Happy news: Local charcuterie wizard Chris LaVeque of El Salchichero has won a prestigious 2014 Good Food award. At a blind tasting last fall LaVeque's Coppa wowed judges who chewed through over 1450 total entries from all over the country. Congratulations are also in order to chef/caterer Heidi Schlect, whose divine Santa Rosa Plum Jam took a Good Food award.Osocalis distillers Jeff Emery (yes, the winemaker of Santa Cruz Mountain Vineyard) and Daniel Farber won awards in the Spirits category for their Rare Alambic Brandy and Apple Brandy. Kudos all!
There's also good news (for her) and bad news (for us) from longtime food entrepreneur Marilyn Emery, of the piquant food kiosk Alfresco. “Yes! I'm retiring,” Emery told me this week with obvious delight. “I've been working since I was 14,” says the former co-owner of the late, great Pearl Alley Bistro,” and I' m really excited to look forward to my photography, doing arts and crafts, travel.” Emery revealed that Robert Gaukel of Bella Chi-Cha would be taking over the kiosk once the red tape was untangled. “He wants to maintain continuity, like using his pesto recipes and incorporating them into some wraps.” Emery has been a vivacious fixture of the Santa Cruz food scene for over 30 years, and her inventive energy will be missed on the street.
Also very good is Gabriella pastry chef Krista Pollock's sensuous way with chocolate. Rita and I had a birthday feast of fresh trout and polenta, after which we split a plush slab of barely-sweetened dense chocolate cake filled with chocolate ganache and glazed cocoa nibs. It exemplified the entire point of chocolate. Pollock's also doing a kiwi tiramisu inflected with green tea that has me drooling. Worth considering while you're dining at Gabriella.
The especially bad news, as you probably know by now, is the closure of Aptos' wildly popular Booka Restaurant, housed inside the Bayview Hotel (is there such thing as a cursed location?). Apparently, there were some unresolvable tensions somewhere in the contractual agreement that left the hard-working restaurateurs without options.
“Unfortunately,” chef Eli Epstein told me, “there's not much I can say due to legal issues, but things were supposed to be done that were crucial to the survival of the restaurant. And they weren't.” Epstein said Booka has gotten “so many calls from people who loved what we did. And if there is a future for Booka it will require someone coming forward to help make it happen.” However, Epstein told me that the new 831 Sandwiches catering service—which I wrote about in last week’s column—will continue to provide creative lunches throughout the county.
Tapas Tuesday at Soif continues to impress. For $3, I enjoyed a choice little app of farm egg topped with crisp, intensely flavored pork belly and a few sprigs of brassica. I paired it with a glass of very dry Mosel…And now's a good time to get advance tickets to the gala February 6 Del Mar Theatre evening of food, wine and film. The concept is the love child of theNickelodeon's new marketer Ike Jablon, entrepreneurs of VinoCruz and The Glass Jar group. Already known for Penny Ice Creamery and The Picnic Basket, the Glass Jar folks are almost ready to unveil their downtown restaurant Assembly. The February 6 event features a tasting preview of the Assembly menu, paired with wines from VinoCruz, followed by a screening of the foodie documentary Spinning Plates about three extraordinary restaurants and the behind-the-scenes people who make them work. Advance tickets ($24/$18 without wine) available at http://www.thenick.com and the Del Mar Box Office.
