Petite, hardworking and restlessly creative, Katherine Stern cooked her way around the world before taking over the sunny kitchen at La Posta on Seabright in early 2010. The restaurant ‘s popularity has continued to grow under her expertise, evident in imaginative pastas, feather-light pizzas and entrees like braised quail and fennel sausage. She was expertly dressing an 80-pound pig for spit-roasting when I caught up with her last week.
A native of Silicon Valley, Stern attended culinary school in Portland. “I’ve always loved cooking, so thought I’d give it a shot,” she says. “It felt right.”
It also quickly began to lead her in interesting directions. After a stint post-college working in Santa Cruz, Stern traveled to Europe, ending up in Tuscany. There she joined a group working on organic farms, where a friend turned her on to a new winery just getting underway on a castle estate. “I began working in the fields, then the olive orchards and vineyards. I also helped in the kitchen. It felt very special,” she recalls.
She returned to the United States, but not for long. “In 2002 the estate asked me to come back as their cook, mostly for family meals. It was very traditional Italian cooking. I learned a lot.” She also met her future husband. “He was restoring part of the castle, and I was cooking.” Romantic, no?
Stern’s focus on Italian cookery began then, and it continues to this day. Back in this country she worked at Quince in San Francisco, “during the big California passion for Italian food,” she recalls. Then she and her husband moved to New Zealand.
“Travel gave me a good idea of what was going on elsewhere in cooking,” she says. “We lived in Wellington for a while, then we moved to Scotland, where my husband is from. I worked at a hotel. It was rugged and gorgeous.”
It was also, she admits, challenging for finding ingredients. “And it was too rainy.” So they returned to California, got a tip about La Posta and met with owner Patrice Boyle. “We talked about Italy and the food I liked. And it clicked.”
Using the existing menu as a template, Stern gradually revamped everything. “Now it’s all mine,” she says. “Patrice has confidence in me and lets me do what I want.”
Stern haunts the farmers markets twice a week, always looking for the newest harvest and locally sourced items like the pig she’s fixing for an upcoming barbecue. Famously, the restaurant also has its own chicken coop. “We have our own chickens for eggs and make our own sausage, salames, pancetta. And we do the breads. Everything is from scratch,” she chuckles. “I can get a little carried away.”
Naturally that means housemade pasta, a subject that makes Stern’s face light up. “I love to make pasta—I always enjoy that,” she says. “Once you have it down, it’s easy.”
For Restaurant Week she’s thinking about a sunchoke soup, a tiny pizzetta and, of course, pasta. She also has quail and lingcod on her mind.
Morning wears on, and Stern’s peach leaf gelato with wild fennel is almost finished. “I don’t see myself doing anything else than cooking,” she says. Let’s hope for all our sakes she never has to.
La Posta, 538 Seabright Ave., Santa Cruz. 831.457.2782. Closed Monday.
