16 minute read
Edible Notables
Edible Notables Ristorante Avanti
A Santa Cruz institution survives its makeover
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By April M. Short
“Are you going to keep all the old plates and the pots?”
Such was the trepidation of customers who’d come to view Ristorante Avanti as something of an extension of their own dining rooms that owners Paul Geise and his wife Cindy were peppered with questions like this when they announced their decision to move the nearly 25-year-old Italian eatery to a fancier space just one block down Mission Street.
Paul told them, “No.”
“And they had this look on their faces that they didn’t quite understand why not, but as a human you have to keep growing,” Paul says. He points out that he and Cindy still own the old location, complete with the original pots and plates, but it has been reincarnated as Pizzeria Avanti, which offers creative, organic pizza and the old informal atmosphere.
Still, customers were relieved to get their Ristorante Avanti back.
“When we did move and re-open, I mean, I never had so many hugs in my life,” he says. “It really gives you a sense of community or more like family. We become an extended family to all these other families that come here to celebrate birthdays and holidays.”
The original restaurant sat in a small strip mall on Santa Cruz’s West Side, which the Geises converted from an old deli in 1987. The dining room—decorated with the aforementioned pots and dishes— was pleasantly cozy and clamorous, but its casual atmosphere contrasted with the elegance and simplicity of Avanti’s seasonally shifting menu.
“I wanted to bring the interior up to the level of the food,” Paul explains.
So the Geises added a fancy cocktail menu, full bar and a more elegant interior.
“Before it was sometimes so old fashioned, it felt like you were eating at your grandmother’s,” Paul says with a laugh.
Paul had lived in Italy as a child, and he opened Ristorante Avanti in part to provide an alternative to typical1980s Italian restaurant fare in America, which was limited to tomato-heavy pastas from Southern Italy. Remembering the risottos, polentas and seafood his mother and grandmother cooked from scratch, Paul wanted to redefine Italian food in Santa Cruz with fresh, wholesome recipes.
From the start—before organic was trendy—he and Cindy realized the importance of buying and cooking with locally cultivated, simple, and chemical-free ingredients. Today, they also buy pastured whole animals as much as possible for their meats and are big supporters of local farms.
“To me, every purchasing decision you make in your home or business is a political decision,” Paul says. “[We’re] trying to make the smallest possible impact on the earth by avoiding chemicals and by not buying stuff from China that has to be shipped all the way here. It’s still a real challenge and it’s more expensive, but for me it’s about doing the right thing.”
The result of the Geises’ efforts is a beloved local institution complete with regulars, a long-term staff and dedicated local partners.
“It’s fun to see farmers in here,” says Paul. “Billy Rodoni [of Rodoni Farms], who we get all of our Brussels sprouts from, he’ll come in here and get a Brussels sprouts salad. If your family has been growing Brussels sprouts for generations and you still come here and get Brussels sprouts, I think that’s a real compliment.”
The evening I visited the new Ristorante Avanti, it retained its familial vibe amidst chic fittings. Wooden tables, the tops of which are reclaimed redwood from Robert Mondavi wine tanks, were placed a spacious three to four feet apart, booths lined the walls and an island bar, also made from reclaimed redwood, stood in the center. A 12-or-so person party enjoyed the secluded outdoor patio, which kept their rambunctious conversations from disturbing the indoor guests.
I thought of Billy Rodoni while I munched a delicious Brussels sprouts salad, and imagined the beets of my red beet ravioli sleeping in a nearby field just hours prior.
The restaurant has changed, but its heart, its mission and its delicious food have been preserved.
April M. Short is a lifelong storyteller and award-winning journalist whose work is dedicated to the issues affecting Santa Cruz—her home of six years—and the surrounding region.
Ristorante Avanti • 1917 Mission St., Santa Cruz 831.427.0135 • ristoranteavanti.com
Edible Notables DIY GOES PRO
A new law brings cottage foods to market, with some debate
By April M. Short
Miranda and Joe Schirmer of Santa Cruz’s family-owned Dirty Girl Produce organic farm have long been able to sell at farmers’ markets the tomatoes that their friends at Happy Girl Kitchen Co. can for them. Yet, because of the high cost of commercial kitchen space and complying with state regulations, they haven’t been able to sell Miranda Schirmer’s homemade strawberry jam.
That’s all changing. Thanks to the new California Homemade Food Act (AB 1616), which takes effect this winter, it will now be legal for the Schirmers and other home food artisans to prepare and sell certain non-potentially hazardous food products—jams, nuts, churros, breads and other goods that don’t involve cream or meat ingredients—to the local public.
“This enables our business to move in a direction we wouldn’t have been able to go: preserving what we’re growing, without having to take on a huge amount of risk,” says Miranda, who is excited to make use of the new law. “It’s a really practical law, and I think a lot of people are going to benefit.”
Miranda also believes the growth of new small-scale producers will be good for the environment and the community.
“This is giving the chance to microenterprises to pop up that otherwise wouldn’t,” she says. “And it can also be good for the price of food. If people don’t have to rent commercial space, they could charge a little bit less, and it might make their products more affordable.”
Tabitha Stroup, owner of Friend In Cheeses Jam Co. in Santa Cruz, is not so enthusiastic. Stroup has been a professional cook for two decades and is in her second official year of operation. Her gross sales are just over the limit required in order to benefit from the Homemade Food Act ($35,000 in the first year of operation, $50,000 two years after that).
While she says she admires the philosophy behind the act, she is wary of voicing full support. In her eyes, the new law could mean public health risks due to watered down regulations. She notes that she is required to undergo a yearly inspection for her commercial kitchen. By contrast, the law leaves whether to inspect home producers annually up to local heath departments, and does not require even an initial inspection of home producers that only sell direct to consumers, rather than through stores and other indirect outlets.
“There are many concerns regarding sanitation. In a home kitchen we behave in another manner than the professionalism of a commercial kitchen,” she says, describing herself cooking at home in her slippers, beer in one hand, blaring Jane’s Addiction and watching the family cat scuttle past.
“I go into a different mindset than when I’m in my professional kitchen with my three-door refrigerator, three sinks and drain in the middle of the floor,” she says.
“This is a great start and the idea is good, I just think the wording is watered down and needs some tweaking,” Stroup says.
Christina Oatfield, who worked with the Sustainable Economies Law Center to help the bill win passage, says it offers plenty of safety mechanisms.
The legislation requires home food producers to complete a course designed by California’s health department specifically for cottage food enterprises. Home producers will also have to label their goods as made in a home kitchen, and register with local health departments. And the bill’s writers consulted county and state environmental health officials throughout the entire year-and-a-half legislative process, and revised the bill numerous times in accordance with health officials’ input.
What’s more, some 30 other states already allow sales of homeproduced foods through their own cottage food laws.
“I think a lot of people were surprised that California was so late to adopt one of these laws, given how much activity there is going on here to stimulate local food economies,” Oatfield says. “I know consumers are excited for the additional options available to them—more small batches, more local food options and more opportunities to support local food producers in their communities. It’s definitely a reflection of this shifting attitude about how our food is produced in this state.”
April M. Short is a lifelong storyteller and award-winning journalist whose work is dedicated to the issues affecting Santa Cruz—her home of six years—and the surrounding region.
For more information on the California Homemade Food Act, go to www.theselc.org.
Edible Notables La Balena
A California restaurant with a Tuscan heart
By Camilla M. Mann Photography by Geneva Liimatta
Carmel’s budding community of young, creative and sustainabilityminded restaurateurs has just expanded with the addition of Anna and Emanuele Bartolini and their La Balena, an informal nod to Northern Italy on Junipero Street between Fifth and Sixth.
The Bartolinis had been tossing around the idea of opening a restaurant for more than a decade. Emanuele’s grandparents, who were originally from Sardinia, had a restaurant in Florence years ago, and after emigrating from Italy to New York, Emanuele started work in the city’s restaurant world before he even knew English. By the time he left New York to move to Carmel, he was working as a senior manager at Del Posto, which is owned jointly by Mario Batali and Lidia and Joseph Bastianich and is one of the most highly regarded Italian restaurants in New York. In Carmel, he was most recently a general manager at Cantinetta Luca and helped open Salumeria Luca.
For Anna, a designer, opening La Balena—and getting to know the local farmers and other purveyors who will become a part of it— feeds a passion for supporting young people who farm and care about food the way that she does.
Anna and Emanuele strive to uphold the idea that food and wine taste better when served near where they are grown and when produced with ethical standards.
La Balena’s menu will be simple, seasonal and sourced from local organic suppliers as much as possible while remaining faithful to true Italian—and particularly Tuscan—cuisine.
The restaurant will have two chefs. Chef Salvatore Panzuto— who obtained a culinary degree from Naples’ Instituto Professionale Alberghiero di Stato—will prepare traditional, rustic food with the spirit of a classic Italian enoteca, or wine bar.
La Balena’s other chef will be Brad Briske, who is best known in the area for his turns as chef at Main Street Garden and Gabriella Café in Santa Cruz County as well as his farm-to-table meals. Briske, who most recently was hired by Carmel’s Casanova to take over their charcuterie program, will bring to La Balena his deep relationships with local organic farms and his creative style in cooking their bounty. Briske and the Bartolinis first met at Live Earth Farm in October, when Briske cooked a sensational dinner for Edible Monterey Bay’s 1st anniversary.
As this issue of Edible Monterey Bay went to press, the Bartolinis were planning for a late November opening and still working on the restaurant’s interior. But already, the former location of the Carmel Food Co. was showing plenty of character—and was reflecting the style and interests of its owners.
In evidence of the Bartolinis’ intent to run their business in as sustainable a manner as possible, the tables in the main dining room are made from reclaimed tropical hardwoods that were salvaged from trans-Pacific shipping crates. The cushioned wooden bench seating came from the local Habitat for Humanity store; the Bartolinis have refinished and re-upholstered them in two shades of coffee—one in the color of espresso and the other, caffè latte.
Hand-marbled papers, vintage postcards and posters, and some artwork that they collected during their time in Florence and its environs lend an authentic air to the space.
One of the pieces is the whale’s tail seen in the couple’s logo, which is by Florentine artist, Maurizio Bomberini. The restaurant’s name was inspired partly by the work, and partly by Emanuele’s deep passion for whale conservation.
Opening the restaurant and settling in Carmel are something of a homecoming for Anna, who as a child would travel from her home in Georgia to visit her grandmother’s first cousin, a Carmel resident, and could only dream of one day living here.
Camilla Mann is a food writer, photographer, adventurer and passionate cook based in Monterey.
La Balena • Junipero Street between Fifth and Sixth avenues, Carmel • 831.250.6295 • www.labalenacarmel.com.
Edible Notables The Fault Line
Delicious hospitality and a Donner Party ghost
By Lisa Crawford Watson
You can find it by wandering down Franklin Street until the path runs out of pavement and disappears into acres of growing fields, where row upon variegated row extend to the distant foothills, which seem to reach right up to God. You also can ask the folks in town how to get to San Juan Bautista’s Fault Line Restaurant and Gazebo, and they’ll point you toward “Edie’s place.” But even the best directions don’t guarantee you’ll be invited in for dinner.
The place, which had previously served Italian and German fare, was already named for its location when Edie Duncan bought the house, built by Donner Party survivors Patrick and Margaret Breen. Duncan, who was born in Poland and raised in Germany, had immigrated to San Francisco, ultimately settling in Santa Cruz. But a series of life changes and losses had sent her in search of a renewed sense of faith and a different point of view. She found both in the cottage, which is right next door to the Mission San Juan Bautista, and rests on the gap between the Pacific and North American plates, otherwise known as the San Andreas Fault.
“Mr. Patrick Breen lived in the corner of the living room for a long time,” says Duncan. “I could always tell where his ghost had been, by the shift in a spoon at the table or some other change in the room. But lately he seems to have departed.”
It wasn’t Duncan’s original plan to reopen the restaurant; her intention was just to live in the cottage. But then the earthquake of ’89 took down her fireplace and rearranged her life. “I was preparing food for the carpenters who were repairing the damage,” says Duncan, “when some people wandered in and asked if I was serving lunch. So, I said, ‘Sit down.’ After I thanked them for coming, they said, ‘This isn’t a restaurant? Well you need to open one; the food was really good.’ After that it kind of got out of hand.”
Duncan installed a polished-wood bar in the entry and shingled the walls—herself. She added a restroom and set up a workhorse of a kitchen, with eight gas burners, a Wolf grill and a wall of seriously seasoned pots and pans. Some 22 years later, she continues to cook, clean and serve by herself, as if hosting a few personal friends. By now, most customers are. And although she has served as many as 120 guests in one evening, she now sets six tables across the living room and hopes to serve just one or two.
“People ask when I’m open,” says Duncan, “and I tell them, ‘Whenever I feel like it.’ I only take reservations, and I don’t do kids, credit cards or coffee. Nobody wants coffee by someone who doesn’t
drink it. If they need coffee, I send them down the street to Vertigo Coffee.”
Dmitri Fridman, who owns Vertigo, recently celebrated his mother’s birthday at The Fault Line. “It is a unique experience you cannot find elsewhere,” he says. “Edie is such a great cook and makes her guests feel like they are dining in a private home. Anyone looking for a little adventure for the evening will find it there. She serves a wonderful meal in a pleasant atmosphere, which has a cool collection of Russian art and other works throughout the house. And she has a gorgeous gazebo out back.”
The Japanese-style structure was designed by a San Francisco landscape architect, the late Tommy Church, Duncan says. Guests may sit in its shade before dinner, enjoying a sip of something as well as views of San Juan Bautista State Park and the mission’s bell tower.
While Duncan’s dinners are generous, she doesn’t do dessert, and finds most people don’t miss it. She does introduce a little jar of chocolate-covered blueberries at the end of the meal, accompanied by the bill, along with a story or a joke she’s been saving. Ask her about “Timbuktu.”
“I don’t bake,” she says. “I can’t take orders from a recipe, and baking must be precise. I love cooking, but it has to be on my terms. I cook not by recipe but by taste. I fix food as I please, and let my guests decide.”
Fortunately for her guests, her tastes run both to the delicious and the healthful.
“I don’t do greasy food, and I use only fresh, organic, free-range food. It comes naturally to me. It doesn’t take a lot of experience to know that you put good things in to get good things out. I love fresh herbs, and I know how to make a good sauce. I don’t smother my food; I put just enough to dip, but people tend to lick my plates clean.”
Duncan’s menu shows up on an erasable whiteboard, listing her wild salmon, chicken schnitzel, rib eye steak or whatever she feels like making. Next to each listing she marks a few dots to signify how many servings remain available. She begins the meal with garlic bread and brie, followed by a fresh salad. Then she adds three vegetables to the entree — two green and another to add color to the plate. She’s known as the “spud queen” for her savory potatoes.
Duncan is attentive to her guests and sets the mood for the evening with their choice of music, preferably a little Leonard Cohen. Having installed big speakers in the yard, she can fill the air with his “Hallelujah,” and likely no one at the mission minds.
Lisa Crawford Watson lives with her family on the Monterey Peninsula, where she is a freelance writer and an instructor of writing and journalism at California State University Monterey Bay and Monterey Peninsula College.
