Taking the Leap: An Inspiring 2010

The apparently sauced knucklehead in the Jimmy Buffet t-shirt jumping off Bixby Bridge in front of an objecting CHP officer has to rank among the most striking single moments of 2010 in Monterey County.



But it's a cumulative accomplishment from our culinary community that is much more striking, if not downright inspiring.

In an atmosphere where people can't go more than several syllables without bemoaning the state of the economy, a wave of inspired new restaurants jumped into the soup.

It's impossible to measure the boost that gave all of us. We can look back at some favorites that came to be and that we covered in the Weekly and in this space, with a blog that also found its start in 2010:

Happy Girl Farms (372-GIRL) is suddenly making preservation and pickling sexy again in P.G.

Seaside Farmers Market (3-8pm Mondays in University Plaza) got fresh across town.

In Marina, Noodle Bar number two (384-6225) built upon a fun family business that occupies a tiny coffee-bar-style spot in Seaside. Just up from the little Seaside Noodle Bar, their cousin Mikey Nguyen opened Asian fusion spot Chopstix (899-2622), packing enough people in to earn itself another outpost, coming very soon across from Del Monte Center.

Element Tasting Bar and Pizza Bistro (998-7045) made a name for itself on River Road.

Not far from there, Rancho Cielo, landmark vocational educational center for troubled kids who need a new take on troubled life, added Drummond Culinary Academy with the crucial aid of a number of excellent local chefs.

Bellagio Pizzeria (643-9500), Habanero’s (375-3700) and Luxe Lounge, meanwhile, filled in where Croce's and Doc's once reigned in downtown Monterey.

Sakana Sushi (375-7375) is newly doing clever maki around the corner from there.

MYO number two (649-FROY) is bustling just up Alvarado.

Flanagan’s Irish-American Pub (625-5500) gives Carmel's Barnyard a much-needed watering hole (and the best fries this side of Maryland), Michael’s Taqueria (754-8917) is uplifting Oldtown Salinas, and much-ballyhooed Cannery Row Brewing Company gives Cannery Row and the wider Peninsula nothing less than a game-changer.

Miss Delish (612-1884) rode farmers market acclaim to a storefront on Lighthouse. Former Duffy Hunter's Tavern owners opened up Down Under Deli (625-DELI) in Mid-Valley.

Pastries and Petals (620-1400) does ambiance, style, savory and sweet on an off-beat street in Carmel while Babaloo Cuban Cuisine provides our first real food truck with pick-up.

The homegrown Bakery Station (783-1140) transformed a dilapidated gas station into a hub of fresh-daily creations.

KT’s Sweet Lunch (214-7465) now redefines the delivered business lunch as healthy, easy and affordable.

Even in a Valley with standouts like the Wagon Wheel, new French countryside-style Toast Carmel Valley (659-8500) can make a claim to best breakfast—and lunch and dinner ain't bad either.

Elsewhere in the Valley, Tim Wood is ushering in a new era of eating at Carmel Valley Ranch's Lodge (625-9500) and beyond.

The Otters Den (883-1227) is totally repimped in Marina, huge news for the college crew.

Monterey Bay Salt Company (760-6993) got grinding with help from Pebble Beach Food & Wine connections.

Tiny Viva La Crepe (601-4847) raised the bar for French flavor on the Wharf, of all places.

The inspiration also emanates from the vital rebirths happening in time-honored spots, with The Penny Farthing Tavern (422-5652), Pajaro Street Grill (783-1285) and Fresh Cream Restaurant (250-7943) ranking near the top. Terranova Fine Wines (333-1313) also enjoyed a second coming with upgraded technology and ambiance.

We're lucky to have them. Here's to all of 'em for taking the jump.

Cannery Row Animal

The coolest thing on Cannery Row isn’t the Forrest Gump haircut on the look alike guy or the pygmy seahorses.

It’s the mechanical bull El Mariachi Restaurant (324-4953) has in its dining room. I went in the other night for some Monday Night Football and the place was dead empty, but that was OK with this cowboy because it meant as many rides as we wanted, instant service from a cool bartender and quick delivery of some sturdy super nachos.

Turns out three turns on the bovine is just fine (and the operator/barkeep said he was taking it easy on us). The happy hour’s pretty good (half-price apps, $3.50 margaritas, beers that start at $2, 4-7pm weekdays) too.

Breakthrough Technology Alert: Beer Taps at Your Table

Though the Niners stink like a Porta Potty in the sun, there are some good things going on this football season. Like the redone Knuckles’ (372-1234) menu—Kobe beef mini dogs! California cheese steaks with sun-dried tomatoes and avocado!—and their tableside tap service, aka the Table Tender.

It is actually pretty cool. I was thinking it was a gimmick/dangerous to have a beer spout right there rising from your table, but on a busy game day, it is totally clutch to be able to tap yourself some
Kona Longboard or Coors Light rather than tackling a waiter. It bills by the ounce.

It’s $40 to reserve, but if no one has roped it off, you can swoop in there as we did and let the good times flow.

Standing record for a day, I’m told by 20-year vet Cindy the Superserver (seen here demo-ing the spout), is 1,300-plus ounces, which are tracked by the little digital monitor in the wall.

Extra point: Go in on a Tuesday and have a 50/50 chance of having your food paid for—they flip a coin as part of a promotion they’re calling “Toss It Up Tuesday.”

The Mucky Duck's Deal of the Year

The one and only Mucky Duck (655-3031), where the food is underrated and Jean the bartender is my hero—you owe it to yourself, if you like shooters, to try a Jean’s Genie, above—has the best deal in town Wednesdays with half-price night.

They celebrated the holidays by extending the deal to the whole week. The last day is this Thursday. That means half-price nachos....

...and fried pickles! A burgeoning magazine club and I descended on a recent Wednesday, ate and drank to our literary hearts' content—six of us—and still only spent $100, tops.

You know what to do.

Feeding the Need

Angels live among us.

Evidence—extensive evidence—lingers no further than the ever inspiring Monterey County Gives! website, which profiles the scores of local nonprofits participating in
the Monterey County Weekly Community Fund's annual fund-raising push.

Surprisingly few food/hunger-centered groups are involved—the Health, Wellness & Food category includes just two—but they are about as vital to our area's well-being as any organizations out there.

Ag Against Hunger feeds millions with what essentially would be thrown away. Without the Spreckels-based nonprofit, 11 million pounds of produce would have ended up in compost heaps or in landfills this year, instead of at local food banks which in turn distribute the food to groups that need it. The growers who produced that food would have had to pay a fee to dispose of it, and hungry people in three counties on the Central Coast, as well as those elsewhere in California, Colorado, Utah, Arizona and Washington, would not have access to fresh produce.

“We can actually feed one person for one pound of produce, and given that 11 million pounds were saved last year,” Ag Against Hunger spokeswoman Lindsay Coate told me last week. "That’s a staggering amount of people."

Much of their goods go to Food Bank for Monterey County, which leverages every dollar donated into seven pounds of food for the neediest bellies in town.

Donating to these do-gooders, or any of the many assembled on the Gives! website, is easy. I picked five of my favorites to give to and completed the donation in about two minutes.

Even if it's just a couple bucks that still helps a given group compete for bonus funds for drawing the greatest number of donors (or donors under 35). Better yet, the Weekly is adding $100,000 in donations to match reader giving.

A Christmas Gift For You: Three Rockstar Recipes

You can't spell celebration without e, a and t. To honor the holiday spirit of generosity and good eatin', three standout chefs from the Sardine Factory, the Preserve and Domenico's/Cafe Fina have shared unique and uniquely delectable dishes with Special Edible readers.

I was sold at "lollipop," but, like the Sardine Factory—which just added a new tapas menu and upgraded the front lounge—it gets better: You can eat the "handle." The Factory was already one of our local capitals for calamari, now they do it with even more style. And you can too.

Calamari Puff Lollipops
Bert Cutino
Sardine Factory

Serves 8

2 ½ lbs cleaned squid, filet only
½ medium onion, chopped
1 egg
1 parsley, chopped
1 bunch green onion, finely chopped
½ tablespoon granulated garlic
¼ cup cracker meal
¼ cup bread crumbs
1 tablespoon salt and pepper
oil to fry

Chop squid into small pieces. Add onion, egg, parsley, salt and pepper and granulated garlic into bowl. Mix thoroughly. Add half of cracker meal, baking soda and bread crumbs into mixture. Form into little two-ounce oval balls (about 1 inch in diameter) and roll balls into remaining mixture. Lay on sheet pan with parchment paper. Let set. Fry at 350°. Cook balls in a deep fat fryer until golden brown. Serve hot with your favorite sauce.

"We’ve been eating crab at my Nana’s on Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve every year since I was born,” says Dominic Mercurio, owner of Café Fina and Domenico’s on the Wharf.

Mercurio gets King Crab for his restaurants directly from the F/V Time Bandit, made famous on the Discovery Channel’s Deadliest Catch.

“King crab is so sweet and flavorful, like lobster," he says, "you don’t have to do much to it,” He usually serves it simply with butter and a few drops of lemon. Or he will crack the legs down the middle and serve them open-faced with a light scampi sauce.

When it comes to local Dungeness crab, he deploys a range of treatments: chilled with cocktail sauce and lemon; steamed with drawn butter; cioppino-style in a savory, light tomato broth; sautéed with crab butter, a bit of sweet wine, butter, green onions and a touch of hot sauce; and finally, his Nana’s Sicilian Salad-style, with an oil and vinegar-based marinade.

Nana’s Sicilian Salad-style Dungeness crab recipe
Domenic Mercurio
Cafe Fine • Domenico's

¾ cup of extra virgin olive oil
¼ cup of red wine vinegar
2 tablespoons chopped garlic
¼ cup of chopped flat leaf parsley
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
Juice of one lemon
Salt and pepper to taste

Mix all the ingredients together in a bowl large enough for the three crabs. Add crab, stirring every 15 minutes for one hour to let the marinade saturate. Serve chilled. Preparation can be done in the morning or afternoon, as it is perfectly fine to let the crab sit for up to five hours refrigerated.


While the rain drives some insane in a nasty way, it moves local fungifiles to happy insanity. One of the most revered treasures they uncover: candy caps, a fragrant, syrupy sweet mushroom used in cooking to flavor foods like vanilla or truffles.

Santa Lucia Preserve Chef Carlton Lepine is a fungi pro who leads hunts through the ideally damp redwood and oak underbrush. When he scores these spores, the Preserve's residents and members win big. And while a lot out there off Carmel Valley Road costs hundreds of thousands, now you can eat like them without the massive mortgage.

Candy Cap Blondies
Carlton Lepine
Santa Lucia Preserve

1 1/2 cups light brown sugar firmly packed

1 cup unsalted butter
¼ cup candy cap mushroom, dried, ground fine 

2 ¼ cups all-purpose flour
¾ teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon salt 

2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
¾ cup butterscotch chips

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Butter and flour a 9-by-13-inch glass baking dish.
Put the sugar in a large bowl. Melt the butter in a small skillet or in the microwave in a glass measuring cup. Stir the butter into the sugar until smooth, cool to room temperature.
In another medium bowl, whisk the Candy Cap mushrooms, flour, baking soda and salt together.
Beat the eggs and vanilla into the sugar mixture. Add the flour mixture a bit at a time and mix until a smooth thick batter forms. Fold in the chips, as desired.
Spoon the batter to the prepared dish and spread evenly to fill the dish. Bake until the Blondies are light brown around the edges and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, about 20 to 25 minutes.
Remove from the oven and let cool slightly. Invert onto a rack and cool completely. Cut into squares and serve.

The Bacon Revolution Is Just Beginning

Maybe you're like my editor, who's had enough of the bacon insanity that has been sizzling in our culture for the past few years.

"Bacon is our god," she says. "We are worshiping our pork-belly master."

Or maybe you're like me. I was attacking bacon-wrapped dogs from L.A. food carts before Tonya Harding's goons were attacking Nancy Kerrigan's leg. I've believed a breakfast joint is only as good as its bacon since I could say "over easy." I once named a kitten after a Baja California dish that wrapped prawns and jack cheese in you know what. (The little baller's name was Shrimp Papagayo.)

In a culture obsessed with bacon, I'm not just a member, I'm an early adopter and enthusiastic card-carrier. Just the other day I discovered NorCal's Bacon Hot Sauce, ordered some online and blew through two bottles ($14.99/three-pack; check out www.baconhotsauce.com).



But as cooks began chicken-frying bacon in Snook, Texas (check out the above vid), bakers started stuffing it in scones, Whole Foods kept slanging chocolate-bacon candy bars...



and YouTube freaks went on greasing us with videos on candy bacon (above) or weaving bacon into whole blankets, I figured we were approaching reached a saturation point.

Nope.



Now you can give your baby My First Bacon as its best friend. This piece of pork has more going for it than a slick personal statement (“You’ve got a friend in meat!”). The cute little guy’s three feet long, nice and squooshy like a stuffed animal, with cartoony eyeballs.

And (!): This is a creature that speaks for itself. Truly. Press the button behind where his left ear would be and the masculine-sounding meat says, “I’m Bacon,” in a low baritone that sticks in your head like turkey bacon to the pan.

ThinkGeek is the brains behind the bacon. Check out their "stuff for smart masses" website for more.

Did someone say best Christmas gift ever?