Burrito Week which would explain those people happily stuffing their faces all over town. Launched back in the lingering pandemic daze of 2021 — and built on the popular success of our Burger Week, which we started four years before that — the promotion enlists participating restaurants to serve burritos for just $8 a piece, quite a deal in an era where some tortilla-wrapped meals charge twice that much.

The restaurants — some of which regularly serve Mexican cuisine or have at least a burrito on the menu; others don’t at all — pay to take part, so we have nothing to do with choosing which restaurants are involved, a pesky misconception. (You’re welcome to encourage your favorite burrito maker to join next year, of course.)

The participants then announce a special burrito for the week, which ends on Wednesday, September 25. Some stick to their standard burrito, making the reduced price the main draw, while others go more creative, especially those that don’t usually use tortillas in the first place. (We don’t impose any rules on what makes a burrito, by the way.)

A few places are even serving two completely different burritos — this year, that’s Bluewater Grill, Home Plate Grill, and Taqueria La Unica — whereas others offer multiple versions based on which protein or vegetable you choose (Los Arroyos, Los Agaves, Super Cucas, Maíz Picante, and Crushcakes). If you compound the math, we’re in the ballpark of 28 different burritos from the 18 restaurants.

That’s four burritos per day. Anyone up for a challenge?!?!?

I’ve been the editor-in-charge of our Burger and Burrito Weeks since we started these special food issues in 2017. The first two iterations of Burger Week were learning experiences, mainly lessons in what not to do, such as publishing stories about restaurants not involved in the paid promotion. Even though the stories were solid pieces of reporting and writing, they just led to confusion and didn’t really serve either our readers or our advertisers well.

So for Burger Week 2019, I worked with the sales and promotions team to develop a strategy that would promote the participating restaurants while retaining our editorial team’s original reporting and insights. To do so, the restaurants give us a description of their special creation and agree to serve it to our team far in advance. Then I send out writers to each restaurant to try the burger/burrito for free, take some photos, and then write a short piece about it and the restaurant.

Though our iPhone photos could probably still use some work, we’re still using that same protocol today for both burgers and burritos, and it’s become a pretty well oiled eating machine. The restaurants, many of which are repeat Week-sters, understand the process, and our writers get it too. This year, only three of the 18 write-ups came in post-deadline — that may be a record —  and all had valid excuses.

Once we publish the Burrito Week guide, how it goes down at each establishment is mostly out of our hands. We’ve heard of places occasionally running out of ingredients, or changing hours midweek, or otherwise having trouble keeping up with the flow. Thankfully, those instances are usually rare, and we mostly hear great feedback from both satisfied eaters and appreciative restaurateurs who enjoy the bump in attention.  

This year, my self-assigned preview burritos were at Home Plate Grill and Yellow Belly Tap & Restaurant. Home Plate is serving two burritos — the breakfast-minded Train Wreck and the fork-and-knife-need Chili Colorado Mojado — while Yellow Belly is showcasing fried chicken again in the BA-GAWK like they did with last year’s Mother Clucker. All three burritos are satisfying to both palate and gullet, and for different reasons. You can read my report on the specifics of each here.

What I didn’t have enough space to write about in those blurbs is that both Home Plate and Yellow Belly are camera-ready examples of a proud neighborhood joint — reflective of their locales, easygoing in their approach, and serving friendly, fulfilling food. Home Plate is humble, casual, and ready to serve high school students, much like the El Encanto Heights suburbia that surrounds it.

Yellow Belly, meanwhile, sports a slightly more hip and urban vibe with extra emphasis on the drinks. That fits with the people who live and work in that upper De la Vina zone, a business corridor extending up into State Street that my friends and I have been trying to name “The Wishbone” since many of us lived there years ago.

Thanks to my visit, I learned that Yellow Belly is actually celebrating their 10-year anniversary next month, and are planning parties on October 4 and 5. Said co-owner Alex Noormand, “We are going to celebrate with drink specials, free gifts, bands, and a whole lot of cheer.” Stay tuned for details.

This week’s reporting also reminded me that Yellow Belly and Home Plate are perfect examples of places that you may occasionally forget exist because of how comfortably nestled they are into their immediate communities. That’s where Burrito Week comes in, reminding many of us of the places we love, while enticing us to visit other spots where we’ve yet to become acquainted.

Recent Food & Drink Ramblings

I wore my pith helmet — found very long ago on the Glen Annie Golf Course — to the Sideways 20th anniversary dinner at Hitching Post 2 in honor of the Central Coast’s pith-pioneer Frank Ostini. It was a hit, but not as much as the bevy of wines, bites, and stories that Ostini, Gray Hartley, and company served that night. Also in the house, among others, were the Foxen boys, Billy Wathen and Dick Dore, as well as Richard Sanford, in attendance with his daughter, the artist Blakeney Sanford.

The wine country geologist, podcaster, and new mom Brenna Quigley is back in town, and invited a small gathering of wine pros to Bibi Ji so she could practice a talk she is about to give to a conference in New Zealand. That meant a bunch of Kiwi chardonnay to taste, lots of talk of faults and soils, some happy hour drinks across the street at The Good Lion, and then dinner back at Bibi Ji. I helped Brenna out quite a bit with her first podcast season of Roadside Terroir, which you can check out here. A great night, with hopefully more to come.

I’m overdue for writing a proper feature on The Dutch Garden since it reopened almost two years ago, but I keep eating and drinking there whenever possible. Everyone appreciates how much they kept the classic German menu much the same as it was for decades, albeit with updated, fresher ingredients. I’ve been constantly impressed by the specials, which last week included housemade wild boar sausage with pasilla chile and cheese and an heirloom tomato-basil bisque. The refreshing cucumber salad called gurkensalat is a sneaky standout.

[Click to enlarge] From left: Beer-braised mussels at S.B. Fish Market Café; Silvers handroll for $20 at Creaminal block party.

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The Santa Barbara Fish Market Café in Goleta now has a happy hour. I was there on Monday, and ordered three items: the reduced price Caesar salad (one of the better salads in town), the crispy rice, spicy tuna treats, and the beer-braised mussels. All are highly suggested.

Creaminal Ice Cream hosted a block party in the parking lot of Your Choice Thai on Saturday. There were carnival games, on-site screenprinting by Mind Garden for t-shirts and hats, a couple photo shoot options, a DJ Javier merch booth, a big screen showing kids movies, and a giant Elmo rolling around. But the main draw was certainly the food: sticky chicken wings, banh mi, Korean sushi, fresh juices, and more from Your Choice; crazy creative ice cream by Creaminal; and bluefin handrolls by Silvers Omakase. We almost forgot there was no booze for sale.

When I did this story on Arizona tasting rooms, the first person I spoke to was T. Scott Stephens, a sommelier and co-owner of Beckett’s Table in Phoenix. He was in town with his wife/business partner Katie Stephens for his birthday on Sunday, drawn to town for the Sturgill Simpson show at the Santa Barbara Bowl. I met up with them on Tuesday to shake hands in person and talk wine over some sips at Frequency Wine Company, whose patio is one of the better places to taste in the city right now. Owner Zac Wasserman rolled up while we were tasting and talked a bit of harvest news. Most echoed what I’ve been hearing — lighter crop, high quality — but some of Zac’s grapes were near the frontlines of the Lake Fire. Smoke taint is a very real concern for him and many others in that area right now. Expect to hear more soon.

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From Our Table

Here are some stories you may have missed:

• I was sad to see what appears to have been a very scary mental health emergency up at Sunstone Winery over the weekend, when Frederick Miles Rice barricaded himself in the villa with threats of suicide. I’ve known his parents Bion and Anna Rice for two decades, as they were part of the family that founded and owned Sunstone before it was sold a few years back. I’ve also stayed in that villa a couple times myself, nights that became slightly raucous stories for another time. I was happy to see the issue ended without anyone being seriously hurt, though the family’s journey to healing is just beginning, of course.
• Soul Bites on State Street needs serious cash to survive, reports Christina McDermott.
• Katy Perry is getting down with her own McConnell’s Ice Cream flavor, reveals Leslie Dinaberg.