Full Belly Files | Eleven Tastes to Remember My May

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The clear tent housing the White Buffalo Land Trust fundraiser at Grimm’s Bluff.

Even though we’ve got another week to go, my month of May is making out to be a remarkably memorable stretch of food-and-drink fun amidst an especially action-packed year. I’m really looking forward to the next four weeks of relative calm, with only the usual articles and wine reviews to worry about — and without any major trips planned until my introductory visit to the Languedoc in France at the end of June.So using some of my favorite bites and bottles as our guide, here are 11 of my top tastes for May 2025, in chronological order.

My Cachuma Lake bass was not the one we cooked.

Oak-grilled bass @ Lake Cachuma: While camping for two of my good friends’ combined 50th birthday party, we took out a boat, and I caught a bass in front of many impressed children. We threw mine back, telling the kids that bass wasn’t great eating. But another one was caught later, so I gutted it, gave basic instructions for cooking over the fire, and was surprised at how tasty bass can be. Maybe we’ll keep more next time. (Of course, the burger at Hook’d was even better.)

Cabra al romero and Future Perfect Pinot @ Cheese the Day!: Our two Cheese the Day! events went quite well, even the one that I missed on May 14 due to a 24-hour stomach bug right in the middle of the weeklong Santa Barbara Culinary Experience week. I could list a favorite pairing for each wine, but the herb-crusted cabra went very well with this sagebrush-inflected pinot noir by Future Perfect.

From left: Ryan Roark at Demetria; Rock 12’s Victus Amaro

Industrial Eats @ Demetria and farm spirits @ Rock 12 Distillery: This was a Friday well spent, starting with a tour of Demetria and sips of their Rhône wines over pizzas, sandos, and salads from Industrial Eats. Then I visited Rock 12 Distillery for the first time, where Sarah and Marko Suput are growing apples and making booze in the middle of the Sta. Rita Hills. Both of these visits will be articles soon.

Rancho San Julian’s inaugural pinot noir

Chile relleno casserole and estate pinot noir @ Rancho San Julian: Despite the recent rise of her cookbook-writing, TV show-starring daughter, The Indy’s editor-in-chief Marianne Partridge is always the top chef during the lunches she hosts every year for the newspaper’s staff. This year’s highlight was her chile relleno casserole, paired with the inaugural release of her husband Jim Poett’s Rancho San Julian pinot noir.

From left: Mother’s Day frittata; Grassy Bar Oysters at S.B. Fish Market in Goleta

Mother’s Day and birthday bites for my wife: My wife Joanna’s birthday is May 12, which helps me remember both that and Mother’s Day every year. We started with a Sunday morning frittata, checked out The Barbara Beach Club, and lunched at The Nook at Lama Dog. For her Monday birthday, we ate Grassy Bar oysters and a soft shell po’ boy at the Santa Barbara Fish Market Café in Goleta, seared up ocean trout from the market for dinner, and finished it off with a chocolate olive oil cake by our good friend Brian Hall, known in some circles as Pattycakes.

Juniper-peppercorn venison at bouchon’s Farmer & The Cook dinner

Venison and bouchon cuvée @ The Farmer & The Cook: I was honored to moderate bouchon’s annual Farmer & the Cook dinner during SBCE this year, featuring BD Dautch from Earthtrine Farm, Clara Cadwell from Tutti Frutti, and winemakers Greg Brewer (Brewer-Clifton), Robert Daugherty (Margerum), and Marrissa Schoonover (Jaffurs). I opted for the juniper and peppercorn–crusted venison as my main dish, which came with a Jaffurs-crafted blend of syrah and petite sirah.

Alice Waters takes a photo of Chef Daniel Kim at Rincon Hill Farm.

Lion’s mane mushroom @ Rincon Hill Farm: On Friday, the morning after revealing Bobby Stuckey to be the 2025 honoree of the Julia Child Award, legendary chef Alice Waters, Julia Child Foundation Chair Eric W. Spivey, and a bunch of folks from that foundation and the Santa Barbara Culinary Experience gathered at Rincon Hill Farm in Carpinteria for a tour of the impressive property. Destined to be an event space and to be the source that feeds the kitchen for the next incarnation of The Palms, the farm is a playground for Chef Daniel Kim, who quick-fried lion’s mane mushrooms in a shiitake garum and served them alongside a selection of housemade misos. We followed that with lunch at Field & Fort in Summerland, where I made culinary history by introducing Alice Waters to the Arnold Palmer iced tea–lemonade drink.

From left: Lotusland’s Farmer Forward Dinner; Rockfish crudo at Lotusland

Vermillion rockfish crudo @ Lotusland’s Farmer Forward Dinner: Farming remained top-of-mind into the evening, when I co-hosted the Farmer Forward Dinner at Lotusland. Chef Ashley Transki from Duo Catering worked with farmer Jacob Grant of Roots Farm, fish mongers Kim Selkoe and Victoria Voss from Get Hooked Seafood, and winemaker Matt Dees from The Hilt (who also brought the lamb) to develop the menu. This crudo combined a recent catch with citrus-dusted popcorn grown by Grant, who gave an inspiring speech about wanting to grow heirloom corn that sings. Later dishes included a polenta beneath halibut and an atole for dessert that certainly had his corn hitting the high notes.

Carignan and conversation at SBCE Grand Tasting: There was a lot of great energy at the SBCE’s Grand Tasting on May 17, although I only caught a glimpse of it because I was mostly inside the chapel running winemaker panels. I hosted one about unique sites for pinot noir, and then we also dove into grapes, like carignan from Camins 2 Dreams, that are less known to most wine lovers here. As usual, the best part was hearing from these winemakers about what drew them into wine and what keeps the craft magical for each of them.

Mushroom tartlet at WBLT Roots of the Future IV

Mushroom tartlet @ Roots of the Future IV: I hustled from the Grand Tasting to the White Buffalo Land Trust’s (WBLT) Roots of the Future IV, the regenerative farming nonprofits fundraiser hosted this year at Grimm’s Bluff Vineyard. As I experienced at my first WBLT fundraiser 18 months ago, the event goes all out, in this case even erecting a clear tent to house the few hundred attendees. This tartlet came with a glass of the WBLT pinot noir — grown at Jalama Canyon Ranch, made by Sandhi — and was followed by a beef wellington, whose pastry tent housed stewed meats and worked well with the Grimm’s Bluff estate cab.

From left: Third Window smashburger at Vintners Foundation golf tournament; Pork katsu by The Sando Truck at Vintners Foundation golf tournament.

Pork Katsu and Smashburger @ Vintners Foundation Golf Tournament: Last Monday was the annual Vintners Foundation golf tournament, held at Alisal Ranch and seeming to grow in size and prominence each year. There’s plenty of wine to enjoy, but the food booths are critical to stay on target. This year’s highlights were the just-out-of-oven pork katsu by The Sando Truck and the hot-off-the-griddle smashburger by Third Window.

Now off to the Khruangbin shows at the Santa Barbara Bowl…

Pretentious Boar Mystery Solved!

For months now — specifically, ever since President Joe Biden was rumored to eat there — many in the Santa Barbara County restaurant-watching community have been wondering about The Pretentious Boar & Ale House: Where was it? Who was behind it? Why hadn’t we heard about it? Was it real?

Well, I solved the mystery, or rather, it was solved for me. And you can find all the answers too if you go to Full of Life Flatbread this Sunday, May 25, for the release party around Jamie Baker’s new novel You Ate It. Read my story all about it here.

From Our Table

Here are some recently published stories that you may have missed:

Richelle Boyd gave a recap on our Cheese the Day! shenanigans.
George Yatchisin did a deepish dive on Dart Coffee and its expansion plans.
Originally published for BlueDot magazine collaboration, the paper also ran this piece I wrote about sustainable wineries on our pages.
I did a bunch of stories for Wine Enthusiast’s California issue that comes out next month, but it looks like a few of the articles are already available online, including:
- Meet the wine families of Paso Robles
- Profile of Alice Anderson and Topher De Felice’s regenerative efforts at Âmevive
- In-depth report on the somewhat conflicted state of California’s agave industry