If you subscribe to the notion that variety is the spice of life, you will be enamored, like I am—and like so many others are—with Full of Life Foods. The increasingly popular restaurant in Los Alamos embraces the farm-to-table philosophy, basing its ever-changing specials menu almost entirely on what local produce is in season. This allows you to return every weekend of the year and savor a different special creation every time.
If, on the other hand, you are a creature of habit, ordering your tried-and-true favorites again and again, Full of Life Foods has you covered with a dozen all-natural flatbread pizza flavors that adorn the year-round menu, in addition to signature desserts.
You’re not alone. The extremely popular flatbreads are the backbone of their business. During the week, Full of Life, the artisan bakery, produces certified organic, handmade, frozen flatbread pizzas, distributed nationally.
Owner Clark Staub and company are doing a lot of things right. What was once a Friday and Saturday evening-only restaurant expanded to include Sunday supper, which is now the most popular night of the week. And as of May 17, Full of Life Foods is open for dinner another night of the week: Thursday.
And that’s not all. A familiar face recently returned to the restaurant. Chef Brian Collins, who was chef at Full of Life Foods from 2008 to 2011 and executive chef at Dolphin Bay Resort’s Lido Restaurant in Shell Beach this past year, is back in Los Alamos.
The previous chef, Dylan Fultineer, moved to the East Coast.
“Dylan was leaving, and I called Clark, the owner, and pretty much asked for my old job back,” Collins told me.
He was able to hit the ground running: “Expect more good food coming your way,” he promised.
For Collins, coming back to Full of Life feels like coming home.
“Honestly, sometimes you have to go away to appreciate what you had, you know?” he said, noting that he loves working in Full of Life’s open kitchen. “I just really enjoyed working with that hearth—you know, that big wood oven that they have in the center of the dining room? … It kind of creates a fun interaction with our guests. I missed that. I really enjoy making food and getting that immediate feedback; you know the look on people’s faces, or talking to our guests to see where they’re from? I enjoyed recognizing our regulars and saying hello.”
Full of Life Foods suits his training. Collins went to culinary school in San Francisco. He landed an internship and then a full-time position at Chez Panisse Restaurant, which is owned by chef and author Alice Waters, “who really pioneered the local, organic, seasonal movement here in the United States,” Collins said.
“When I was there, I got to really see what amazing, fresh products look and taste like, how to use them in creative ways, because there the menu changes every single day,” Collins said. “It’s a great way to stay inspired.”
For Full of Life Foods, Collins hand-selects often organic produce, at several local farmers markets. The chef, who lives in Arroyo Grande, stops at the nearby farmers market on Wednesday mornings and on Saturday afternoons. Between Collins and restaurant owner Staub, they hit the farmers market on Saturday in San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara, and the one in Solvang every Wednesday.
Each weekend, Collins creates a market soup, four market starters, two flatbread specials, and three market desserts.
When I visited on Memorial Day weekend, the specials included roasted asparagus and Rutiz Farms Chioggia beets, topped with Burrata (a fresh Italian cheese made from mozzarella), Romesco sauce, and red wine vinaigrette; oven-baked Santa Barbara black cod on homemade levain, Rutiz Farms fava beans, and Spanish dry chorizo; and shelling pea soup with crème fraîche. The flatbread specials were baby Maui onions, shaved Roots Farm new potatoes, and housemade pancetta with a garlic ricotta sauce; and broccoli and aged Gouda flatbread with leek cream sauce and slow-roasted tomatoes.
Customers come for dinner and routinely tell Collins they want every special he’s doing that night. That’s the beauty of Full of Life Foods: “You can keep it simple, or you can really go for it,” Collins said.
Full of Life Foods e-mails its weekly specials to anyone who signs up. Just go to the website, fulloflifefoods
.com, and click on the link. The restaurant also has a popular Facebook page, so they’re accepting “friends.”
Full of Life Foods does not, however, accept reservations. Seating is on a first-come, first-served basis. Thursday through Saturday they open at 4:30 p.m., but they don’t start seating until 5 p.m. They open at 4 p.m. on Sundays. Guests come early and put their name on a wait list and enjoy a glass of Santa Barbara County wine or beer at the bar.
Bring the kids, like many customers, and let them play in the outdoor organic garden while the parents relax on picnic tables with some local wine and a bite to eat. Or bring a date and sit fireside along the rail—the front row—and watch the action in the open kitchen. There’s also a table that seats 20, where Full of Life does winemaker dinners—which I know from experience are definitely worth the price of admission.
And what about the rumor that they might expand to the south?
“Well, that’s a dream—a goal that Clark would like to get to. I’d like to help him get to, for sure,” Collins revealed. “There’s nothing on the immediate horizon, but we are definitely going for that, to open a second location.”
For the time being, if you haven’t ventured out to Los Alamos in a while, you may be surprised that some of the most innovative, satisfying, and “full of life” foods on the Central Coast can be found every weekend at 225 W. Bell St., now on Thursday nights, too.
Sun food and wine writer Wendy Thies Sell is not a creature of habit; she orders something different every time. Contact her at wthies@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Jun 7-14, 2012.