Food & Drink

Deep in the heart of autumn, families begin gearing up for the holiday season. With Thanksgiving just days away, Central Coast area hotels and restaurants ride to the rescue with a spate of innovative menus and relaxing spa packages for both hosts and their guests. If relatives are headed your way in the upcoming weeks, […]

Los Olivos, once a sleepy country village where dogs lounged in the middle of the road, has matured into a wine-centric burg with a main drag wryly known among locals as “tasting room row.” In mid-summer, the number of tasting rooms doing business along Grand Avenue—the two blocks that constitute downtown—totaled 16. On Oct. 9, […]

A beloved local institution has gone national with an innovative method for delivering restaurant-quality meals to tables across the nation. And it’s not just your average restaurant quality, either, but prime steaks and savory seafood grilled, Santa Maria-style, over a live red oak fire. The Hitching Post I, founded in Casmalia 56 years ago by […]

Community spirit runs deep among Santa Barbara County winemakers, a convivial bunch of science-minded artists who universally appreciate their lucky lifestyle. When asked, they rarely hesitate to lend a helping hand, whether the request involves equipment loans, technical advice, or donations to a worthy cause. This year, seven area winemakers have joined People Helping People, […]

Gentlemen, fire up your ovens, grills, and breadmakers! Tie on those manly aprons and head for the kitchen—it’s time once again to brandish your giant spoons at Real Men Cook, the Arts Outreach annual fundraiser and lively showcase for brawny local talent. This year’s event, slated for Oct. 25 at Flag Is Up Farms, marks […]

There’s a new family of vintners in the Central Coast wine community, and they’re setting up their operation on a venerable tract of land in San Luis Obispo County. The Conway family of Santa Barbara, who purchased Rancho Arroyo Grande last June, stands poised to launch a fresh portfolio of luxury and ultra-premium wines on […]

The people could be a metaphor for the soil. Or the soil could be a metaphor for the people. The farmers are predominantly bipolar, schizophrenic, severely depressed. The land is a dusty four acres of sandy dirt, once home to abandoned machinery. A promise of good things to come isn’t the first thing that comes […]

Just when area vintners find themselves knee deep in grape juice and slippery skins, the Santa Barbara County Vintners’ Association (SBCVA) extends an invitation to join the messy fun. Over four days this October, wine lovers can get an eyeful of the action as winemakers, chefs, and tasting room staffers roll out the red carpet […]

Here in the no-longer-so-wild West, we like to celebrate our lifestyle and civic longevity with parades, parties, and lots of hearty food. The friendly folks of Los Alamos, that scenic burg located just off Highway 101 about 18 miles south of Santa Maria, are no different, having annually rolled out the red carpet and cast […]

In the mid-1970s, the Firestone family built Santa Barbara County’s first post-Prohibition winery to bottle their homegrown wine grapes under their own label. Tony Austin, prote;ge; of Andre; Tchelistcheff, the godfather of the California wine industry, came aboard as winemaker and eagerly shepherded the fruit of the young vines into remarkably good wines.  Since then, […]

These last days of summer belong not so much to baseball and back-to-school, as to the incredible tumble of squash erupting from vegetable patches and grocery bins all over town. Green, yellow, smooth, or warty, the prolific members of the squash clan pretty much rule the season of harvest. Heralded as “baby” squash during the […]

Noted for its converted dairies and makeshift barrel rooms, Santa Barbara County’s early wine scene harbored surfers-, cyclists-, and retail clerks-turned-vintners who tackled harvest with second-hand equipment and jerry-rigged crush pads. Rustic and colorful, the early 1980s saw the birth of a local industry destined for greatness, no matter how humble its beginnings. In 1987, […]