Super Sunday in Santa Barbara

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Up in Santa Barbara for the weekend speaking at the Edible Institute, a conference sponsored by the Edible Community of food magazines, and there was one place I absolutely had to stop. Can you guess where?

Yup. Every time I even drive near Santa Barbara, I am drawn as if magnetically to La Super-Rica, one of my favorite restaurants on the planet. Sunday lunch didn’t disappoint. Here you see the posole special -- we had a couple of those; a couple orders of tacos de rajas (stuffed with a slow-cooked combination of poblano peppers, onions and cheese); a couple tamales de verduras; a couple chorizo especiales (basically a little pot of melted ranchera cheese studded with bits of well-browned chorizo); and a Super-Rica especial (grilled pork, grilled chiles, melted cheese). Hey, there were four of us.

Another great find in Santa Barbara was a relatively new restaurant called Julienne. This is a really exciting place. The in-house charcuterie was absolutely terrific, some of the best coppa I’ve had. It’s small and popular, but sitting at the bar was very cool. Also ran into star winemaker Greg Brewer, who was entertaining a group of friends there.

-- Russ Parsons