The American Riviera
Santa Barbara makes the claim based on a magnificent beachfront location and California-cool fabulousness
Eat dessert first.
While not the official credo of Taste Santa Barbara, it is how we find ourselves on the sunny sidewalk outside Renaud’s Patisserie & Bistro munching on macarons. It’s the first stop of a progressive-lunch food tour that will last threeand-a-half hours, cover 10 blocks and hit six restaurants.
The delightful meringue confection’s origins may be French, but macarons are also completely at home in his Southern California city.
You see, Santa Barbara has taken everything wonderful from around the world, put it in an enviable setting of Pacific Ocean beaches to the west and mountains to the east and proclaimed it the American Riviera.
Every bit as cosmopolitan and captivating as the French and the Italian, the American Riviera is all about beautiful lifestyles and vacations, gourmet food, local wines and eye-popping architecture and scenery.
“You can’t beat Santa Barbara and California. Just look at this,” said Taste Santa Barbara owner and guide Evan Schoolnik sweeping her arm at the general atmosphere of sunshine, palm trees and people going about their business of strolling, shopping, eating and drinking.
Schoolnik is a California girl through and through.
Originally from Los Angeles, a two-hour drive to the south, she moved to Santa Barbara because it’s where, as a child, her family vacationed and ate.
“I love food, I love to talk and I love to talk about food,” she says while tucking her sunglasses onto the front of her white T-shirt.
“So starting a food tour company was a natural for me.”
With dessert over, we leave Renaud’s and its mouth-watering macarons to walk three blocks along downtown artery, State Street, to Santa Barbara Public Market.
Chopsticks are handed out so we can enjoy spicy panchit and potstickers at Thai resto, Empty Bowl.
It’s over these noodles, my wife and I get to know our fellow foodies and tour mates: Jeff, the Santa Barbara County sheriff; his defence attorney wife Nicole; IT manager, Russell; and event planner Courtney.
Across the street and down a couple of blocks we come to La Arcada, a palm-treed courtyard surrounded by buildings designed by Myron Hunt, who championed classical Mediterranean architecture in California and is also responsible for the Rose Bowl in Pasadena.
In this courtyard we sip vintages at the urban tasting room of Sanford Winery and then do the Mexican-Spanish fusion thing at Cielitos restaurant while sitting at a sundappled patio table.
Next it’s Isabelle Gourmet Foods and then, finally, beer and ice cream floats at Hoffman Brat House for a second dessert, that tastes better than it sounds.
However, we didn’t come to Santa Barbara just to eat, although we did our f air share of it, just stay tuned for more later in this story.
We actually jogged, right from our digs at the historic Hotel Santa Barbara, also located on State Street, down to Stearns Wharf and along the promenade parallel to gloriously wide East Beach and the Pacific Ocean.
Lots of other people had the same idea of working off all that tempting food and wine because we saw loads of other joggers, cyclists and power walkers.
We made note to come back to The Funk Zone, across the street from the promenade.
The warehouses of the former industrial district have been converted into shops, restaurants and wineries.
Thus, more tastings at Santa Barbara Winery, Pali Wine Co. and Riverbench Winery with a coffee break at Lucky Penny, a café where the exterior walls are made of, yes, pennies and the patio furniture is old school desks and chairs.
Dinner is at Enterprise Fish Co. for blackened swordfish and sea bass and the newly discovered Sanford chardonnay.
My wife and I broke the two-hour drive from L.A. to Santa Barbara with a stop in oceanside Ventura, home to vast strawberry fields, orange groves and, of course, wineries and good eateries.
Breakfast of ham-and-cheese puff pastries and salad at Sunflowers on the Square is whipped up by Nancy Pedersen, who used to work at Bon Apetit magazine.
To work up an appetite for lunch we paddle kayaks from Venture Boat Rentals at Ventura Harbor Village before taking a table at Paradise Pantry, a side-by-side resto and cheese-and-wine shop for a cheese platter and the weekly special of Killer gourmet mac ’n’ cheese.
Ventura and Santa Barbara are one-and-a-half and two hour drives north of Los Angeles International Airport. Air Canada and WestJet fly to LAX.
Check out VisitCalifornia.com, TasteSantaBarbaraFoodTours.com and HotelSantaBarbara.com.