San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Ambience is key for eating fish tacos here
summer road trip is one of the classics of California life. Not only is it a chance to see the country, but it also offers a taste of the surprising variety of ordinary California food.
I’m not talking about a trip to a Napa Valley restaurant with a Michelin star and a celebrity chef, a meal served with an exquisite bottle of wine and a certain elan. That’s too rich for me in more ways than one.
I was putting on the Ritz the other night at a pre-opera dinner in San Francisco and, somewhat intimidated by the waiter, muttered my order for hors d’oeuvres. “Would you like the oeufs mayonnaise, Monsieur? ’’ the waiter asked. ‘Are those deviled eggs?’ I said. ‘I’ll have two.’’’
They were delicious, too. We are spoiled in San Francisco and around the Bay Area where there are certain standards. You can eat like an ordinary king. Those of us of a certain vintage still remember Herb Caen’s idea of a perfect San Francisco meal: cracked crab, late bake French bread still warm from the oven, a glass of Chardonnay properly chilled. You can still get that kind of meal in the city, when crab is in season. Or maybe sand dabs, if the fishing is good.
On the road it’s tougher. The Sailor Girl, my road companion, and I have been driving around a bit and found there is a real variety of ordinary regional food.
We started earlier in the year, in the north on a wintry expedition to Sonoma and west Marin. There’s an old time Italian restaurant in Valley Ford on the way to Bodega Bay, where at the Lucas Wharf they serve crab sandwiches in season; out the window sea lions climb on the dock.
A bit farther south the Marshall Store has oysters right out of Tomales Bay. It’s a casual family place, like a picnic. Customers sit on benches near the water with the wind blowing in their face, chilly sometimes. Very Northern California.
Now it’s summertime and time for a trip on Highway 101 to Southern California. It’s almost a food desert on 101 south of the Santa Clara County line, the southern frontier of the Bay Area.
But just off the freeway in Santa Barbara is Stearns Wharf, a marvelous wooden pier, nearly half a mile long, and a landmark in Santa Barbara for 150 years. It once was a terminal for coastal steamships but now it’s lined with shops, restaurants and even a small aquarium.
We went there for a Southern California clasA sic: fish tacos. Fish tacos were invented in Baja California, but they seem best at a place like Stearns Wharf with its blue Pacific, a sandy beach lined with palm trees and a California city rising on the edge of the coastal mountains. Very Southern California.
They have fish tacos in Northern California, too. But they seem somehow better in the Southland, especially with a local beer in frosty glass. Maybe it was the ambience.
We made an unscientific survey: fish tacos in Malibu, on the Ventura Pier (six varieties of fish tacos at the Beach House), even inland at a brew pub in Thousand Oaks — all were good but fish tacos by the beach were best.
Full of fish tacos we headed back up the coast, up that long stretch where the highway turns inland at Gaviota, miles of dry mountains and farmland.
It’s wine country, too. And it has a surprising regional specialty: Santa Maria tri-tip, cuts of beef grilled over local oak and specially seasoned. It’s locally and regionally famous. We heard about it from Don Sanchez, who was born and raised in Santa Maria. He urged us to take a look.
Highway 101 runs right through the Santa Maria Valley but it’s still out of the way: four hours from San Francisco and out of the range of Los Angeles.
We stopped a couple of times: once at the Hitching Post next to a winery in Buellton, last week at the Rancho Nipomo, just off 101.
You eat under a tent in good weather at the Hitching Post. The meal is served with a view of rolling hills. It’s the food the rancheros served the Californio vaqueros in the 1850s. Beef and beans.
The Rancho Nipomo was a bit different. It’s a big barn of a place that specializes in tri-tip and oak-smoked meats. The Gold Rush Cantina is next door. It describes itself as “a rustic, mission-style hangout for BBQ plates, Mexican eats and sandwiches.” It was full of locals when we went, plus a few travelers who pulled off the highway.
It’s a roadside stop at an intersection where the road from the central coast meets the road from the central valley. Very central California, totally different from the bayside places in Marin and Sonoma, the fish taco stands on the ocean piers. Nothing fancy. Pretty good ordinary food, chewy too, California style.
They have fish tacos in Northern California, too. But they seem somehow better in the Southland, especially with a local beer in frosty glass.