Dinner in Never-Never Land

View from Above the Fireplace at Mattei's Tavern

Brothers at Mattei’s Tavern

2350 Railway Avenue

Santa Ynez Valley, CA 93441

(805) 688-4820

Michael Jackson named his “home” where he kept all those wild animals Never-Never Land, and if you are very, very determined, you can still find the security entrance to his palace at the midpoint on a quiet road about a half mile from this hideaway restaurant in Los Olivos, Santa Barbara County. At the guard shack you will see hundreds, thousands of notes scratched into the facade of the structure and fence. While most folks come to this part of the country to taste wine, there are also plenty apparently who also come for a bit of HIStory. For those who aren’t diehard fans of the Prince of Pop, there is BROTHERS AT MATTEI’S TAVERN. - See more at: http://www.alunchboxblog.com/dinner-in-never-never-land/?preview=true&preview_id=1509&preview_nonce=f44a073ac0#sthash.Gvj7mCDg.dpuf

Brothers at Mattei's Tavern
Food Quality
Drinks
Environment
Price
$40 per person, depending on what drinks you order

Overall

 The thing about wine country restaurants is that you need to figure out which nights you’re supposed to be there. Back in the day, it was known throughout the county:

• Tuesdays featured a nice weekday fireplace meal at Los Olivos Cafe and Wine Merchants, Fridays that was the hot night at the Santa Ynez Vineyard Restaurant,

• Weekends were for the best flatbread pizzas on the west coast in Los Alamos,

• Thursday and Saturday lunches of tri-tip sandwiches at the Los Olivos corner deli next to the port-a-potties.

• And any day you can get into the Hitchin’ Post II, you need to get a seat. Ask for a table a the window where they grill the quail over the split redwood logs. If heaven has a smell, this is that smell.

So, timing is particularly important at Brothers as well.

Brothers located at Mattei’s Tavern provides a weeknight bar-side meal that is unequalled in Santa Barbara county.(Unfortunately, this establishment is destined to move from it’s particularly impressive quarters on Railway Avenue to a new location near the flagpole in the middle of downtown Los Olivos by March 2012). The owners of the original Mattei’s Tavern are hoping to turn the building into a hotel. We shall see. This spot has been dogged by failure since it opened as a hotel in the early 1900s.

At any rate, I had the opportunity to travel through Santa Barbara wine country recently. And in a search for the perfect Wednesday hot spot, we came upon Brothers at Mattei’s Tavern. While it’s unfortunate that this terrific bar restaurant will have to be moving in March 2012 to the center of Los Olivos across from the flagpole in the old hardware store space, this hundred year old space provided an incredibly delightful locale for me and my mom to settle in by the fire after we had tasted our way through the Syrah and Pinot Noir of the Central Coast region.

Foxen Winery Tasting Room just up the road from Mattei's Tavern and Michael Jackson's Palace

I was so pleased to have discovered this hideaway. We’d been here once before but ate in the dining room. Don’t do that—the bar area is superb, especially during the week. I love how it had so much positive vibe on a Wednesday literally in the middle of nowhere.

As I mentioned at the top, this hot spot is just down the street from Michael Jackson’s Never Never Land, where he kept his zoo menagerie. You can still go to the guards’ gate where fans have carved their names and afterlife wishes into stone and bricks. I really should have asked if MJ had ever dropped in on the Brothers who cook here. Well, MJ doesn’t seem like he was much of an eater, so he probably never dropped in—recluse that he was.

We found that the food here is pretty darned nice. The Little Gem salad with cucumber dressing is light. Perhaps a little tooooo light, as you can see from the photos. The dressing was excellent and that really makes the salad in any case. However, I left wondering how and why they just split a single head of a little gem and tried to make the entire salad. For ten dollars, that’s not a lot of greens.

At any rate, then we ordered the richly-filled vegetable spring rolls. This seemed initially to be a strange choice in a bar. But these tasty and hardy starters are unlike I’ve ever had before. Vegetables! I really appreciated that they bothered to hunker down with their mandolin and shred vegetable after vegetable to make my rolls. I think I do know why they are so memorable, however. I left feeling that the spring rolls are probably also fried in the exact same fryer as the French fries. They enjoy a noticeable French fry taste. Probably not proper preparation, but I’m not sure anyone would care. Full of great crisp vegetables, fragrant oil, and plenty of tangy, spicy sauce, they deliver the goods.

Mom and I were wrecked from the day and so decided to just split the Kobe beef burger. This decision sounded unwise initially, but the chefs were excellent so about splitting the meal for us and out came our dinners on two separate plates. Our attentive waiter knocked our socks off, and lead us from wine to wine, from starter to finale and left us alone at the fireside for our chat. The burger was medium rare, fatty, and flavorful, and my mom—who has a thing about ordering hers with barbecue sauce— helped us discover that Brothers’ BBQ sauce is out of this world…was it as good as K.C. Masterpiece? Better! We’ll never know whether Sysco delivered it or they made it, but it was terrific.

Their wines-by-the-glass selection is paltry for a restaurant/bar in the heart of wine country, but because of where you are, this barely matters. My Cabernet from Happy Valley was terrific, and my mom’s Melville Pinot Noir, Verna’s Vineyard, was top notch.

Truth be told, we didn’t get out of this tavern for under $75, but then I’ve come to expect any place called tavern to be pricey—see my review of Wit and Wisdom in Baltimore for more. Why is that? Urgh…

Anyway, when in wine country, soak up the vibe, enjoy the lovely experience off the highway in the middle of nowhere, just outside the gates of Never Never Land. Put it on your bucket list.

The Littlest Little Gem Salad in the World

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Strata, the Breakfast of Cholesterol Champions

Many of you have heard or read about my sister Nicole and HER INCREDIBLE FOOD SITE. Every once in a while, I’ll be bringing you what I consider the highlights. This week it’s another in my series of “breakfast for lunch” entrées: Carmelized Onion and Spinach Strata.

This rich eggy treat is topped with a savory tomato topping that just rocks the house down. While the sheer mountain of cholesterol that awaits you is daunting, if you parse the final product out in small portions, you are really only eating about one or two eggs per serving. My guess is that if you switch out the cream with another diary alternative (which I would be no good at guessing, but perhaps buttermilk or nonfat Greek yoghourt), you could salvage the less-than-healthy elements to this dish.

Strata Isn't Just for Breakfast Anymore!

SERVINGS: 12
PREP TIME: 30 minutes
COOK TIME: 1 hour & 15 minutes

Ingredients

Strata
6 c cubed day-old French or Italian bread, with crust left on
2 T unsalted butter, plus more for greasing the pan
1 T peanut or other cooking oil
2 large Spanish onions, halved and thinly sliced
1 t sugar
one 10 oz. box frozen chopped spinach, thawed and squeezed dry
10 large eggs
2 c grated aged Gruyère cheese
3 c whole milk
1 c heavy cream
2 t Dijon mustard
1 T finely chopped fresh thyme
1/8 t freshly grated nutmeg
Kosher salt and freshly-ground black pepper

Sautéed Cherry Tomatoes
3 t olive oil
2 pints cherry tomatoes, quartered
3 T finely sliced fresh chives, plus more for garnish
Kosher salt and freshly-ground black pepper

Instructions

For the strata:

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F.

Put the bread on a baking sheet and toast until lightly golden brown on both sides, about 10 minutes. Remove and let cool.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

 Combine the butter and oil in a large sauté pan over medium heat and cook until it begins to shimmer. Add the onions, toss to coat in the butter, and then add the sugar and season with salt and pepper. Cook the onions, stirring occasionally, until golden brown and caramelized, about 30 minutes. Remove from the heat and let cool slightly.

In a large bowl, combine the bread cubes, onions and spinach. In another large bowl, whisk together the eggs, 1 1/2 cups cheese, milk, heavy cream, mustard, 1 teaspoons salt, 1/2 teaspoon pepper, thyme and nutmeg.

Butter a 9 by 13-inch decorative baking dish. Add the bread cubes to the baking dish, and then pour the egg mixture over the bread cubes and press down to make sure the bread is totally submerged.

Bake the strata uncovered until the mixture has puffed up slightly, is golden brown on top and doesn’t shimmy with uncooked custard when you shake the pan, about 1 hour. Sprinkle the remaining 1/2 cup cheese over the top during the last 10 minutes of baking. Let cool 5 minutes before serving.

For the tomatoes:

• Heat oil in a large sauté pan over high heat until it begins to shimmer.
• Add the tomatoes, season with salt and pepper and cook until the tomatoes softened.
• Add the chives and remove from the heat.
• Serve large spoonfuls of the strata onto plates and top with sautéed tomatoes.

My brother-in-law says the reason this is so popular is because the topping makes this rich egg dish taste like pizza. It’s surprising how close to the truth that is. I think it’s really savoury and perfect for lunch. We kept returning to this huge cassarole for leftovers. It’s remarkably tasty and is great with a lightly dressed green salad.

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What Would MFK Fisher Do?

Inspiration comes in many forms. Between the story of Julia Child’s time in France and MFK Fisher’s time in Europe before WWII, food lifestyle writing seems to have been thought up by women. These two great women have such exciting stories to tell, that it’s not worth missing any of them.

I wanted to alert those of you who don’t know MFK Fisher a little of the pleasure that her thinking can bring into your life. Perhaps it’s the vaguely outrageous (for its time) references to her divorcing someone who appeared to be a perfectly wonderful, but ultimately unstimulating, first husband (who was apparently a professor from my alma mater, Occidental College, in Los Angeles), and dumping him for her next door neighbor’s husband–with whom she lived in France and Switzerland.

Perhaps it’s the incredible life that she and that playboy stitched together as he fell ill with chronic pain all too quickly after marrying, and then died tragically–a suicide. So just as war was coming to her doorstep and requiring her to move back to dreadfully dishwater-dull America in the early ’40s, she and her contraband second husband found themselves alone again: he in his heaven, she in wartime America. So she set about writing

MFK Considering the Oyster

Her Wiki contributors give us simple background, “Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher (July 3, 1908 – June 22, 1992) was a preeminent American food writer. She was also a founder of the Napa Valley Wine Library. She wrote some 27 books, including a translation of The Physiology of Taste by Brillat-Savarin. Two volumes of her journals and correspondence came out shortly before her death in 1992. Her first book, Serve it Forth, was published in 1937. Her books are an amalgam of food literature, travel and memoir. Fisher believed that eating well was just one of the “arts of life” and explored this in her writing. W.H. Auden once remarked, ‘I do not know of anyone in the United States who writes better prose.’”

To Wit:  ”There in Dijon, the cauliflowers were very small and succulent, grown in that ancient soil. I separated the flowerlets and dropped them in boiling water for just a few minutes. Then I drained them and put them in a wide shallow casserole, and covered them with heavy cream, and a thick sprinkling of freshly grated Gruyere, the nice rubbery kind that didn’t come from Switzerland at all, but from the Jura. It was called rape in the market, and was grated while you watched, in a soft cloudy pile, onto your piece of paper.”

Her memoirs of learning to eat oysters properly at her girls finishing school, her clear-headed efforts to promote lifestyle-eating in her writing rather than just the humdrum recipe-writing and restaurant reviewing of the day, MFK Fisher brought a certain je ne sais qua to journalism and to her solipsistic novelization of a life that many would kill for and which still eludes most of us.

Fierce Mary Francis

I only hope my blog can begin to do her justice. I value your feedback and attention to these efforts.

As I was developing this blog, I noticed how few blogs there were that were findable with this sort of esoteric/eclectic/entrancing point of view. I mean really, if you were to search for really interesting food writing what would you type into the Google bar to pin-point this sort of clever evocation of a place and time?

Search Engine Optimisation and the general inflexibility of the average marketing materials that come my way to promote this blog make getting the word out very, very challenging.

“What is the purpose of your blog, anyway?” Frank and Bret asked today over lunch, “Would it kill you if you suddenly had advertisers asking to promote their wares on your site?” I didn’t really know how to answer their questions that followed: “I assume you want followers, don’t you? What are you doing to get more pageviews?”

After our chat I arrived home tonight and thought the better of it. I found myself wondering, “What would MFK do?” I have my own ideas, but I put it out there to you: What do you think MFK would do in my shoes?

Please, dear reader, share with me your thoughts. Either here or by email at gardenflat@aol.com. Thanks in advance for considering my request. Consider the Oyster.

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Blue Bottle Coffee: Please Welcome Guest Blogger Ev

Oh Man, I Need One Now

Good Monday Morning to ya!! Boy, am I awake! You see, my last trip to San Francisco resulted in a tragic addiction that I have yet to shake off. Blue Bottle Coffee. It’s possibly the worst plague to come along in a very long time indeed. But heck, it makes me perky as I face the work week.

I remember when I first heard about this shop in San Francisco about two years ago, I was dubious about the very expensive cups of coffee. But then I was working over at the Palace at a conference and I dropped into this place at the SAN FRANCISCO FERRY BUILDING IN THE EMBARCADERO. What an incredibly worthwhile very long wait for a simple cup of coffee.

Ev, my brother-in-law, sent me an email with a ton of pics showcasing the place, and I just had to share with y’all.

Um...That's Evan in the Middle

“Sorry, it took me so long to get you these photos of Blue Bottle,” Ev writes. “I really mean that because I had a great experience taking them. I used go there a lot in the mornings to get a cup but it became too expensive. $2.75 for a drip and $3 bucks for a Gibraltar. Although I did enjoy it I think rather pricey. ~:- ( I asked the manager in the morning if I could come back and photograph the place for alunchboxblog.com, after I got off work. With his approval, I came back in the evening on my way home with my camera.

“I politely waited in line, ordered my Gibraltar and recounted my story from the morning. I reassured them I wouldn’t get in the way and snapped away. I started out front waiting for the “Gib” to be created by a master A.J.

A.J. Preparing a Gibraltar Glass

I snapped some of the outside and inside; the Japanese coffee preparation products that line the walls; the bagged beans; and the “boys” at the espresso machine.

“I knew there was a sweet machine on second counter so I asked to be allowed into the “Employees Only Zone” and permission was shortly granted. Oh, I’m so cool and grateful. I quickly snapped a few photog’s until one of the employees started asking too many question and made me miss my ferry. Ugh. That’s when I tried to call you.

“Well, here we are back at home. Jacked up on coffee and loving every second. Sometimes, it’s the simple things in life that give us the most comfort. Mine is Coffee.
Enjoy, Ev”

For a walk through of Ev’s experience waiting for, then devouring his Gibraltar at Blue Bottle, just click on the slideshow below.

Tip Generously!

PLAYPREV|NEXT1 of 24

From their rather TERRIFIC WEBSITE, the origin of the business’ name is rather eye-opening: “In the late 1600s, the Turkish army swept across much of Eastern and Central Europe, arriving at Vienna in 1683. Besieged and desperate, the Viennese needed an emissary who could pass through Turkish lines to get a message to the nearby Polish troops. Franz George Kolshitsky, who spoke Turkish and Arabic, took on the assignment disguised in a Turkish uniform. After many perilous close calls, Kolshitsky completed his valiant deed, returning to give the Viennese the news of the Poles’ imminent rescue of their city. On September 13, the Turks were repelled from Vienna, leaving everything they brought: camels, tents, honey, and strange bags of beans which were thought to be camel feed. Kolshitsky, having lived in the Arab world for several years, knew these were bags of coffee. Using the money bestowed on him by the mayor of Vienna for his heroic deed, Kolshitsky bought the Turks’ coffee, opened Central Europe’s first coffee-house (The Blue Bottle), and brought coffee to a grateful Vienna.

Blue Bottle Barista-eye View

319 years later, in Oakland, California, a slightly disaffected freelance musician and coffee lunatic, weary of the grande eggnog latte and the double skim pumpkin-pie macchiato decides to open a roaster for people who are clamoring for the actual taste of freshly roasted coffee. Using a miniscule six-pound batch roaster, he makes an historic vow: “I will only sell coffee less than 48 hours out of the roaster to my customers, so they may enjoy coffee at its peak of flavor. I will only use the finest organic, and pesticide-free, shade-grown beans.” In honor of Kolshitsky’s heroics, he names his business The Blue Bottle Coffee Company, and begins another chapter in the history of superlative coffee.”

In the end, what I came away with from my experience was the sheer simplicity and excellence of the beans. I now boil a pot of water every morning, line my ceramic bonmac filter, and grind the Blue Bottle Beans (My particular favorite varietals and blends are the incomparable Oaxaca Adopta Un Cafetal, the primo Three Africans blend, and the Bella Donovan.) I find that in spite of the price, making my drip coffees at home is significantly cheaper than purchasing the professionally made ones at the Ferry Building. OK, it’s not perfect when I make it, but the essence of the experience washes over me every morning.

Here’s HOW YOU CAN PURCHASE YOUR BEANS and get them shipped to your door: at this time they do not ship internationally. But soon, very soon, I’m sure. Should your flights bring you to San Francisco (and now Brooklyn!), don’t miss this incredible java experience.

Berry St. Brooklyn
160 Berry Street, Brooklyn, NY
M-F 7-7, Sat & Sun 8-7
(718) 387-4160

- See more at: http://www.alunchboxblog.com/blue-bottle-coffee-kick-starting-your-day/?preview=true&preview_id=1745&preview_nonce=c01655b0f3#sthash.14vLcN3z.dpuf