It’s Time to Channel Julia Child

This edition of Full Belly Files was originally emailed to subscribers on May 3, 2024. To receive Matt Kettmann’s food newsletter in your inbox each Friday, sign up at independent.com/newsletters.

Back in 2019, I was asked to be on the advisory board for a Santa Barbara–based offshoot of the Julia Child Foundation for Gastronomy and the Culinary Arts. (Yes, that’s as much of a mouthful as her food was.) We decided to call ourselves the Santa Barbara Culinary Experience, and set about planning what was going to be one of the most epic and eclectic food and drink events in memory during the middle of March 2020. (Among other highlights, I was especially proud of the wine programming that I helped to develop, including pinot noir through the ages and charcuterie paired with cool-climate syrah.)

But we all know what happened next. COVID forced us to cancel the event, the first of many cancellations to come.  

In the still-pandemic daze of 2021, we hosted a virtual event around my Vines & Vision book about Santa Barbara County winemakers, and then came back to life in 2022, specifically branding the weeklong series of events as the Taste of Santa Barbara. In that year and last, we co-hosted classes with A to Z Cooking School, led farm tours, crafted special dinners, put on screenings of Julia Child shows, and threw wine festivals at the Presidio.

My family enjoyed the Paperboy x The Lark brunch last Sunday, where we met Paperboy founder, and Lark alum, Ryan Harms. A really nice guy, and the food and cocktails were tasty.

That formula is again in play for Taste of Santa Barbara 2024, and you’d better jump on the ticket train if you haven’t already, as many of the events are already selling out. But as I wrote this one Tuesday night, there were still plenty of tickets for a few of the smaller classes and meals, including the hyperlocal vegetarian event with Emma West from Satellite S.B., brunch at The Lark, and tours of The Cultured Abalone, Wanderment Farms, and Las Cumbres Ranch.

The big-tent events this year include the wine festival at the Presidio on Saturday, May 18, where the list of producers continues to grow; I’ll be running a few panels during that one for those seeking a bit of education with their imbibing. And that night is the Lights, Camera, Julia! screening at the Metro 4, where members of the team who produced the MAX series Julia  — which I loved, personally — will regale the crowd with memories of that experience.

The new and most ambitious course for Taste of Santa Barbara, however, is the Friday-night Soiree at the Casa de la Guerra. A small curated gathering of chefs, including Massimo Falsini from Caruso’s, Alex Bollinger from El Encanto, Sergei Simonov of Loquita, Justin West of Market Forager, and Sandra Adu Zelli of Gipsy Hill Bakery, will be preparing special dishes for attendees. Cutler’s Artisan Spirits will be making cocktails, and a wide variety of wines will be provided by the Santa Barbara Vintners, including stalwarts like Star Lane and Tyler and newcomers like MarBeso. The tickets are a bit steep at $200+, but the team is doing all possible to ensure it will be money well spent.

Here’s a full slate of events.

Wine Week
Here’s your reminder to go snag some $10 glasses of wine at more than a dozen establishments around town celebrating our second annual Santa Barbara Wine Week. I wrote about it in last week’s newsletter, and can now direct you to the larger feature I wrote for the issue.

It’s about Chris Hammell, the longtime manager of Bien Nacido Vineyard, and the fact that he’s departing this fall after almost 25 years at the helm of that historic property. In reporting the story, I realized that his career arc reflects much of the same path for Santa Barbara County’s wine industry. After years of steady growth, many vintners are having to ask hard questions about what the future holds.

Mexico City
I’m on the third day of a five-day blast through Mexico City, the destination for my annual trip with friends from elementary, high school, and college. No doubt I am posting photos as you read this. Check my Instagram here.

Recent Bites & Pours
Some highlights of the past couple weeks:

• Meeting with Chef Travis Watson of the Hotel Californian. He’s got a pretty amazing life story and is making some serious food down there. He’s hiring some new talent and will be crafting some fresh menus, and then I’ll write a profile. In the meantime, he whipped up some mean scallops in pea puree and steak in a truffle reduction.

• I hosted two panels on Sta. Rita Hills chardonnay and pinot noir with Matt Dees of The Hilt, Matt Brady of SAMsARA, Sashi Moorman of Domaine De la Côte, Chad Melville of Melville, and Don Schroeder of Sea Smoke during the Chaine des Rotisseurs’ Mondiale weekend at the Bacara.
• I dove deep into a boiling hot pot of lamb, fish balls, lotus root, and other assorted items (some known, most unknown) at Uniboil in Old Town Goleta. I was meeting with Jon May, who’s launching a higher-end wine tour business called Coastal Vines Luxury Tours.

From Our Table

Here are some stories you may have missed:

• George Yatchisin headed out to the high desert to get a taste of the Cuyama Buckhorn.
• George also wrote about The Black Sheep’s tenth anniversary tasting menu.  
• Leslie Dinaberg lunched at San Ysidro Ranch.
• And Riley Burke gets the intel on the fourth annual Buellton Brew Fest, which is on May 4.