Duck breast with roasted grapes
As a cookbook author, I’m often asked “what’s your favorite restaurant?” I usually answer (take your pick): I’m a cookbook author; I’m too poor to afford going out to eat, or I write cookbooks, not restaurant reviews or I don’t eat out very often because I test recipes at home all the time. Another important reason I don’t eat out often is I’m far too often disappointed by the food, by the service, by the atmosphere, by the noise of many restaurants. At the very best I don’t like paying through the nose for mediocrity. But every now and then I do stumble on a perfectly delightful restaurant that satisfies in every way. The Scarlett Begonia in Santa Barbara, California is one such restaurant.
The owner Crista Fooks and executive chef Avery Hardin describe the Scarlett Begonia as always striving to have interesting, thoughtful food with weekly changes in menu of innovative fresh looks at breakfast and lunch and dinner. Their goal, as stated on their web site, is “to provide Santa Barbara with a restaurant that showcases progressive modern food, using sustainable, organic, high quality ingredients coupled with innovative cooking to be one of the most foodcentric restaurants around.”
They succeed in this. The Scarlett Begonia serves excellently prepared and innovative Cal-Med dishes—that’s a name I’ve given their menu—that are evocative, satisfying and delicious. All the food was locally sourced and expertly prepared in a sensible way. Service was competent and attentive without being overbearing. The indoor dining room in this tucked away and hard-to-find restaurant is small creating a cozy, welcoming and quiet atmosphere for dining. A hip restaurants for adults.
pork belly with Brussel sprouts and apple
I’d like to state that I am not a restaurant critic but rather a culinary historian and cookbook author. So, what does that mean when one writes about ones restaurant experience? Very simply it means that my appreciation for the dishes I’m served is also based on my interpretation, based on my culinary knowledge, of what the chef is trying to achieve and how they are inspired. And not merely “is this restaurant any good” or how technically competent is the cooking. I also will only talk about the food I ate and not provide a deconstruction of the menu, although that is a perfectly legitimate critical thing to do.
We had roasted pork belly with Brussels sprouts and the local Fairhill Farms apples both as thin slices of apples and as what the restaurant called “cider jus” but would have been more accurately called moût de pommes given it’s resemblance to a dish from Gascon cuisine. We had braised squid stew with house-made fennel sausage, sofrito, pickled Fresno chile, grilled focaccia, and smoked tomato aioli a dish that is clearly inspired by the cooking along the littoral that runs from Catalonia through Roussillon to Languedoc in France. Lastly we had roast Maple Farms duck breast with roasted grapes, pine nuts, celery root purée, and verjus a preparation which screams Gascony or the Lot in my mind where canard des vendanges or my own Languedoc-inspired seared foie gras with grapes is as equally resounding.
For me this meant not only delicious food, but every bite filled with memories of dishes that I’ve had before in southwest France, creating a kind of culinary mnemonic neural network that elevated my experience beyond what restaurants normally do.
braised squid stew
The service was competent and I very much enjoyed the young female servers surprise when I explained to my dining companion what guanciale and sofrito was. The only tick I can point out is that pappardelle was misspelled on the menu as parpadelle. And if that is the only thing wrong with a restaurant then you’ve got a winner.
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