Southern California

While we find ourselves in Santa Barbara wine country, also known as the Santa Ynez Valley, about every other month or so, I can honestly say I had never been to the actual town of Santa Ynez until last month. I use the word “town” quite loosely to describe this 6-block, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it, gathering of small office buildings, shops and homes. I’ve seen it on the regional tasting map for years, but until S.Y. Kitchen moved in, there was no reason to ever go there…at least not for a tourist.

Despite its proliferation of wineries in the last  decade, the restaurant scene in the Valley just has not kept up the same pace of growth. Your high-end / non-chain options are few and far between (literally), so when we heard of this place - owned and operated by the team behind Toscana in Brentwood - we figured we would give its “modern, rustic” Italian food a try. The chefs - brothers Luca and Francesco Crestanelli - are direct from Verona, bringing their expertise to fruition in this tiny corner of wine country.

I LOVE breakfast! It’s my favorite meal of the day. How anyone can skip it is a mystery to me. However, the cost of it has gotten a bit out of hand at most places in LA, so we rarely go out to eat it when we’re at home. Plus this is a meal I have a firm grasp on as a cook. While I may not be Top Chef material, I can make a mean chilaquiles, egg mcMuffin or frittata to compete with most diners and dives out there. So when I find myself out of town, I do hard research on where to get the best breakfast - a place with interesting menu options without breaking the bank. It IS the most important meal of the day.  

We don’t go to “The Desert” (a.k.a. Palm Springs, which refers to the whole region despite the various other small cities surrounding it) very often. I mean LA is hot enough, but sometimes you just need to escape to somewhere more relaxed, where wearing a bathing suit all day is de riguer and lounging by the pool a necessity (otherwise you’d die of heat exhaustion). A quick internet search turned up Cheeky’s (the menu had me at cheddar scones), but it was too far from where we were staying and we’d never be able to make it there before 9:00am, a must if you want to beat the breakfast crowd in any city. (I am officially too old to waste time waiting in line for anything, especially something so ordinary as breakfast.) So, we were thrilled when a local friend told us about Louise’s Pantry. She said it was the best and locals always know.

I've always had a strange relationship with The Wedge. I see it on the menu, I want it, I plan to order it and then I change my mind. I'm always afraid that I'm going to get stuck with a chunk of iceberg lettuce (no nutritional value) smothered with cheap, prefab blue cheese dressing (that's neither blue nor cheese). Then suddenly, this summer, after a day at the dog-friendly Hendry's Beach in Santa Barbara – there it was – not just on the menu but at the next table – what looked like the most delicious wedge salad in the world.

I'll admit, I was hungry, beach hungry. But I'm the type who polls other diners if I like what they're eating. And diners are always willing to give me their opinion. The nearly-naked couple I talked to at the casually elegant Boathouse restaurant on this fateful summer day gave me the thumbs up (their mouths were full). But more than their thumbs up, what encouraged me most was the sparkle in their eyes. They were in wedge heaven.

"Can I get real milk?"

"Honey, you're not in LA, it's creamers or black coffee for you."

He must have been expecting a brat face back because my smile caught him off guard. He had no idea that he had said the magic words and black diner coffee was exactly what I was after.

Thom and I had both woken up at 4am to work on set on different commercials, he is a stylist and I was working as a wardrobe assistant. After our respective jobs wrapped we met up at the Bootleg Theater to see Buffy Sainte Marie, who gave everyone in the audience an out of body experience. By 12:30am we were on the road to Palm Desert, picking up our friend Merrick on the way. We got to the desert by 3am, went straight to sleep, and woke up the next day to enter Coachella.

Nightmare upon nightmare it took us three hours to get into the festival (those con artists woudn't sell single day tickets this year and it's the only year the festival has sold out) so we waited in traffic and line upon line to enter a post apocalyptic like field filled with hipsters and, well, L.A.