NICK POWELL

As a person who loves sleep, my weekday mornings are usually a mad dash of toothbrushing, laundry digging, lunch prepping, and coffee swilling. I usually grab a banana for the road and call that breakfast. Sometimes I have a few minutes to spare for toasting bread, but morning meals are generally a luxury I just […]

It’s incredibly easy to know next to nothing about how food production actually works. Most of us drive past the fields every day but barely note the gradual change from empty dirt to tidy rows of leafy greens. The workers sometimes seen running boxes of strawberries to the loading truck don’t seem to have any […]

It’s immediately apparent that Alfredo Koch knows what he’s talking about. He’s a professor and coordinator for the agribusiness/viticulture and enology program at Allan Hancock College, and he’s got credentials galore: an ag degree from Cal Poly, a doctorate from UC Davis, three wineries under his belt, and decades in the game.  We met on […]

I know this contractor dude, Ivan Casavantes, who I see at remodel jobs all over the county. He always seems to have some secret spot, right around the corner, with the best quesadillas or breakfast burritos on the coast. He brings enough for his whole crew but rarely lets the restaurant’s name slip. I think […]

The wonder of self-pour taps might be common knowledge in some circles, but they’re all brand spanking new to me. On a recent Friday, I explored these space-age contraptions at the vaguely corporate but also thoroughly enjoyable Blast 825 Brewery in Old Orcutt. This new way to serve beer works like this: Patrons prove their […]

When a little birdie told me that Solvang’s Root 246 recently revised its list of handcrafted signature cocktails, that was all the inspiration I needed to check it out. The wife and I were feeling adventurous, especially as I could count on one hand the number of high falutin’ five-course meals I’ve had in my […]

My family doesn’t usually go out for Italian food, except for the occasional Americanized junk pizza when we’re feeling lazy or hosting a sleepover or what have you. My wife’s grandmother was born in Italy and passed her family’s cooking techniques to her grandkids, so most of the time, my wife’s two-day Bolognese sauce and […]

It only took 10 minutes of chatting with Chef Conrad Gonzales about his new eatery for it to become abundantly clear that he was planning something bigger than just another restaurant.    The guy is passionate about food, but not just the end result on the customer’s plate. He talked about the varied, interconnected origins […]

As soon as I opened the door, I knew my search was finally over: I’d found my new go-to sushi place.  Atari-ya doesn’t look like much from the outside. The place sits sandwiched between shops among the rows of assorted strip mall businesses that make up the Stowell Center Plaza. The windows are too dark […]

When two co-workers at two different jobs offer unsolicited recommendations of the same restaurant in the same week, the universe was trying to tell me something. The message was loud and clear: Time to go get a burrito. I had received an email from a sales rep at the Sun saying she’d been to La […]

I’m not going to lie. I had my doubts when I first sat down at Magic Dragon Cuisine. The spacious restaurant was nearly empty, but to be fair, my wife and I had shown up at about 4:30 on a Sunday afternoon. Not a good sign, but I tried to give the place the benefit […]

How are wars still happening when we live in a world where brunches like this exist? I seriously don’t get it. What are we fighting about? Oil, that goopy black garbage?  For God’s sake, there are two rows of tables in Santa Maria where every Sunday, all manner of delicious food from heaven is artfully […]