In 2011, we set out on a mission to prove that sustainably sourced, local cannabis can create a thriving community and a resilient planet. Ten years later, we celebrate you for helping us make that a reality.
What should we eat? Not, what should we have for dinner tonight? But the bigger picture: What foods are best to fuel our bodies? And keep our planet healthy?
These topics were very much on our minds as we put together this Summer issue and questions about food ethics had people chattering. First, Bon Appétit magazine announced it was not going to publish any more beef recipes on its Epicurious website, then Netflix broadcast the documentary, Seaspiracy, which urged viewers to swear off eating seafood forever. “Pro-planet” concern for the environment was cited as the reason in both of these high-profile controversies.
With two articles about meat and one about seafood already in the works, it was clear we were jumping into the fray with both feet.
There’s no denying that raising cattle conventionally in concentrated feedlots has a high carbon footprint and contributes to global warming. We also agree that in many parts of the world industrial-scale fishing depletes ocean resources, and aquaculture causes pollution and other terrible problems. But fortunately for us, there are plenty of environmentally sound, healthy alternatives here in the Monterey Bay area.
Local ranches raise animals with care in a regenerative manner that enriches the soil, improves water retention and increases biodiversity. Read more about a new nationwide initiative by The Audubon Society to incentivize more ranchers to adopt regenerative practices, in our first Edible Communities signature section in this issue. Look for grass-fed meats that don’t damage the planet at farmers’ markets and at local supermarkets, or buy directly from the ranchers themselves.
Likewise, California fisheries are well managed. The Monterey Bay offers a sustainable source of food for us and provides livelihoods for small-scale fishermen in Santa Cruz, Moss Landing and Monterey. This means you don’t need to swear off seafood if you buy locally, from a CSF (Community Supported Fishery), at shops supplied by local fishermen or directly at the docks.
These are complicated issues and we don’t want to diminish their importance, but as in all things diet-related a sense of balance is important.
We realize that many of our readers choose not to eat animal products for ethical or health reasons and we respect those decisions. We also know that other readers take a more omnivorous approach. Some readers are vegan, others paleo, some are gluten free and others embrace an Ayurvedic approach. What do they all have in common? They care about where their food comes from. And that gets to the heart of what Edible Monterey Bay is all about.
Know your farmer, know your rancher, know your fisherman and when you eat out, be selective. Patronize restaurants where your chef can be trusted to source healthy “pro-planet” local ingredients. Guides to local CSAs and CSFs can be found on our website, along with our beautiful new Dine Local Guide.
And don’t forget to enjoy your food! We live in the midst of a remarkably vibrant regional foodshed. The selection of fruits and vegetables here is unsurpassed and so is the selection of local meats and seafood. Seek them out and buy them at all the wonderful advertisers that support this publication. Then let’s stop judging other people’s food choices and start appreciating all the ways we are alike.
It’s summer and the pandemic seems to be winding down, so—as the delightful sheep on our cover are doing—let’s get together again!
Deborah Luhrman Publisher
EDITOR AND PUBLISHER
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We may all be people of this earth, but some of us are truly people of the land. For Clovis Harrod the siren call of Big Sur was irresistible. “It was like a lover who called to her,” says her granddaughter Helen Handshy.
In the early 1950s, Harrod backpacked in Big Sur with a friend and it changed her life forever. Falling in love with the area, she left her husband in southern California and took her two children to start a new life in the coastal community, waitressing while building a homestead on five acres of untamed land. “I live in the cabin which was the first structure Clovis built; it has a plastic corrugated roof,” Handshy told us.
Although she spent her childhood in Big Sur, as a teen Handshy found herself restless for the outside world and moved away. Inevitably, she was drawn back. “Big Sur is not for everyone. It wasn’t always right for me. I came back because Clovis needed help with the property and it’s been a huge blessing. The experience has been amazing!” Handshy tends many garden beds and prolific citrus orchards and is constantly thinking about what to plant next—because sharing with others has be-
come her life’s work. The pandemic made that clear.
Abundance from the humble farm started by her grandmother was part of the inspiration for The Big Share—a weekly food exchange where everything is free. Handshy and co-founder Joseph Bradford, with whom she worked at Nepenthe restaurant before 2020 changed everything, were worried about their coworkers and others who couldn’t get unemployment when the pandemic shuttered businesses along the scenic coast.
“What attracts people to this rugged and remote place is the very thing that makes it hard to connect. There’s no community center, no cell service,” she says. But when Handshy, Bradford and other community-minded residents started taking bounty to the Big Sur Grange every Monday to share, word spread quickly.
“We packed up veggies and citrus from our gardens in our truck. Other people brought what they had in abundance,”
she says. “We encouraged people to disseminate to those in need. People started planning their trips around this exchange. If we can save 10 people a trip into town, it’s great!”
During lockdown, no restaurants were open and there are no grocery stores in Big Sur, so access to fresh produce was difficult. “You can’t get produce here unless you grow it yourself. It’s one of the biggest needs. People were so grateful,” she adds.
Then others started bringing jams and prepared foods. Farmers called with excess produce. Donations of dried foods, eggs and dairy products came in. Someone arrived with a giant truck full of fresh chicken and Handshy had to scramble to rehome the bounty.
At one point, The Big Share was distributing 168 USDA farm boxes weekly. Handshy estimates the program has given away between 3,500 and 3,600 pounds of produce alone since it started last fall. Clearly, there is a big need.
Handshy says local chefs, like Nick Balla of COAST Big Sur, have pitched in to help. “Whenever we have excess produce we take it there and he turns it into something wonderful. He took fresh green beans and pickled them with horseradish.”
Balla, who moved from San Francisco to Big Sur three years ago, loves the community and shares the program’s values. “I like to work with what’s at hand, rather than what could be sourced. When Helen brought me extra potatoes and flour, we made focaccia and sourdough starter. We made 200 pounds of focaccia that we could happily share on Monday! We are super passionate about feeding and taking care of people.”
Beyond the pandemic, the fires, road closures and so forth, Handshy is thinking ahead to the next disaster and partnering with CABS, the Community Association of Big Sur. Coastal landowners and stakeholders started the group in 1962, largely to prevent the area from becoming a national park. Her program will take advantage of CABS’ nonprofit status, so that all fundraising and funding can be done through it.
Handshy returned to Big Sur when her grandmother needed help with the farm and that’s where the idea for The Big Share got its start.
“It will help us sustain this program, fund storage space and find a permanent home for The Big
Share,” she says.
Big Sur resident Elsa Rivera, who also got involved in the effort, points out that it’s different from other food assistance programs. “It is truly a gifting economy of love and community. I’ve loved connecting important resources for Helen to help the local project grow and develop into a one-stop free shop where folks can come together safely to check on each other and feel connection when connection has been so lacking during COVID. It’s not focused on the subjective opinion of need; it’s sharing our humanity and friendship with each other.”
Another exciting piece of the program going forward is a garden incubator and seed exchange project underway on the 5-acre homestead. “We want to help people start their own gardens, so we’re using our property as a pilot project to develop starts. We’re growing kale, lettuce, tomatoes. We’re spreading the love and we want everyone to do the same,” says Handshy.
Many who came to Big Sur decades ago planted fruit trees, but 90 percent of those homes are vacant now, with no caretakers. It’s an untapped and valuable resource, so they’re trying to contact owners to get permission to harvest.
If you have a garden in Big Sur that needs tending or harvesting, The Big Share team will help with that. About the only thing they can’t grow and provide is coffee. But given the generosity of the community, someone will likely step up and fill that need, too.
Says Handshy, “My dream is that every community in the world will be doing this. Share local! This is what I would like to see more of!”
That dream is perhaps the most valuable thing she has to share.
The Big Share
thebigsurbigshare.com helen.bigshare@gmail.com
Laura Ness is a longtime wine journalist who contributes regularly to Edible Monterey Bay, Spirited, Los Gatos Magazine and the Wine Industry Network, sharing stories of the intriguing characters who inhabit the world of wine and food.
BY MARK C. ANDERSON PHOTOGRAPHY BY GENEVA RICO
Where am I? Should I Google my location? These were my thoughts, even though I was confident I stood smack dab in the middle of Santa Cruz. Such was the power of the moment at new Woodhouse Blending & Brewing on a recent Friday afternoon.
Maybe it was the kinetic pan-Latin music from Papiba & Friends. Maybe it was the dozen masked women dancing in front of them. Maybe it was the Brazilian street food—fried chicken-potato balls, savory beef pies and “crazy meat” sandwiches—flying from the kitchen. Maybe it was the airy brewery-taphouse setting with its striking art, high ceilings, clean lines and detail-driven design. Certainly it was the inspired craft beers like Wanderlust IPA and Houndstooth Hazy, flowing steadily from
gleaming taps set against a taupe tile wall.
In truth, it was all of the above, which—coming on the heels of pandemic lockdowns—gave Woodhouse that wonderfully foreign feeling. I ordered a tart and tasty Orange Tier kettle sour to toast the mood.
Co-founder and head brewer Mike Rodriguez is the alchemist behind the beers and has been at his craft for two decades. Across stops at celebrated spots like The Lost Abbey and Mason Ale Works, his creations have pulled in 13 Great American Beer Festival medals and three more from the World Beer Cup.
Before any of those West Coast brewery gigs, he got his start out of high school at Power Plant brewery in Kansas City, Missouri, which is where a surprising amount of Woodhouse collaboration first sprouted.
Fellow co-founder William Moxham met Rodriguez in middle school, but was in our area working for Apple and invited Rodriguez to join the Santa Cruz project. Rodriguez brought rugby buddy, brewing mind and accounting pro Tyler Johansen, another co-founder, with him.
Fourth co-founder Ken Kieffer, whom Moxham and Rodriguez met in high school, came out from KC too. Newer partner Tug Newett is a pal from the Kansas City Art Institute.
“We wanted to get friends involved who could contribute skills and pitch in a little money and help us get through,” Moxham says.
Pre-Woodhouse, he’d been debating between going back to work 90hour weeks for Apple or starting his own business. “There’s three things I wanted to make besides art and music,” he says, “beer, coffee or wine. It was kind of a no-brainer because Mike’s always been a real close friend.”
The Woodhouse leadership squad started brewing here in 2018, after building the facility from scratch, hands-on, with help from Michael Doherty, the contractor who happens to work next door.
The operating philosophy: strictly small batch, traditional and nontraditional styles, with an emphasis on blending brews for aging in barrels, to “inspire enthusiasts, as well as aficionados, worldwide,” per the brewery’s stated mission. Soon Woodhouse’s Krisp Kristofferson international lager and Something for Something IPA were finding traction in discerning local venues like Beer Thirty and finicky places further afield like Santa Barbara’s Llama Dog and Ventura’s Fluid State.
The execution of the beers reflects Rodriguez’s no-nonsense, no-hype, no-attention-needed-or-wanted style. When I asked him what makes his flavor profiles interesting, he deferred. “Interesting is subjective,” he says. “I just try to make clean and consistent beer. That’s my job.”
The various partners divided and conquered emerging tasks, with Johansen tackling city regulations, Kieffer spearheading IT and everybody wearing a number of hats. Early in 2020 the team began converting the wood mill that abutted the brewery into a 3,000-square-foot kitchen and tasting room that peeks into the brewing space from above.
Today the landing enjoys a sweeping tasting bar, several high top tables, curated art pieces and clever scrabble-letter beer menus. That main space flows out onto a deck that overlooks a parking lot pavilion with picnic tables and more high tops beneath modern shade sails, flanked by a rack of beer barrels.
Sharing that platform is one of the priorities for Woodhouse’s leadership. Creative Director Newett cites music-centric events, art openings, salsa lessons, yoga-with-a-beer sessions, a florist pop-up and, recently, a car show.
“We can bring the beer, so we’re looking for people who can bring in creativity and community. That’s the ultimate thing we can cultivate,” Newett says. “We’re not trying to be a big established brewery. We’re looking to be a community support system for emerging local entrepre-
“We can bring the beer, so we’re looking for people who can bring in creativity and community. That’s the ultimate thing we can cultivate.”
neurs and artists—cooks, painters, musicians, whatever.”
That’s already happening with the food, which is where an operation like Sampa Kitchen comes in. It’s a three-sibling team dishing Brazilian fare as chefs-in-residence. Complementing the main menu items like bolinhos de queijo (deep-fried potato dough stuffed with oregano and mozzarella) and tortas de frango (a traditional South American take on chicken pot pie) are rotating specials. On my visit that meant wild salmon in cilantro lime sauce, porção de calabresa and chicken-baconpesto sandwiches.
“I like how the place is set up as an indoor-outdoor type of thing,” says Sampa point person Natasha Malia. “In Brazil we grew up outdoors and we drink a lot of beer, so it’s a perfect combo with Brazilian food. We love it.”
As part of the arrangement, Sampa is prepared to decamp for regular guest chefs, whether they’re veteran home chefs (like Moxham’s mom doing Filipino specialities) or industry pros (like cult Surf City hit Full Steam Dumpling). Food trucks like Pana Venezuelan also make appearances.
“Culture and travel inspire us to do different things and ethnically we’re a diverse group of collaborators,” Moxham says. “We want to mix it up.”
Woodhouse’s early popularity in local bars and brisk can sales amid COVID told them their beer had found a following. With the tasting space’s mix of art, design and openness, they felt they had a formula for a special spot. But they didn’t anticipate being so busy they’d be running out of beer.
“We were confident that we’d get a good reception,” Moxham says, “but we didn’t think we’d get a near 100 percent return rate.”
Perhaps that’s because there’s more at work here than food, drink and setting. When I first visited and tasted through a flight, Newett and I didn’t talk about the brewing operation or its Kansas City roots or what I was sampling. We talked about how creatives might struggle with their own artistic value, or drug abuse, or personal worth or depression—and how outlets for expression can figure in.
In other words, the talk of art and community isn’t a sales pitch. It’s an ongoing driver, and one that gives the place depth it might not otherwise enjoy. At the moment the most captivating pieces include an oxidized penny arrangement by Newett’s wife Deana and a series of portraits by Newett himself—of Amy Winehouse, John Coltrane, Anthony Bourdain, Frida Kahlo, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Prince.
It helps conjure the type of space that’s hard to create but now easier to find, no Google geography searches needed.
Mark C. Anderson is a roving writer, explorer and photographer loosely based in Monterey County. Follow and/or reach him on Twitter and Instagram @ MontereyMCA.
Woodhouse Blending & Brewing woodhousebrews.com 119 Madrone St., Santa Cruz
While many cities around the Monterey Bay are debating whether or not to remove restaurant parklets, Hollister has boldly stepped forward to make its outdoor dining structures a permanent fixture in its downtown.
Parklets, built to accommodate outdoor dining during the pandemic, have become a common sight outside restaurants. Now that the COVID threat appears to be waning and indoor
dining has come back, there’s a fierce debate going on in cities such as Carmel, Pacific Grove, Santa Cruz and Capitola over whether the structures should remain.
But downtown Hollister has embraced its 15-plus parklets, and in fact the city has made them an integral part of its downtown revitalization plan, according to Peter Hernandez, a San Benito County supervisor and downtown business owner.
“We’re really seeing a shift in the downtown area—10 to 15 years ago, it was really dead,” says Hernandez, owner of Ohana Shave Ice. Hampered by fast-moving two-way traffic, the area was merely a place to speed through on the way to somewhere else, he says.
Peter and Karina Hernandez and their kids enjoy some of the treats available at their shop Ohana Shave Ice. (photos Coline LeConte)
“Downtown is a lot more vibrant and busy than it used to be,” agrees Hollister Downtown Association Executive Director Corey Shaffer. “The parklets have definitely added to the ambiance.”
The Hollister parklets, all built according to city specifications and similarly constructed, nevertheless have their own personalities. Each business has added special touches like string lights, outdoor heat lamps, shade cloth or colorful patio umbrellas, cute signs and outdoor décor. Plant containers around the parklets were filled with beautiful succulents and other greenery by Growing Hearts, a Hollister nonprofit that helps adults with special needs develop gardening and landscaping skills.
Downtown revitalization had been discussed for some time, but COVID brought urgent focus to the issue. In order to help Hollister businesses survive and recover from the economic hardships imposed by the pandemic, the city decided to make room for outdoor dining spaces and reduce traffic by converting a four-block section of downtown to a one-way, one-lane street. Another unique feature that has been added, Hernandez points out, is angled parking spaces that must be backed into —a nod to Hollister car culture and one that makes it easier to display cool coupes, hot rods and motorcycles.
The parklets were inspired by similar outdoor dining spaces built along Third Street in San Juan Bautista, which has also made part of its main drag a one-way street. This creates space to accommodate the parklets and slow traffic, making it safer for pedestrians.
Hernandez says that seeing what establishments in San Juan Bautista had done with their parklets sparked conversation with the city of Hollister and the Hollister Downtown Association to do something similar.
Ad hoc outdoor dining spaces began popping up in Hollister in May 2020, when pandemic restrictions halted indoor meal service, and part of the downtown area was blocked off for this purpose. For the parklet program, says Daisy Caceres, senior support services assistant with the city of Hollister, the idea was to create a cohesive look for the downtown area that was also attractive. A series of meetings took place to iron out the details.
“It’s kind of a pilot program, and all new to us,” says Caceres.
What really made it feasible for downtown business owners, though, was a unique funding collaboration that involved both San Benito County and the city of Hollister. Both city and county pledged a portion of their federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) funding toward the parklet program, $80,000 from the city of Hollister and $150,000 from the county, according to Caceres.
Businesses, after building the parklets according to city-approved designs, were eligible to be paid back up to $15,000 of their investment. The only catch: The city council approved the downtown plan on Oct. 19, 2020, and parklets had to be completed within four weeks to qualify for reimbursement. A flurry of activity ensued with a fast and furious downtown makeover.
It wasn’t just restaurants and bars taking advantage of the parklet project. Two boutiques and a hair salon also put up structures. But eateries, bars and taprooms are the main beneficiaries.
Hernandez says this is part of Hollister’s “roadmap to recovery,” which also envisions the vibrant downtown scene as a draw for tourists who are passing through on their way to The Pinnacles and to Clear Creek Management Area—a popular destination for mountain bikers and off-road enthusiasts.
“The business community loves it,” says Hernandez of the new look for downtown. In addition to being a slower, family-friendly environment, “it’s a catalyst, a message to the community, to spend their dollars here.”
Part of the magic of the parklets, says Shaffer, is just being able to walk downtown and see who’s there and what’s happening.
“People are attracted to people,” she says. In the parklets, “people are gathering and having fun, laughing. That makes you want to be part of it.”
Kathryn McKenzie, who grew up in Santa Cruz and now lives on a Christmas tree farm in north Monterey County, writes about the environment, sustainable living and health for numerous publications and websites. She is the co-author of Humbled: How California’s Monterey Bay Escaped Industrial Ruin.
When life slowed down during the pandemic, chef Karen Anne Murray sat down to reflect on 20 years of Eddison & Melrose with a new book that brings her teatime traditions home
BY RAÚL NAVA PHOTOGRAPHY BY MARGAUX GIBBONS
America’s Anglophilia reached new heights during the pandemic. The past year saw many of us bingewatching British television, but long before The Great British Baking Show turned us into armchair experts on Britain’s sweet treats, chef Karen Anne Murray brought a taste of England to the Monterey Bay area with her catering company, Eddison & Melrose.
As the beloved business celebrates its 20th anniversary, Murray invites us to join her for a cuppa and celebrate the tradition of tea with her new book, Tea Table: Inspiring Teatime Creations from California’s Central Coast.
“Tea to me is a sense of calm and tranquility,” explains Murray. “You can’t rush tea.” She’s right—tea requires time and patience waiting for the water to boil, for flavors to be extracted from the leaves, for the drink to cool to a drinkable temperature, for conversation to build sip after sip. “The whole sense of slowing down the pace, it’s very soothing.”
When life on the Central Coast ground to an abrupt halt last March, Murray saw an opportunity. “For some years, I’ve said I would write a book,” she recalls. “I realized things were going to be quieter and now would be that time.” Her teatime tome was born from a desire to offer a sip of serenity in the chaos of the pandemic.
As a chef, Murray cooks by memory, so she set about putting pen to paper and began writing a couple recipes down every Sunday morning. One morning last July, she spotted a wicker table cast off, by the side of the road. As the day wore on, she couldn’t shake that splendid table. Murray routed her return home past the abandoned table. Fortuitously, there it still stood, so she pulled over and loaded it into her car.
As Murray continued documenting her recipes on Sunday mornings, she snapped a couple of photos of each creation on this weathered wicker in her backyard. Murray grew so fond of the table, she took it to the beach to stage shots against Pacific Grove’s seaside scenery.
That’s when inspiration hit.
“It’s more than just a cookbook now. It’s based around this table,” explains Murray. She wasn’t just capturing recipes, she was capturing connection—sitting at a table and savoring a special moment, a special place, a special person—and welcoming readers into the culinary arts.
Murray credits her own entry into a culinary career to a successful home economics exam at age 13. “I wanted to do something I was good at, that I could have fun with,” she recalls. “Plus, I loved the idea of travel and figured out I could go anywhere in the world and always find work. People always have to have food!”
Born and raised in England’s West Midlands, she enrolled in professional chef training at nearby Birmingham College of Food and Domestic Arts (now University College Birmingham). “It wasn’t like England now where it’s known for famous chefs like Gordon Ramsay and Jamie
Murray uses a box grater to get the perfectly sized bits of butter for flaky scones.
Oliver,” she recalls. “No one was interested in the food back then—it was quite bland!” The intense two-year training course provided the fundamentals of cooking.
In 1986, Murray came to visit her sister who was living at Fort Ord and enrolled as a foreign student first in an advanced baking program at Cabrillo College, then for restaurant management at Monterey Peninsula College. Equipped with chef, baking and management training, Murray set off on her childhood dream of traveling the world and cooking.
For 12 years, Murray worked in kitchens throughout North America and Europe. She thrived on the high energy of restaurant kitchens, eagerly absorbing global gastronomy and learning how to think on her feet. While living in Vancouver, she established a personal chef business. In 1998, she returned to the Monterey Peninsula after meeting her husband Tom and soon after shifted her focus to catering.
Flipping through the phone book inspired her to establish Eddison & Melrose in 2001.
“I looked at all the caterers here at the peninsula at that time. There were hundreds, so how was I going to stand out?” she recalls. “I love tea,
but I didn’t see anyone specialized in tea, so I decided I was going to be the tea person.”
She chose the name as a tribute to her parents—Eddison was the middle name of her late father and Melrose is the middle name of her mother. “‘Eddison & Melrose’ sounded right, sounded elegant to pair with tea.”
Murray started Eddison & Melrose by subletting spaces in Pacific Grove and Monterey before securing her own catering kitchen in Sand City. In 2009, she opened a storefront in Monterey’s Monte Vista Village Shopping Center.
Scones soon became one of her signatures. “I’d been making them on a regular basis and perfecting those. A lot of customers asked me for the recipe and told me, ‘These are the best I’ve ever had!’ I was even shipping orders to other states,” she recalls. “It made me realize this was something to tap into.”
By 2009, Murray had also spun off one of Eddison & Melrose’s most popular offerings into its own brand—Karen Anne’s Granola.
“It’s very much a baby of mine. I took a lot of time to develop different flavors,” she says. She now offers five granola blends made with slowroasted organic oats and other carefully curated ingredients. Her granola is available at Deluxe Foods of Aptos, Bruno’s Deli, Grove Market, Nielsen Bros. Market, Shopper’s Corner, Star Market and Whole Foods.
Murray beams with pride when explaining how families buy Karen Anne’s Granola in bulk and enjoy a bowl together every morning. She fondly recounts how some now ship granola to children who have gone off to college and how honored she is to be part of their tradition.
In 2018, Murray decided to refocus Eddison & Melrose, embracing granola and scones as flagship offerings when she moved to a new cottage in Pacific Grove’s Forest Hill neighborhood—ironically, the very location where she’d originally started the business in 2001. At Eddison & Melrose Oats n Scones, she has hosted private teas and prepared a menu of sandwiches, scones (naturally) and more for catering events.
Murray is excited for readers to take a taste of Eddison & Melrose home with Tea Table.
“I envision many families spending time together with those recipes,” she says, recalling recipe development with her son Andrew. “He’s 14 and he likes to cook. It’s a book he can pick up and follow the recipes in there. I wanted to create that ease for all readers.”
So put on the kettle, pour out a cup and let new traditions steep at your table.
eddisonandmelrose.com
1180 Forest Ave., Ste. G, Pacific Grove
Tea Table: Inspiring Teatime Creations from California’s Central Coast, published by Pacific Grove Books, is available at Bookshop Santa Cruz and at BookWorks in Pacific Grove. Print and digital editions are also available through Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Raúl Nava (he/him/él) is a freelance writer covering dining and restaurants across the Central Coast. He authored the foreword for Tea Table. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram @offthemenu831.
Courtesy Karen Anne Murray, chef-proprietor, Eddison & Melrose Oats n Scones in Pacific Grove
Often scones are too sweet and/or too dry. Murray thinks of these as having a touch of ocean spray—she reduces the sugar, adds a hint of salt and uses moisture to create a lighter texture.
2 cups all-purpose flour
1½ tablespoons baking powder
Pinch of salt
¼ cup sugar
3 ounces cold butter (about ¾ stick)
1 egg ½ cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla flavoring
Optional:
½ cup blueberries, raspberries or blackberries
½ cup all-purpose flour (for dusting)
1 teaspoon sugar (for sprinkling on top)
You will need a box grater with medium holes, rolling pin, spatula, 2½ inch in diameter cookie cutters and a large cookie sheet lightly greased with butter. Preheat the oven to 425° F.
Combine the first four ingredients in a large bowl.
Grate the cold butter into the bowl with the other ingredients. Rub together with your fingers until the mixture is crumbled.
In a small bowl whisk the egg, milk and vanilla together.
Pour the liquid into the dry crumb mixture.
Using a spatula gently mix the ingredients together until a soft dough is formed. If making a fruit scone, add your fruit now and mix in gently.
Dust your clean board or countertop with flour and roll the dough to a ¾-inch thickness.
Using the cookie cutter, cut 8 scones and place 2 inches apart on the cookie sheet. Using the teaspoon of sugar, sprinkle the top of each scone.
Bake for 5 minutes. After 5 minutes turn the tray around and bake for a further 5–7 minutes until nicely browned.
Allow to cool for 10–15 minutes. Enjoy with butter, jam, curd, cream or solo. Makes 8 scones.
Courtesy Karen Anne Murray, chef-proprietor, Eddison & Melrose Oats n Scones in Pacific Grove
This strawberry lemonade is a playful combination of two of Murray’s favorite summertime flavors and perfect for all ages. A splash of rum turns it into a really good daiquiri or Jamaican rum punch and adding tequila makes a strawberry margarita.
1 cup strawberries (fresh or frozen) washed, stems removed ½ cup sugar
1 cup cold water
2 tablespoons lemon juice, freshly squeezed 4 cups ice
1 cup cold water
You will need a saucepan, spoon, blender, strainer, pitcher and four glasses.
Place the first 3 ingredients in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Allow to simmer for 15 minutes.
Remove from the stove and stir in the lemon juice. Cool for 15 minutes.
Pour the liquid into the blender, add 1 cup of cold water and blend until smooth. Place the strainer over the pitcher and pour the liquid through. Add the second cup of cold water to the pitcher and stir.
Add 1 cup of ice to each glass. Pour the lemonade into each glass. Serves 4.
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Delicate and fleeting, the first stone fruits of the season might be the best
BY JAMIE COLLINS PHOTOGRAPHY BY LARA PIERSON AND PATRICK TREGENZA
Apricots became one of my favorite summer fruits when I was in college in San Luis Obispo and lucky enough to live in a little house with a large Blenheim tree in the backyard. This abundant tree produced delicious, sun-kissed, orange-colored spheres. I would fill my shirt with tree-ripened apricots and sit on a rock devouring my new favorite fruit, juice dripping down my chin. Apricots from this tree sparked my first interest in jam making, because I wanted to be able to jar up this sunshine-y flavor to savor all year.
Locally, apricots are grown in warmer inland areas like Hollister, Gilroy and Morgan Hill where daytime temperatures are hot enough to ripen sweet fruit and winter temperatures are cold enough for the apricots to set flowers and fruit properly. The two- to three-week season—in late June, early July—is so short that most fruit is sold dried.
The flat Santa Clara Valley was once filled with orchards of apricots and other stone fruits, but over the years farmers sold off their land to developers to meet the housing needs of San Jose and Silicon Valley tech workers. So now only the southernmost parts of the valley still have producing orchards.
In Hollister, for example, the Rossi family has been growing apricots at B&R Farms since 1929. They manage 40 acres of Blenheim apricots and sell dried fruit, preserves and chocolate-covered dried apricots. During harvest season they offer a U-Pick, where those not lucky enough to have a tree in their backyard can gorge on fresh fruit and fill buckets with apricots for cooking and preserving.
Apricots, Prunus armeniaca, are in the rose family, which also includes cherries, plums, peaches and almonds. Apricots were first cultivated in China about 2,000 BC and were traded by travelers on The Silk Road and likely made it to Persia where they took root and were then distributed around the world.
Persians love to add apricots to their meat dishes; their traditional lamb stew includes cooking the meat with dried apricots and raisins, a cinnamon stick, saffron, mint, jujubes and a little honey.
In the Middle East, street vendors sell a luxurious drink made of amardine—mashed sundried apricots rehydrated with water and blended with sugar, pine nuts, pistachios and rose water. Other uses include dried apricots stuffed with almond paste, or a dessert of fresh apricots whipped with cream and orange blossom essence.
Fun fact: Apricot kernels, the nut inside the pit, are used in Chinese medicine. While toxic in large amounts, they contain amino acids that support the large intestine and lungs—which can stop wheezing and can unblock the bowels.
Apricots are full of vitamins A and C, and the orange fruit contains loads of beta carotene.
Apricots are much more popular in other countries than they are in the United States, therefore our acreage pales in comparison. Turkey produces 21% of the world’s total, followed by Iran and Pakistan.
California produces more than 95% of commercially grown apricots in the U.S. which are mainly slated for processing and are dried, canned or made into products like baby food or pie filling. Washington is the only other state with commercial production for the fresh market.
The problem with selling apricots on the fresh market is that they are so perishable they need to be harvested unripe to be shipped. There is no way to harvest them ripe and get them to a grocery store in time. The unripe fruit that is shipped is pale and tasteless and gives consumers the idea that apricots are not tasty, thereby decreasing demand. Unless a grocery store works directly with farmers who can deliver freshly picked fruit, farmers’ markets are the only place to get a flavorful ripe apricot without growing a tree yourself.
Peter Van Dyke, a fifth generation farmer in Gilroy, grew up on an apricot farm at the base of the Gavilan Mountains that has been CCOF certified organic since 1986. During his youth, his family sold both fresh and dried Blenheim apricots and bing cherries at the farmers’ market, and sold most of the dried fruit wholesale. The harvest window for Blenheims is so short and labor intensive that these days none of the fruit Van Dyke sells is fresh. All apricots are picked and placed on wooden trays for drying in the hot summer sun. Both unsulfured and sulfured apricots are sold to processors and retail outlets, such as New Leaf Community Markets. Van Dyke says that, sadly, people don’t know what apricots are anymore and that interest in them has dwindled. As the market has declined, many farmers have removed trees to make space for more lucrative crops. Van Dyke says nothing compares to a Blenheim for flavor but reports there are flavorful new hybrids coming out, like the golden sweet and the Modesto.
While reaching out to Van Dyke for this story, I learned his mother Betty had passed away at 88 years old. He lovingly called her the “Matriarch of Apricots,” because Betty worked on the farm with her grandfather from the time she was old enough to pick windfalls from the ground. She helped every season and eventually learned every aspect of the business and was still involved when she had her own family. When her father got sick and couldn’t farm anymore, she and her three sons took over, transitioning to certified organic. Betty Van Dyke lived a rich life of surfing and farming apricots and cherries, and with her sons’ help pioneered and improved modern methods for high-quality dried organic fruit.
Apricot fruiting wood is typically grafted onto plum or peach rootstalk. The rootstalk provides a vigorous root system and growth habitat but none of the flavor characteristics. Popular self-pollinating varieties grown in California, besides the Blenheim, are Wenatchee Moorpark, Tilton and perfection. Varietals like moon gold and sun gold need to be planted together to pollinate each other.
Apricot trees should be planted 18 feet apart between rows, and 14–16 feet between trees. For ease of labor, they should be pruned to a shorter height to avoid the need for a ladder when thinning and harvesting. Plant several varieties that have different harvest windows to prolong the time you will be harvesting fruit, instead of one variety you will need to harvest all at once. Apricots tend to be somewhat alternate bearing as many fruit trees often are, which is another reason to have several varieties planted. Trees will need to be pruned to an open center each winter to produce good fruit yield and thinned to get desired, larger sized fruit.
Apricots prefer warm, dry places during growing season, and need winter chill hours below 45° F to flower and have good fruit set. Since apricots bloom between February and March, they can be a precarious crop. A late frost can damage the flowers and affect the fruit set, while late rain at bloom can cause disease issues. If it gets too hot while fruit are maturing, the fruit will soften prematurely, causing “pit burn,” and if temps get too high near harvest, there is risk of sunburn on the skin of the fruit. Soil should be well drained to avoid fungal issues in the roots. Varieties need between 300 and 1,000 chill hours, so it’s best to do research if you are planning to buy a tree, to make sure you have the right climate.
My favorite way to eat apricots is fresh, but when I have an abundance I like to make apricot salsa fresca, utilizing various stone fruit instead of tomatoes, adding chopped fresh or roasted chiles, cilantro, red onion and lime juice.
Apricots are great grilled, because the heat caramelizes the sugar in the fruit. Choose firm yet ripe fruit, cut them in half, remove the pit then grill. Let cool and fill them with goat cheese or ricotta and top with toasted pine nuts or pistachios for a beautiful summer appetizer.
My farmers’ market friends know I will gladly accept and process bruised fruit that won’t make it to their next market. I often dehydrate it and make breakfast bars.
Or try making a tasty salad dressing—simply roast the apricots and blend in with olive oil, lemon juice, sautéed shallots, curry powder (if desired, but not necessary) and salt.
Of course there is always apricot jam, in my opinion one of the best kinds because it has a velvety texture and needs nothing added to make it taste amazing (although, full disclosure, I do add a splash of Meyer lemon juice to balance the sweet with acid). It makes a nice topping for a frangipane tart. Chutney is another great idea or try adding pepper to your jam to serve with savory food like cheese platters and as a sandwich spread.
Jamie Collins is the owner of Serendipity Farms and attends all of the Santa Cruz Community Farmers’ Markets, where you can find her fresh organic fruit, vegetables and nutrient-dense prepared food items.
Elite level cyclist and nutrition coach Ginger Snell launched Bella Bee mobile espresso bar and bakery last year and can usually be found in Seaside, Monterey or Carmel Valley. Her delicious baked treats often pack an extra nutritional boost and while Snell is not vegan, she says she loves using whole food ingredients that do not include animal products. In these delicate bars, for example, coconut oil takes over the role of butter, but she says: “You wouldn’t know they are vegan when eating them.”
For the crust:
1 cup (80 grams) dried, unsweetened coconut
½ cup (60 grams) rolled oats
¼ teaspoon baking powder
¼ teaspoon salt
¼ cup (35 grams) whole spelt flour
¾ cup (105 grams) rye flour
½ cup extra virgin coconut oil (melted)
¼ cup maple syrup
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
For the filling:
½ cup (90 grams) unsulfured, unsweetened dried apricots, sliced
¾ cup unsweetened (or homemade) apricot jam
For the topping:
1 cup dried, unsweetened shredded coconut
1/3 cup (50 gram) raw cashews
¼ teaspoon baking powder
1 tablespoon maple syrup
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
Zest of 1 lemon
1 cup (80 grams) dried, unsweetened, coconut flakes
Preheat oven to 350° F. Line a 13x9-inch pan with parchment paper. (Line both sides and bottom of pan, creasing paper to make the corners. You will use this to lift the bars out of the pan.)
Make the crust: Put coconut, oats, baking powder and salt in a food processor and grind until fine. Transfer to a medium bowl and mix in spelt and rye flour. Add oil, and mix with a fork until combined. Stir in maple syrup and vanilla. Dough should be completely moistened but not sticky. If dough isn’t moistened throughout, add another teaspoon of oil. Dough will be a bit clumpy, but will stick together when pressed.
Press dough thinly and evenly over the bottom of the pan. Prick crust with a fork and bake 20 minutes or until the edges are begin-
ning to brown. Remove from the oven, but keep oven on.
Make the filling: Place sliced apricots in a small bowl and cover with boiling water. Leave for 5 minutes and then drain. Spread baked crust with the apricot jam and then arrange drained apricot slices on top.
Make the topping: Put shredded coconut, cashews and baking powder in a food processor and grind until moist. Transfer to a medium bowl.
In a separate small bowl, combine maple syrup, olive oil, vanilla and lemon zest. Pour this into the coconut and cashew mixture and stir to combine. Gently mix in the coconut flakes.
Crumble the topping over apricots and jam. Topping won’t be solid over the filling, just crumble evenly.
Bake 15–18 minutes until golden on top. Set pan on a rack and cool completely. Lift out with the edges of the parchment paper and place on a cutting board and cut into bars. Store in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to 3 days. Makes 12 large bars.
Recipe adapted from Amy Chaplin’s book, “At Home in the Whole Food Kitchen.”
The Central Coast may not have many cheesemakers, but lack of quantity is made up for by quality, variety and sheer deliciousness. Starting with the white tray at top and moving clockwise: Harley Farms Goat Dairy (Pescadero) Van Goat, Chévre in Oil and Honey Lavender Goat Cheese; Schoch Family Farmstead (Salinas) Monterey Jack and East of Edam; Garden Variety Cheese (Royal Oaks) Cosmos sheep’s milk feta, Moonflower and Beau’s Blend; Central Coast Creamery (Paso Robles) Holey Cow; Martin Hoellrigl (Private Chef – Capitola) Jersey Cow Double Cream wrapped in Nori, Garden Bay Leaf Aged Brie, Double Cream with Almonds and Native Culture Cheese Truffle.
Welcome to our 1440 kitchen! During all-inclusive Teaching Kitchen Weekend package stays you will become the home cook you’ve always wanted to be, learn about the practical applications of “food as medicine,” and enjoy a weekend filled with fun hands-on cooking demonstrations, culinary classes, educational wine tasting experiences, and more. In community with other foodies in the 1440 Teaching Kitchen, these epicurean weekends are led by the 1440 Culinary Team and feature local artisans, growers, farmers, and vintners. Upcoming events include:
Make fresh hand-made pasta and sauces with 1440 Executive Chef Kenny Woods in ode to his Nonna Precci’s Italian heritage while enjoying house-made charcuterie and local wines
Celebrate a warm summer weekend with ice-cold local craft beers and savory smoked meats while you grill your own delicious plant-based proteins and create refreshing seasonal vegetable side dishes
Thailand’s distinct flavor profiles inspire a hands-on weekend of vegetable spring rolls, fresh green curry and other seasonal treats as you sip on local wines, boba teas and Thai-influenced cocktails
Back by popular demand, these immersive learning experiences are open to all skill levels and capacity is limited to allow for safe social distancing. If you feel inspired to hone your cooking abilities, or just love everything about food, the Teaching Kitchen Weekend package is the perfect 1440 experience for you.
Every booking supports our community building initiatives, feeds local families and contributes to our scholarship and grant program
We’re experiencing a period of upheaval in the world today, which has also had an impact on the economy and markets. Given the spike in volatility and uncertainty we’re seeing in the broader economy, it may be time to step back and carefully review your financial life.
Take some time to assess where you stand and whether it may be appropriate to make any adjustments in your strategy. Here are four key questions to ask about your current financial circumstances.
#1 – Do you have enough cash to meet short-term needs?
A healthy cash reserve is important in times like these. A general rule of thumb is to have enough cash on hand (held in readily accessible accounts) to meet three to six months’ worth of expenses. But given today’s economic uncertainties, it may make sense to set aside up to nine months’ worth of cash.
#2 – Are you comfortable with the level of risk in your portfolio?
Investment markets have been volatile since the start of 2020 and may continue to be for the coming months and maybe years. Unsettled markets can be a real test of whether you are comfortable with your investment strategy or if the level of risk in your portfolio is keeping you up at night. Given
the disruption that’s been occurring, a portfolio review makes sense.
#3 – Do you have a solid protection strategy in place?
This is an opportune time to make sure that you and your family are adequately insured. Health insurance is a good place to start, particularly if your work situation has changed in recent months. The importance of adequate life insurance is more evident in times like these to protect the wellbeing of your family. Look at other protection options too, such as disability income insurance and long-term care coverage to meet specialized care needs, especially as you grow older.
#4 – Is your financial plan still on track?
Finally, take a careful look at your overall financial plan. Are you still on track to achieve the key goals you initially established? Does your plan require adjustments based on circumstances that have changed? Given all of the events of recent months, this is the right time to review your plan to make sure you are still heading in the right direction.
Be sure to connect with your financial advisor to explore these questions in more detail and keep your financial life in order.
Erik Cormier is a Financial Advisor with Cormier Financial Partners, a private wealth advisory practice with Ameriprise Financial Services, Inc. He specializes in feebased financial planning and asset management strategies and has 13 years of experience in the financial services industry. To contact him, email Erik.Cormier@ampf.com or call 408-472-0757. Registered office address is 522 Ramona St, Palo Alto, CA 94301.
Ameriprise Financial Services, Inc. and its affiliates do not offer tax or legal advice. Consumers should consult with their tax advisor or attorney regarding their specific situation. Investment advisory products and services are made available through Ameriprise Financial Services, Inc., a registered investment adviser. Ameriprise Financial Services, LLC. Member FINRA and SIPC.
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File #3141764-RUSH (Approved until 7/31/2021)
Put some sizzle in your summer STORY AND PHOTOGRAPHY
BY MARK C. ANDERSON
So this is how it all ends. Not jumping off the wrong cliff or eating suspect sauerkraut, but flipping the car while attempting a high-speed turn off Highway 101 to traverse a sudden offramp, all in an effort to find some of the best barbecue in the Monterey Bay area in time for summer.
I figured this meat-driven mission would endanger my wellbeing. Only I always assumed that would be more cholesteroland/or calorie-induced. But so it goes with worthy missions: You have some idea where they’ll take you, then much of the adventure comes with the surprising turns it takes.
From the offramp, a serpentine route rambles through the grassy hills of Prunedale. On my phone the curves resemble a water slide a stoned sea otter might design.
A final left at the small hand-painted signs that says “BBQ” leads into a nondescript residential neighborhood that dead-ends against the northbound side of 101. Down the sloping driveway with another homemade sign sits Prunedale Market & Deli, a combo plate of smoked meats, homey charm and funky rural spirit.
Outside more scrappy signs and a huge smoker beckon people from the highway. Inside Martin Muñoz immediately offers us samples of the soup of the day. The cup he alternatively calls “Mexican stew” and “Spanish chili” works as a metaphor for the place: It’s generous, tasty, improvised (“The recipe’s never the same,” he says) and has a lot going on—pepperoni, pork shoulder, hamburger and a tomato base with pleasant zing.
I tell him I’m on a barbecue mission and he launches into his back story. Some highlights: He worked for 25 years as a chef at Original Joe’s in San Jose and “hated every year,” though it’s hard to imagine him hating any job, person or meat. By the way, he adds, he’s not barbecuing anything—he’s smoking everything. He’s become a Yelp darling despite the fact, or maybe because, he says, “I don’t do Internet. I’ve never taken a photo of food.”
The unrepentant hospitality is something I’ll find elsewhere on this mission, but not quite like this. That has to be reason No. 1 he tops Travel and Leisure’s barbecue rankings nationwide. A close No. 2 is a three-way tie: the ribs, chicken and tri-tip sandwich.
The ribs, which are smoked low and slow for four hours with a house garlic-salt-pepper rub, can be enjoyed without a drop of sauce, the real test of the genre (though he pours me a to-go coffee cup of sauce). The chicken proves deep in rich and smoky flavor that I can taste just by thinking about it. And his legendary tri-tip sandwich, as big as a football and piled with spicy Fritos and Sweet Baby Ray’s sauce, is worthy of a Prunedale monument.
My pops came along with me to scout the spot. He’s the type who finds friends-he-hasn’t-met in every stranger, and is from a Prunetuckystyle spot called Coalinga. He was blown away by the welcome we received and the personality of the place. The sources that turned me onto it said they received the same greeting, which gets to the main place quality barbecue takes eaters: a sense of comfort and connection.
My aforementioned father loves to grill, so I grew up around a barbecue. Come summer, barbecuing was almost a nightly affair. A Weber was my first purchase when I got an apartment. My brother raises cattle. But my most fundamental connection with barbecue is all about the…sauce.
I loved barbecue sauce so wholeheartedly that as a kid I wanted it with every meal, to the point that my mom restricted my intake to one ramekin. “Why not more?” I asked her.
“I don’t know,” she replied. “It just seems like a lot.”
So I was floating when I saw one of the area’s newest barbecue spots, The Smoke Point BBQ & Provisions in San Juan Bautista, welcomes guests with a sign announcing five different homemade sauces: Central Texas, Kansas City, North Carolina, South Carolina and a white sauce, typically an Alabama creation.
Sauces are a major point of contention among ’cue connoisseurs, like my companion on my first visit. “That’s too many choices,” he said. “They should do one or two really good sauces.”
The Smoke Point sauces provide a shorthand tour of the most prominent styles of barbecue in the United States, from the minimal saucemaximum smoking approach popular in Central Texas to the mustard sauce-and-whole-hog enthusiasm of South Carolina.
In California—outside of Santa Maria and its oak-fired tri-tip on handcrank adjustable grills—there’s no clear differentiation like those that distinguish other parts of the country. Barbecue aficionados like chef/veteran traveler Matt Glazer (see sidebar, p. 47) can testify.
“I’ve experienced all the identifiable American barbecue cultures and love them deeply,” he says. “This funky state, apart from Santa Maria, is a melting pot of barbecue culture.”
I feel lucky to be open to all of them. And I feel that much luckier that The Smoke Point has given the tiny town huge flavor, creativity and a newborn barbecue sense of self.
Chef Jarad Gallagher is similarly stoked. After earning Michelin stars while cheffing at places like Michael Mina and Plumed Horse he swore off the pressures of upper echelon restaurants to set up shop here on a tumbleweed street.
“When we think of great food and spending time with our families, we think of barbecue,” he says.
But he aspires to do more than classic barbecue.
“There’s enough ribs and brisket,” he says. “This is not me entering into the sector and cannibalizing other people’s businesses by doing the same thing. I have the experience and the training to do something different.”
It’s working, in a way you could call chef-driven. His Fourth Street spot enjoys a family vibe (I warned you, it’s a theme), with lots of regulars and his little daughter running around while his sister and brother-inlaw serve guests and smoke meats. A mural honors native tribes, which helped inspire The Smoke Point’s hummingbird symbol. The smart cocktail program stars whiskeys and scotch. The “provisions” from Mary Risavi of Wise Goat Organics—sauces, spices, soaps, lotions and more— are well-curated. The Dr. Pepperoncini sandwich (with white Cheddar and crispy onions) or the burger (with Angus brisket and chuck) almost outclasses the big meats.
On my tray a food festival unfolds: macaroni salad, pickled onions, thick ribs, lip-smacking brisket, jalapeño-cheddar sausage, zingy coleslaw, tender pulled pork and moist smoked turkey. I sit on the sunny back deck overlooking another reason to love The Smoke Point: its pavilion-to-be. The backyard is as big as the restaurant and tidy front patio combined, and Gallagher aims to seat up to 100 and build a stage for live music.
The popularity of The Smoke Point, which debuted in November, comes at a time when many would guess barbecue enthusiasm—at least in crunchy coastal California—would be fading in the face of rising meat costs and plant-based eating. But it’s one of several ’cue debuts that suggest otherwise.
Seaside’s By the Bay BBQ came into being as a ghost-kitchen concept last fall amid the pandemic. Chef-partner Danny Abbruzzese draws from two decades of personal Southern history and collaborates with pit master Paul Van Langen to smoke brisket and other goodies up to 19 hours. Meanwhile, he has created a powerhouse lineup of side dishes: robust ham-hock collard greens, pork belly baked beans, black-eyed peas, house bread and butter, pickles and more.
Clockwise from top left: tower of ribs at The Smoke Point in San Juan Bautista; Smoke Point chef Jarad Gallagher; a barbecue plate, kitchen action and chef Danny Abbruzzese from By the Bay BBQ in Seaside.
After directing pioneering properties like Asilomar Conference Grounds and Portola Hotel (where he still runs food and beverage), Abbruzzese knows his craft. And growing up in an Italian kitchen in Brooklyn primed him nicely to absorb the flavors of the South. “I had an affinity for the really homey powerful flavors, done fresh,” he says.
Like many chefs featured here, he focuses on natural flavors and textures, which is different than the saucy style favored by many on the West Coast. “That’s what smoking is all about,” he says.
Back in Prunedale, 101 Wine Press was born just ahead of COVID. The Olson family behind the eponymous vineyard wanted a place to showcase its pinots and chardonnays and crafted a clean and contemporary space on San Miguel Canyon Road pairing vino with Santa Maria-style barbecue and eight craft beers on draft.
The chicken, tri-tip and sausage meals are sturdy, as are the bigger combo meals and “fully loaded” baked potatoes. The menu also dips into jalapeño mac and cheese with pepper Jack, fontina, Cheddar and bacon, and the tasty El Jefe I tried with tri-tip and fontina on garlic bread. Another trendy twist: the adult Capri Suns like the “Unicorn” with white sangria, all-natural butterfly tea and edible purple glitter.
Kevin Olson started the winery and his son Nick manages the spot. “Vineyard barbecuing is what we as a family know best,” Nick says. “We’ve been barbecuing for each other since I was a kid.”
While Elroy’s Fine Foods isn’t a barbecue joint—it joined Monterey as a gourmet grocery store last August—given the staff enthusiasm for the massive new Grillworks grill and all the flavor they pump from it, it merits mention.
Over mostly almond wood, a team led by grill master and Carmel Belle alum Roberto Aquino smoke salmon and trout, and grill tritip, chicken, ribs and vegetables, with hoisin pork kebabs making for a popular recent addition.
“You get all the smoky flavors, you caramelize the sugars in vegetables, especially onions,” co-owner/operator Jay Dolata says. “It’s cooking the way nature intended.”
As I toured the tri-county area, the theme of family remained the most persistent. The biggest family of barbecue places is owned by the Gilroy-based Ingram family—Lawrence Jr. and his sons Eric, Franz and Larry. Salinas City BBQ, where I had a dynamite gaucho sandwich with grilled onion, provolone and house chimichurri, wins votes as the best in Monterey County, but so does its sister spot, relatively new Crossroads BBQ. You could make a compelling case that Aptos St. BBQ and Mission St. BBQ—where I loved the textbook ribs, beans, brisket and beer—are the best representatives in their respective cities. It’s hard to argue with their formula for success across each property: No shortcuts. Slow smoking done daily. Expansive craft draft beer options with standout local brands like Sante Adairius and Alvarado Street Brewing. Live blues-leaning music whenever possible.
Out in Hollister, Mike Mansmith starts smoking his brisket for the Wednesday farmers’ market 15 hours ahead of time. (He also does St. Louis-style ribs, chicken and pork shoulder.) But you can make the case his barbecue started far earlier, before he graduated high school and launched what’s become a 30-year career. Barbecue sauce is in his blood, you might say.
Decades back, Mansmith’s parents created the celebrated grilling spices of the same name, so he started cooking to showcase them and hasn’t looked back. At the farmers’ market and his popular Friday and Saturday oak-fired cookouts noon–7pm at 2410 Airline Highway, they figure into every preparation. The family brand barbecue paste, meanwhile, unleashes all sorts of possibilities: Mansmith dilutes with everything from apricot syrup and orange juice to smoked molasses and Karo syrup.
His weekly appearances and catering gigs—and a tri-tip sandwich that calls for a half-pound—take him through 70,000 pounds a year. “Honestly it just boils down to quality,” he says. “If you can give someone a quality item at a reasonable rate, you’ve got something really good.”
In Carmel, a family operation has spawned its own family of barbecue options. The recipe at Bruno’s Market functions so
Holy Smokes Country BBQ in Santa Cruz and its soon-tobe-famous barbecued pork belly sandwich.
smoothly, third generation businessman Ryan
Sanchez exported it to his Valley Hills Deli & BBQ and Corral Market & Deli, featuring all the same breads, meats and techniques.
“If it’s working, why mess with the formula?” Sanchez says. The key to the flagship tritip sandwich, rather than a rub, is an atypical teriyaki marinade that lasts three days. While his grilling game has evolved from propane to oak-fired, the marinade has been the same since the 1990s when Sanchez was manning the grill as a kid. Another crucial consideration: cutting against the grain to enhance tenderness.
“It’s fun being a part of a legacy that started with my grandpa,” Sanchez says. “We’ve evolved with the world but the vibe my grandpa created hasn’t left. The energy still lives there.”
People have different reactions when I explain that I aim to eat all the Monterey Bay barbecue. Some chuckle. Some show pity. Some are thrilled, and launch into soliloquies on the importance of burnt ends. And many ask, so what’s the best spot?
Prunedale, with its unreal juxtaposition of Prunedale Market & Deli and 101 Wine Press—one no-frills and bizarrely famous, the other sparkling and locally adored—is right near the top. New Monterey’s Coast Guard Pier, having hatched Bon Ton L’Roy’s Lighthouse Smokehouse (which moved up the street) and now home to PigWizard’s wholehog roasts, deserves a footnote.
But in the end the best destination is somehow mid-Santa Cruz County thanks to three major barbecue destinations. Cole’s is the most
time-honored spot in this stretch of California, and does fittingly old-fashioned saucy ribs and some of the best chicken I’ve tried during this odyssey. The service is welcoming, and the burger is locally famous. Aptos St. Barbeque ranks as a favorite destination among foodies; there are also rumors it’s bringing back the best live music schedule of any barbecue place around. And Holy Smokes Country BBQ & Catering is one of my favorite spots on many fronts: It enjoys great classics and creative specials alike (note the “BBQ Sundae”), killer ambiance, outstanding local craft beer, superior sauces and an awesome beer/barbecue garden, and it is owned and operated by a family that clearly loves what they do.
Still, if this mission revealed anything about barbecue, it comes back to that: family. So while I’ll drive to Santa Cruz for Holy Smokes’ barbecued pork belly sandwich with tomato aioli and spicy vinegar slaw, my most preferred spot to enjoy barbecue will forever be in the backyard with family, unlimited sauce included.
It takes a while for Matt Glazer to pause long enough to compose his recipe. So it goes for the general manager of a storied property experiencing a rebirth—one minute he’s delivering signature Benedicts to a three top of diners, ecstatic breakfast service has returned, next he’s fielding a printer delivery, then he’s directing guests to check-in and free coffee.
But once he finds a moment, the recipe flows like the Little Sur after a rain. He scribbles it with a Sharpie on a piece of cardboard in less than two minutes. It’s a reminder that even as he lives several lives—dad (“That’s definitely first on the list,” he says), community servant (“Lots of boards!”) and general manager of Deetjen’s Big Sur Inn (“Hospitality management isn’t as sexy as cheffing, but it’s my passion”)—he’s still a chef who loves playing with fire.
“Barbecue sauce recipes are a very intimate thing,” Glazer says. “I’m totally willing to talk about methods and general proportion and use the term ‘two tablespoons of spice blend,’ but that’s as much as you get.” Fortunately, as Edible stayed after him, he relented with the details of the blend. —Mark C. Anderson
1. OPEN YOUR GRILL.
Grilling should involve way more than meat. Glazer proposes fish, bacon, romaine lettuce, even a tart lemon loaf, sliced, grilled and topped with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. “That’d be delicious!” he says. “Anything you can eat, you can grill.”
2. KNOW YOUR SOURCE. He doesn’t diss gas grills, saying they’re a great appliance that makes it easier for non-pros to focus on technique. But he goes for charcoal or wood to impart more flavor. Charcoal can be more consistent; wood offers more flavor; in a perfect world, he prefers seasoned white oak, with kindling from fruit and nut trees.
3. COOL IT ON THE CHARCOAL. People go a little ham on the coals. “You don’t have to use the whole sack!” Glazer says. “Then you jack it to 2,000°, burn burgers, leave them raw inside and everyone walks away with E. coli.” Start with a pile of briquettes roughly equal in size to what you’re cooking.
4. RULE THE FUEL. You don’t want to use hickory for romaine, he points out, as you “might funktify your salad.” Use charcoal or oak. Hickory would serve much better on pork tenderloin or tri-tip or turkey.
1 pint ketchup
2 ounces brown sugar
1 ounce apple cider vinegar
2 ounces spice blend*
*Blend paprika, smoked paprika, mustard powder, garlic powder, onion powder, cayenne, chili powder, dried thyme and smoked salt.
5. MIND THE TEMP.
Pay attention to the amount of fuel, how much you add, how it burns down and how you transfer your food around the surface. “Why is a Weber grill a dome with a vent you can reposition?” he asks. “That’s not an accident. It keeps the heat circulating how you want.” COVID bonus tip: Use the digital thermometer guns for the grill, as cooking is their intended use, not on foreheads. Aim between 375° F and 475° F for most dishes.
6. QUIT FLIPPING.
Playing with your food is over-rated. Every reposition multiplies inconsistency in your dish. It can also tear skin and screw up presentation. Move a burger or steak or piece of chicken three times max.
7. LET THE GRILL CHILL.
New rule: Just because you’re starting something on a grill doesn’t mean you have to finish it there, and vice versa. “Think of grilling as an ingredient,” Glazer says. And other techniques as expedients: “I’m not cooking brisket all the way on the grill, no one has that kind of time!” he adds. Instant pots can be very helpful, for instance, after a sear on the grill.
8. FOLLOW DIRECTION.
With high activity muscles like a tri-tip, go against the grain and it will emerge far more tender. “People cut straight across like it’s a banana,” he says. “It’s not a banana. Nothing is lower pleasure than getting tri-tip sliced with the grain.”
9. LET IT REST.
Think about how the moisture in meat works, Glazer advises. Heat pushes it up. When a piece of meat can sit, what he calls “flavor water” distributes in the piece evenly. Five to 10 minutes works, no cover necessary. “It’s a real thing,” he says.
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A twist on the traditional barbecue side
Coleslaw is too often a thick, mayo-heavy side dish with cabbage, carrots and nothing else. Mayonnaise is good for binding the cabbage together, but in this version a lot of acid is added so it becomes a lighter dressing. Lime juice and apple cider vinegar are used for a wonderfully tangy, but still creamy coleslaw that is packed with flavor thanks to crumbly Cotija cheese, cilantro, green onions and the real kicker: charred summer corn. Top it off with roasted peanuts for crunch and you have a summer slaw your guests will love.
3 ears of corn, shucked
½ cup mayonnaise
2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
Juice of 2 limes (about ¼ cup)
2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
2 teaspoons granulated white sugar
¼ teaspoon ground cumin
1⁄8 teaspoon ground cayenne pepper
1⁄8 teaspoon black pepper
½ small head green cabbage, thinly sliced (about 2 cups)
½ small head purple cabbage, thinly sliced (about 2 cups)
1 jalapeño, seeded and minced
1 bunch cilantro, finely chopped
3 green onions, thinly sliced
4 ounces Cotija cheese, crumbled ¼ cup roasted peanuts, chopped
Preheat an outdoor grill to high (500° F) heat. Place the corn on the grill for 2–3 minutes per side, until charred all over. Set aside to cool.
In a medium bowl, combine mayonnaise, mustard, lime juice, vinegar, sugar, cumin, cayenne and black pepper. Whisk well to combine.
In a separate large bowl, place the cabbages, jalapeño, cilantro and green onions. Cut the corn off the cob and add it to the bowl.
Pour ¼ cup of the dressing over the cabbage mixture. Toss to combine. Add more dressing until desired level of creaminess is achieved. Toss in the Cotija cheese.
Cover and refrigerate for at least 1 hour to allow flavors to incorporate.
Sprinkle peanuts over top when ready to serve. Serves 4–6.
Caroline Chambers grew up in North Carolina, where she was raised on the robust flavors of the South. She has owned and operated a farmto-table catering company in San Diego and has worked as a recipe developer and stylist for publications and brands including The New York Times, Robert Mondavi Wine, Food Network and Magic Chef. She currently lives in Carmel Valley with her husband George, two sons, a dog and ten chickens.
While salmon gets much of our summer seafood love, don’t overlook the other seasonal catch
BY KATHRYN MCKENZIE PHOTOGRAPHY BY DAVID HILLSThe local flatfish that we think of as halibut actually suffers from an identity crisis, and it’s confusing for consumers.
What is commonly called California halibut (Paralichthys californicus) and is caught in Monterey Bay waters is identified on fishery websites as California flounder. Go to the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch and you’ll learn the same fish is also referred to as Monterey halibut, hirame, karei and Southern halibut. (No word on how one fish managed to wind up with so many names.)
To make it even more confounding, when people talk about halibut, they’re often referring to Pacific halibut, which is better known and better marketed to consumers, but the much larger Pacific halibut is not a local catch. It can be found in the waters north of Fort Bragg and up to Alaska.
So when you go looking for Monterey Bay halibut, it’s California halibut … er, flounder … that you’re after.
Summertime is halibut season, and it’s also salmon season, which is why these two fish often end up side by side on restaurant menus in this area. And there’s a reason for that beyond the seasonality, according to Alan Lovewell of Real Good Fish in
Moss Landing, a community supported fishery (CSF) that sells fishermen’s catch directly to consumers.
Despite the perception that salmon is a superior type of seafood, Lovewell says that not everyone loves it, and in fact, many diners prefer the leaner white fish. “A lot of people will only eat halibut, restaurants really seek it out,” says Lovewell. “They want to have that mild white fish on the menu.”
For chefs like Tom McNary of Santa Cruz’s Soif, halibut is always a favorite because it can be prepared in a variety of ways and is versatile in numerous dishes.
“It’s such a mellow fish—it’s like a blank canvas for chefs,” says McNary, who notes that halibut can be dressed up with everything from a delicate butter sauce to stronger accents, such as tomatoes and olives.
Halibut is an agreeable fish in ways even beyond its deliciousness. It’s a heart-healthy choice for diners, containing bountiful amounts of omega-3 fatty acids, selenium and niacin. All three help combat the chronic inflammation which can lead to heart disease, according to healthline.com, and it provides a good chunk of low-fat protein to boot.
Halibut also has the advantage of being a no-drama offering when it comes to environmental concerns, at least in fresh catch from the Pacific Ocean. These fish are caught commercially in Monterey Bay using hook-and-line methods, and Seafood Watch designates handline-caught halibut a “Best Choice.” The state Department of Fish and Wildlife manages California halibut to ensure that populations are fished sustainably and is able to keep the season open year-round for commercial hook-and-line operations as well as recreational fishing.
Sandy sea floors are the usual habitat for California halibut. Like other types of flatfish, its hatchlings start life looking like regular fish, but before long, one eye migrates so that both end up on the same side. The baby halibut becomes a flatfish, settles happily on bay bottoms and lies in wait to lunge at unwary squid or anchovies that happen to swim by.
That’s why summer tends to be California halibut season, says Lovewell. As soon as the squid reappear in Monterey Bay, so do the halibut.
Cody Reed, a local fisherman who sells his fresh catch off the Rdock in Santa Cruz Harbor, confirms that the halibut follow squid spawns. That’s why he looks carefully at where the squid go. “Halibut season really starts around the end of May and goes right up to the first storms,” says Reed.
Reed uses rod and reel to catch halibut, using trolling and drift
methods, and says halibut favor sandy bottoms near reefs, “but there are a lot of variables.”
Since he sells whole fish off the dock, sometimes it’s hard to find buyers for the really big halibut, which can get up to 40 pounds or more. But, Reed says, if you don’t mind taking a larger halibut, he recommends it: “The bigger ones have better, thicker fillets.” People can see what he’s catching at reedfamilyfisheries.com and on Instagram, and they can sign up to reserve fish through the website. (To find fresh halibut at other places around Monterey Bay, check out the lists at montereybayfisheriestrust.org/local-catch-guide which includes dock sales, CSFs, fish markets and fishmongers, grocery stores and restaurants.)
If you’d rather fish for your own halibut, that’s a good option, according to Jim Hendricks of Salt Water Sportsman, who writes that the trick is to always keep your bait moving: “California halibut respond to visual cues as a house cat does to yarn.”
Halibut is generally easy to find during the summer months, whether you’re buying off the dock, from local seafood purveyors such as Real Good Fish or catching your own. However, some consumers still hesitate because of halibut’s tendency to dry out easily—a complaint that home cooks have about white fish in general.
The trick to preparing halibut is all in the timing, says McNary. He doesn’t recommend it for grilling because the tender fish has a tendency to fall apart when cooked, although he says it’s possible with “a really clean barbecue grill that’s well-oiled and well-seasoned.” Or try grilling on a cedar plank.
Because of its mild flavor, halibut can be used in everything from chowders (like the recipe McNary supplied for this issue) to sandwiches, tacos and salads, as well as served as a main course.
One of McNary’s favorite ways to cook halibut is to pan-sear it in a well-seasoned cast iron pan, dredging the fish in a little flour, and heating oil in the pan to start but then adding a little butter. “This gives it a crisp crust. I really like that texture,” says McNary. The critical factor is keeping cooking times short—4 minutes per side in the pan—and taking it off the heat as soon as it turns opaque.
Before cooking, try sprinkling fillets with a little salt, wrapping them in paper towels and refrigerating for an hour or two. Salt draws out excess moisture and firms up the fish, resulting in a flakier—less mushy— fillet to work with.
Baking and broiling are also viable options, but home cooks should keep a careful eye on the time to avoid overcooking. It’s also important to buy fresh fish whenever possible rather than frozen, because the freezing process dries out the fillets or may make them mushy.
It can be a fine line between cooked and overcooked; McNary suggests experimenting to get it just right.
“And if it doesn’t come out right, don’t be scared of it. Try again,” he says.
Fish are caught commercially in Monterey Bay using hook-and-line methods.
Courtesy Tom McNary, executive chef, Soif in Santa Cruz
½ pound bacon, diced
2 cups leeks, sliced
1 cup yellow onion, diced
1½ cups yukon gold potatoes, diced
1½ cups russet potatoes, diced
3 cups fish or vegetable stock
1 cup heavy cream
½ cup milk
Salt and pepper, to taste
1½ pounds halibut
2 tablespoons flour
1 tablespoon thyme
1 bay leaf
2 ears of corn
Scallions, sliced diagonally
Combine stock, cream and milk and simmer.
Cook diced bacon until crisp, remove bacon from grease and drain on paper towels.
Sauté leeks and onion in 2 tablespoons of bacon fat until soft. Sprinkle in the flour to form a roux and stir until flour has a nutty smell. Add the warm stock, cream and milk. Add diced potatoes. Add thyme and bay leaf.
Season with salt and pepper. Simmer until potatoes are easily pierced with fork. If it is too thick, add more stock.
Cut corn from the cobs and dice halibut into 1½-inch pieces. Add halibut and corn to the soup and simmer for 5 minutes.
Serve topped with the bacon pieces and sliced scallions. Add hot sauce of choice to taste, if desired. Serves 4–6.
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Dehydrated pizzas reconstituted at the push of a button. A cup of Earl Grey tea materializing out of thin air. Nutritious green wafers of questionable origin. Science fiction offers tantalizing teases for the future of food.
Our modern food system may not offer these just yet, but some culinary innovations have turned fiction into fact. Biotechnology has given us a growing menu of alternative “meats.” Robots can grill our burgers to order. Social media instantly connects us with chefs and cuisines halfway around the world.
And the restaurant itself has evolved in fits and spurts since its emergence in the late 18th century. The traditional model of being greeted by a host, ordering your selections with waitstaff, enjoying course after course seated at your table and receiving the bill as the meal’s final flourish has been giving way to fast food, counter service, street vendors, food trucks, pop-ups and more.
Restaurants are again poised for an upgrade as they enter a new digitally driven era—increasingly, they’re abandoning brick and mortar altogether and going virtual.
Virtual restaurants offer diners a menu of options, but only for pickup and delivery. Instead of sitting at a table and ordering from a server, you scroll, click or tap a webpage or app to make your selections. After a short wait, your food is available for curbside pickup or a courier brings it directly to your door.
If this concept seems familiar, the pandemic saw most restaurants pivot to this model out of necessity when regulators ordered dining rooms shuttered. But even prepandemic, virtual restaurants were growing
in popularity in response to the costly overhead of opening and operating a physical establishment. The rise of virtual eateries was the logical evolution of the pop-up restaurant model—many virtual restaurants operate inside other restaurants or commercial food facilities, just like a pop-up.
Popular fried chicken delivery service Kickin Chicken in Santa Cruz was an early pioneer of virtual operations on the Central Coast. But the past year has seen several new virtual food businesses debut. Some are entirely new concepts, like By the Bay BBQ operating out of the kitchen at Seaside Seafood Market. Others
Ghost kitchens and virtual restaurants bring Monterey County a taste of the future
repackage their signature dishes under a second brand—Archie’s Eatery runs La Dolce Vita, International Cuisine has Pizza Pasta Mama Mia and The Halal Lovers, and SUR operates Barnyard Chicken & Waffles. These virtual concepts have straightforward names and menus that are designed around search engine optimization to help hungry diners quickly connect to spots that will satisfy specific cravings.
Aquino’s Birrieria has emerged as one of the Monterey Peninsula’s most popular virtual restaurants.
Owner Gustavo Aquino and his family launched the business last March. “We lost our jobs due to the pandemic,” he explains. “My whole family worked in restaurants. We were bored at home staying inside with everything shut down. We don’t like to be bored at home.” He leveraged his sizable social media following and background in social media marketing, alongside his father Macario’s 20plus years of experience in restaurant kitchens and his mother Paulina Bernadino’s baking skills, to launch a home-based pop-up.
As with most virtual eateries, the menu is narrowly focused. Aquino’s Birrieria specializes in Mexican birria, the popular slowcooked stew. While traditionally made with goat, Aquino uses his mother’s recipe for beef birria, cooked for four to five hours in a rich chile pepper broth called consomé.
Birria has become an Instagram sensation with countless photos and videos showing cheesy quesabirria tacos dunked into crimson consomé. Aquino chose Instagram (@aquinosbirrieriallc) as the platform for his burgeoning birria business, taking orders by direct message on the platform. “A lot of the bigger players like to use apps, but their fees are pretty high,” he explains. “Instagram is free and one of the best ways to go viral.” Aquino handles pickup and delivery directly without a pricey third-party intermediary. He also takes orders by text message for those without an Instagram account.
As demand outpaced the capacity of their home kitchen—and recognizing microenterprise home kitchens aren’t technically allowed in Monterey County yet—Aquino set out to secure a commercial kitchen for production.
In January, he transitioned Aquino’s Birrieria operations to the CA Catering Services (formerly Aqua Terra Culinary) kitchen in Pacific Grove. “They were doing catering for big events, but those events were shut down because of the pandemic, so they were looking for people to rent out the space,” explains Aquino. “We’re a ghost kitchen. People see the building, but don’t expect anything to come from there.”
As a business owner, Aquino finds this virtual model appealing, citing the low overhead costs and flexibility (the birrieria is only open Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday). But he misses seeing reactions to the food firsthand. “When I go to a restaurant, I like to go to a specific place because I like the service there, the people there,” he explains. “That’s the one thing that’s missing here. You don’t have that traditional interaction.” While he can’t be there when a diner unboxes their meal, Aquino does make a point of intro-
ducing himself to patrons when they pick up their food. Engaging with his regulars on Instagram has been critical in building relationships. “They say ‘location, location, location’ for restaurants, but with ghost kitchens like ours, we have the following, and a lot of people buying from us live in Seaside, but they come to PG. That surprised me.”
Thanks to the birrieria’s success, Aquino and his family will soon open a brick-andmortar restaurant in Pacific Grove. “We always wanted to have our own restaurant. The ghost kitchen gave us a shot at trying out what people might like and testing menu items before putting in a lot of time, money and labor to open up a restaurant.”
Virtual restaurants operate symbiotically with ghost kitchens—facilities licensed and inspected by local authorities for commercial food prep. Some ghost kitchens are standalone operations, some are shared spaces, some are portable mobile units, but they’re all strategically situated for convenience of pickup and delivery. From the outside, a ghost kitchen is often nondescript—no flashy signage is needed to entice passersby—but inside, a culinary crew churns away as tablets chime with online orders.
The tech sector is betting big on ghost kitchens. Several startups have raised serious capital to deploy ghost kitchens in major cities. Companies like CloudKitchens and REEF kitchens rent out food prep facilities. Kitch is an online “matchmaker” service that helps virtual restaurateurs secure available kitchens. Point-of-sale company Ordermark licenses prefabricated menus for restaurants with its Nextbite platform of virtual menus.
Established national brands have dipped their toes into virtual operations. Many have launched new brands that leverage existing
kitchen ingredients and staff to sell a separate menu. Denny’s operates a virtual burger business, The Burger Den. Chili’s offers its signature chicken wings for pickup and delivery under the label It’s Just Wings. Chuck E. Cheese seeks a more grown-up clientele with its virtual Pasqually’s Pizza & Wings brand. These virtual brands generate additional revenue without extensive investment in new infrastructure to open another franchise.
As such, some have framed these app-driven kitchens as nefarious antagonists. Will the wave of digital franchises drown out small, independent local operations? Not if René Diaz has anything to say about it.
The Diaz family has deep roots in local hospitality. In 1963, Jennie and Dean Sr. opened Plaza Linda. For more than 40 years and three generations, the Diazes operated the popular Mexican restaurant in Carmel Valley. While the Plaza Linda property and brand changed hands in 2007, the family has kept tabs on the local dining scene—René’s brother Robert has a contract for food service at the Presidio of Monterey and has operated World Café DLI at the base for more than 10
years. Meantime, René has seen nationwide chains ride trending tastes to outcompete mom-and-pop businesses, “The big guys get in and push out small businesses and families. That transition? We’ve been there.”
In January, the Diaz family resurrected its beloved “PL” recipes for the digital generation as Plaza Diaz. For four months, the virtual restaurant operated out of the same catering kitchen as Aquino’s Birrieria. It afforded the Diaz family the chance to reconnect with regulars from the original Plaza Linda and explore a more full-blown return to business. “We love it,” says René. “We’re reconnecting with so many people who ate at the restaurant.”
Like Aquino, Diaz found the flexibility appealing—“As a family we could operate it together and control our hours”—but he also appreciated the streamlined finances that could pass savings along to diners. “We don’t have the overhead of a standard restaurant or even a quick-service concept,” he says. “It’s just the kitchen. No plates to wash, no glassware to manage—it’s just to-go containers.”
In May, Plaza Diaz moved to a new location—Monterey’s Red Lion Hotel on Munras Avenue near Highway 1.
“In the delivery and pickup world, you have to be centrally located,” he explains. “The Red Lion Hotel represents the center of the peninsula. From there, I can hit every single house delivery-wise. I couldn’t do that in PG.”
Here, Diaz can take advantage of a spacious kitchen that’s shared with the hotel’s two dining properties—the forthcoming Crazy Horse Mexican Grill and eventually the replacement for its Safari Club bar and lounge—to increase capacity, menu and reach for Plaza Diaz. But, critically, the larger kitchen has also allowed Diaz to expand into new virtual operations.
René, Robert and family operate Mid Coast Supply Inc., which licenses recipes from chefs and restaurants for virtual operations. “Pick your favorite items and I can do it out of this kitchen,” says Diaz. “It’s your menu, your recipes, your items—but we’re the manufacturers.”
Diaz’s first clients are homegrown Caesars Etc. and national franchise MrBeast Burger.
Diaz worked with longtime friend chef Mike Dunn to make favorites from Dunn’s Caesars Etc. catering company accessible outside of special events. Calamari fries and wraps are selections now available for pickup and delivery.
MrBeast Burger is a chain of virtual eateries from YouTube celebrity MrBeast (Jimmy Donaldson) and Virtual Dining Concepts—
the same company behind virtual concepts from other celebrities, like Tyga Bites, Mariah’s Cookies and Mario’s Tortas Lopez. Restaurants and ghost kitchens license the celebrity-endorsed recipes that can be made from ingredients they already stock, providing a new revenue stream that runs in tandem with their primary operation. For Diaz, MrBeast Burger is a strategic partnership that helps support his family’s passion project, Plaza Diaz.
Diaz’s portfolio is growing. He’s brought onboard Brad Kreitler—previously executive chef at Rocky Point—to assist with kitchen operations and shepherd a new virtual brand focused on seafood.
Some prognosticators have warned of a post-pandemic dining landscape with only apps and franchises remaining. Critics find virtual restaurants and ghost kitchens ominous and impersonal, but Diaz is quick to humanize the nascent industry and show the face of the electronic entrepreneur behind the screen. And both Aquino and Diaz have made it clear that small, independent operators can still compete against the tech titans in this new digital future that keeps local hospitality alive and well.
Raúl Nava (he/him/él) is a freelance writer covering dining and restaurants across the Central Coast. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram @offthemenu831.
A virtual restaurant is a restaurant with a menu strictly available for pickup and/or delivery. These establishments don’t offer dine-in service and lack a dining room entirely. A virtual restaurant may operate from a traditional restaurant kitchen or from a ghost kitchen (see below).
Both traditional brick-and-mortar restaurants and virtual restaurants may license a virtual menu or a virtual franchise —a selection of dishes or even an entire concept for production in a ghost kitchen (see below). This is a cost-effective way of expanding a brand beyond a single location.
A ghost kitchen is a food preparation facility that rents kitchen space to chefs and restaurateurs. A ghost kitchen may host a virtual restaurant— sometimes even several virtual concepts at once—with food for curbside pickup and/or delivery. Ghost kitchens must meet the same inspection requirements of a traditional restaurant.
A commissary kitchen is a shared commercial kitchen workspace. Like a ghost kitchen, it may offer food preparation equipment for rent to chefs and specialized food artisans. Regular, direct-to-consumer pickup and delivery typically distinguishes a ghost kitchen from a commissary kitchen, however, the two terms are often used interchangeably. Commercial commissary kitchens must meet the same inspection requirements of a traditional restaurant.
A microenterprise home kitchen operation (MEHKO) is a home-based food business offering homemade food for sale directly to customers. These operations are permitted under California’s Homemade Food Act (AB 626). However, this law requires individual counties to pass local ordinances permitting MEHKOs. To date, Monterey, San Benito and Santa Cruz counties have not passed ordinances to allow MEHKOs, however, many home-based pop-ups do operate throughout the Central Coast and post flash sales on Instagram and other social media platforms.
How we inhabit this planet and envision its future is more critical now than at any time in our history. This past year has certainly taught us that—it has exposed our vulnerabilities, our frail insignificance in the scheme of things. Yet during this turbulent and challenging time we have also found hope.
On the following pages, we bring you the first in a series of thought leadership stories that span topics on sustainability, hunger, restaurant revitalization and regenerative agriculture. These are the values that Edible Communities, as an organization, has been devoted to for the past two decades. Our work lends itself to the singular notion that excellent storytelling has the power to change lives; and that by exploring and elevating important conversations like these, we can create massive change.
We also know that change is impossible without the support of our readers
—consumers who have the power to reshape the world we live in. Every farmer, rancher, entrepreneur and organization we champion is better off because of you. You read, learn, take action and vote with your forks. It will be you who ultimately tilts the scale toward a more sustainable future, a more sustainable food system.
Thank you for joining us as we collectively set our sights on creating a future that is nothing less than extraordinary. One that binds the ecosystems of our lives to Mother Nature without a disconnect between what is on our plates and where it comes from—where all of the seemingly smaller choices we make today add up to massive, beautiful and everlasting positive change.
Tracey Ryder Co-Founder, Edible CommunitiesYou’ve seen the headlines: Beef is destroying the planet. You’ve heard all about the greenhouse gases and pollution a typical beef operation produces. But the idea that beef is an environmental disaster isn’t quite that simple. Those dire warnings are based on one kind of beef: The conventional, factory-farmed kind. And it is, by far, the most commonly consumed beef in North America. In fact, 97% of the beef in the US food supply is grain-fed, feedlot beef.
But there’s another way to produce beef, a way that actually enriches the environment. And it’s happening across at least 3.5 million acres of American grassland. Kay Cornelius, a fourth-generation rancher and new general manager at Panorama Meats, intends to add another million acres to that total by 2030 through a groundbreaking new partnership with an unlikely ally: The National Audubon Society.
“All of our data proves that grassland birds are the most imperiled group of bird species in America. Grassland birds have lost 53% of their population since 1970, and 95% of all grassland birds live on cattle ranches,” says Marshall Johnson, vicepresident of Audubon’s conservation ranching initiative. The nonprofit’s “Grazed on Audubon Certified Bird-friendly Land” seal was established to recognize ranches that are managed in a way that protects those birds. Saving these birds is a vital part of maintaining biodiversity. Like bees, birds are important pollinators, and they help maintain the delicate balance of a grassland ecosystem.
Through Audubon’s new partnership with Panorama, every ranch in Panorama’s network will earn that Grazed on Audubon Certified Bird-friendly Land seal. “We began the project of introducing this certification in 2013, and we enrolled our first ranch in 2017,” says Johnson. Joining forces with Panorama
now means adding 1 million acres of land to the 2.5 million acres that have already been certified as bird-friendly. “It means a lot to partner with an organization that has built its brand in alignment with our core values,” says Johnson.
Darrell Wood, founding Panorama rancher, was the first in the network to get certified. “I volunteered. I wanted to see how it went and what the level of difficulty would be for ranchers,” he says. And he discovered the benefits greatly outweighed any extra effort. In large part, the certification is an acknowledgement of what Panorama ranches, all of which were already organic, have been doing for years.
As part of the program, each ranch gets an annual visit from a rangeland biologist who takes soil samples, measures the vegetation, and assesses how the ranch affects bird life. Then Audubon creates a habitat management plan for the rancher with suggestions for improvements. “The ranches enrolled are going to become even more bird friendly, but they were already doing great things,” says Johnson.
Cornelius isn’t new to dramatically growing a network of environmentally friendly farmers. Before taking the helm of Panorama Meats as general manager last September, she doubled sales in her role as vice president for the biggest and bestknown name in humanely raised meats, Niman Ranch. “I spent 12 years there working for farmers, and in my new job I’m still helping farmers earn a living,” she says.
Finding ways to grow and protect a rancher’s livelihood is a high priority for Cornelius personally and central to Panorama Meats’ mission. “I grew up in a rural community during the farm crisis years. My mom and dad really struggled,” she says. The experience of watching her once-thriving farming community dry up back then informs everything she does today. “At Niman
Ranch, we really celebrated the family farmer doing the right thing and we’re doing the same thing at Panorama.”
The simplest way to keep these family farms in business is to ensure they are able to get their product to market and to be paid a fair price. Being part of Panorama’s network helps them accomplish these goals, and the Audubon’s bird-friendly seal provides a major boost, a way to make these special packages of meat stand out from everything else in the butcher’s case for environmental conscious consumers.
Not every supermarket is stocked with grass-fed, grass-finished and bird-friendly beef—yet. If you can’t find it at your store, there are still ways to purchase sustainable steaks, chops, and burgers wherever you are. Here are some tips to get you started.
Panorama has partnered with online retailer CrowdCow.com and you can find their beef as well as meat from other high-quality sustainable ranchers there.
In many communities, smaller farmers and ranchers will sell onehalf, one-quarter, or one-eighth of a single animal to you. Check out EatWild.com to find one near you.
The connection between beef, birds, grassland, and climate change isn’t immediately obvious. To understand how a properly managed ranch can actually help remove carbon from the atmosphere, you have to understand the long history of North America’s grassland.
Before they were hunted nearly to extinction in the late 19th century, wild bison grazed an area just the right amount to promote the growth of a complex and robust root system without killing the plants. Domestic cows, if left to their own devices, will eat the grass down to the bare earth, destroying the grassland. To make them more like their ancestors, ranchers must use rotational grazing, moving them from spot to spot to achieve that ideal level of grazing. “Cattle can mimic what historic bison used to do. That’s why we need them,” says Johnson.
Farmers markets are typically a great place to connect with the kind of farmers and ranchers who are passionate about sustainability and land stewardship.
When you’re shopping, ask your butcher where the beef comes from and how it was raised. This educates you and lets them know there’s a demand for sustainable beef.
Without animals grazing, grassland becomes overwhelmed with weeds and invasive plant species. The soil quality is degraded, and animal life, birds and pollinators like bees lose their habitat. Vernal pools dry up and disappear. Without well-managed grassland, some species can even become extinct. “There’s a vernal pool on my ranch that hosts an endangered species called fairy shrimp,” says Wood. “I have a stream that goes through my property that’s one of the major salmon spawning streams in California.”
And then there’s the matter of carbon. It’s true that cows emit carbon into the atmosphere, about 80 tons annually for a ranch of 150 acres, according to the Texas Department of Agriculture. There’s also a certain amount of carbon emissions associated with the farm equipment (32 tons). But well-managed grassland, with its deep root systems, lush vegetation, and rich soil, is actually able to remove 500 tons of carbon from the atmosphere per year, giving it an overall positive effect on the environment rather than a negative one. It should be noted that this only applies to cattle ranches with high standards for land management and environmental stewardship--not conventional factory farms.
Raising beef cattle on pasture this way does take longer: Cows don’t fatten up as quickly without the grains provided by feedlots, and they expend more energy grazing than on a feedlot. It also requires more space. As a result, a rancher practicing this kind of regenerative agriculture cannot produce the same volume of beef on the same acreage as a factory farm. Their beef must therefore be sold at a premium.
The preservation of this land is important to everyone, but
these eco-minded ranchers can only protect the grassland, the birds, and the whole ecosystem it supports if they can earn a living doing it.
That’s where you come in.
The way Kay Cornelius sees it, people are looking for three things when they’re shopping for grass-fed beef. “They want to know it’s organic, they want to know that the animals were treated humanely, and they want to know about the environmental impact,” she says. “With the USDA organic seal and the Step 4 animal welfare standards, we had the first two covered.” But until this new partnership with Audubon, Panorama had no iron-clad way to convey their commitment to the environment in a way easily understood by busy shoppers.
The Grazed on Audubon Certified Bird-friendly Land seal requires third-party certification. Audubon is one of the most trusted names in conservation. This means, in an era of spurious label claims, the Audubon seal stands out as meaningful. According to Johnson, since the first ranches were enrolled in the program in 2016, bird abundance has increased on those grasslands by 36%. This is a good indication that other species, especially bees and other pollinators necessary for the food supply, are flourishing as well.
“Consumers buy grass-fed beef to vote for a change in the environment. Paying a little more for beef is a nudge in the right direction,” says Cornelius. It’s a small price to pay for doing your part to preserve America’s grassland and the birds that call it home.
Green tomatoes are a special seasonal treat. Sometimes in June, when I just cannot wait for the first tomatoes to ripen, I pluck a few to make this special condiment. In years that promise abundance from my homegrown vines, I harvest green tomatoes throughout the summer or sometimes when a dog or a child will knock a few off of the vines. In leaner years, I often wait until the end of the growing season, when I am sure that the last of the summer crop will not ripen in the cold of approaching winter.
But whatever the method or timing of the harvest, this is a lovely recipe that highlights the tart acidity and firmer texture of green tomato fruits. Choose tomatoes that are approaching ripeness, rather than very young, immature fruits. You want the fruit to have developed seeds and become somewhat shiny, so that it will be juicy and flavorful.
It’s especially delicious when fermented for just a few days on the counter, which adds a bright sparkle and zing to the condiment, as well as a healthy probiotic boost. If fermentation seems like too much to take on, however, this one is also delicious just as it is.
This is a flexible recipe and the spices can be adjusted to reflect different styles of cuisine. By omitting the fennel and going heavier on the shallots, the flavor profile skews more toward salsa. Subbing a hot curry powder for the coriander makes it a fresh foil to Indian foods. The recipe as written, however, is a happy medium, perfect served over chicken or fish, or atop a dish of lentils or rice.
4–6 large unripe green tomatoes (about 3 cups, chopped into ½-inch cubes)
1 tablespoon salt
Juice of 1 small lime
1 shallot, finely diced
2 Hungarian hot wax or jalapeño peppers, seeded and finely diced
1 frond from a single fresh fennel floret or 1/8 teaspoon dried fennel seed
2 teaspoons minced cilantro
½ inch piece fresh ginger, peeled and crushed or finely diced
½ teaspoon ground coriander
1 clove garlic, crushed
Chop the green tomatoes into fine cubes, removing the white woody core if necessary, which may be more pronounced in unripe fruit.
Place the tomatoes in a medium-sized bowl to preserve their juices and toss with the salt. Squeeze the lime juice over the tomatoes. Add the diced shallot, hot peppers, fennel, cilantro and ginger. Toss to combine. Sprinkle the coriander over the mixture and toss to mix again.
Place the crushed garlic clove at the bottom of a 24-ounce Mason jar. Pack the chutney—which by this time should be weeping a luscious green juice—tightly into the jar on top of the garlic clove. Press the chutney down gently to bring the brine up above the level of the vegetables. Weight the mixture with a ceramic or glass fermenting weight; a glass Weck jar lid works well in a pinch. Screw the lid down lightly and set the jar on the counter, out of direct sun. You can affix a jar top fermenter if desired, but this ferment goes so fast that it does not really need one. Just “burp” the jar, cracking the seal on the lid now and then to release the accumulated CO2. Allow the ferment to sit at room temperature for 2–3 days, releasing pressure as needed. Sometimes it’s useful to put the jar into a bowl or on a small baking sheet to catch any overflow brine.
This chutney is best in the early stages of fermentation. After 2–3 days, it should be moved to the refrigerator, which will halt the fermentation process. Enjoy within 2 weeks. Makes about 3 cups.
Cocktails are our jam! That’s the kind of pun a pair of thirsty homesteaders make, when surveying a pantry full of preserves. How EVER shall we make room for a new season of preserving, when last year’s jams clutter the shelves? All jokes aside, jams and jellies are a marvelous way to bring both fruit flavor and a balanced sweetness to a mixed drink, serving almost as a concentrated syrup. Jellies are clear and bright, while jams often have bits of fruit that can be strained out or left in for delightful, booze-soaked texture. There’s not much we like better than to mix up a batch of jammy cocktails and carry them out to the garden to sip with friends on a long summer evening. On the particular night that spawned this pair of pantry libations, we had no recipe in mind. Just a few jars of jam and jelly, a bottle of bitters, assorted booze and citrus, and some fizzy water. We mixed and stirred, and tasted and added another splash of lime. Just so. Here, taste mine. Oooh, I like that…
These two cocktails are kin, or dear friends like us. They go together well, but they’re not the same. One’s sweet and resolute; the other is dark and tart. One’s blonde, the other brunette. One is cousin to a mint julep, and the other is a kind of refreshing, session spritz. Whatever preserved treasures your own pantry holds, we hope that these two cocktails inspire you to ditch the toast and start spooning jam into a cocktail glass! Cheers to summer and to friends, and to another year of preserving and sharing the good times.
8 fresh mint leaves
1 ounce peach jelly or jam
2 ounces bourbon
1 ounce Meyer lemon juice
Ice
2 dashes Angostura bitters
1 sprig of mint
Place mint leaves in the bottom of a cocktail shaker or pint-sized Mason jar. Add the jelly or jam and muddle well with a long spoon to break apart the mint and create a rough paste. Add the bourbon and lemon juice and stir to combine. Add ice and quickly stir until the liquid is cold, about 30 seconds.
Pack a highball glass with crushed or pebbled ice. Strain the liquid into the serving glass. Garnish with the sprig of mint and Angostura bitters. Serve with a straw if desired. Serves 1.
2 ounces fresh lime juice
1 ounce gin (we use St. George Botanivore or Venus Blend No. 1)
2 tablespoons blackberry jam
1 tablespoon fresh ginger juice
Splash of sparkling wine, hard cider or water Slice of lime
Combine the lime juice, gin, blackberry jam and ginger juice in a highball glass. Stir well to combine. Add ice, then top with the sparkling beverage of choice. (Alternately, mix the drink in a cocktail shaker or Mason jar, then strain the liquid over the ice into the serving glass to remove the fruit pulp before topping with bubbles of choice). Garnish with a lime wheel. Serve with a straw, if desired. Serves 1.
Contributors Amber Turpin and Jessica Tunis live in the Santa Cruz Mountains and have been friends for a long time. They share a love of food and writing, adventure and good company.
