 Farm to You: Pick Up Your Produce at SageThe flavors of spring have taken over the Sage menus: sugar snap peas, fava beans, asparagus, ramps, morel mushrooms, fiddlehead ferns, tangerines, strawberries, rhubarb. Imagine having produce like this at home, instead of the handballs masquerading as fruit in the supermarket. (That’s unfair—handballs have more flavor.) If you can’t get to the Santa Monica Farmers’ Market (and, really, who can?), let it come to you. For over a year, worker bees in Santa Monica have been able to pick up baskets of fresh farm produce every week from drop-off points at City Hall, the public library, and Google (naturally), by pre-paid monthly subscription, thanks to the Santa Monica Farmers’ Market Basket Program. Chef Rich can bring these baskets—usually under $25!—to you from the Wednesday Market for pick up at Sage Eastbluff or Sage on the Coast. Katie Ricketts, of the Southland Farmers’ Market Association, does the shopping—tasting the produce, talking to the farmers and visiting chefs, and bundling up enough for one week in each basket, along with a newsletter that tells you what’s included and offers suggestions on how to prepare it. The vigor and variety of seasonal eating can be yours. Call Chef Rich and sign up: 949-718-9650. |
| The Big Dig Thanks to all of you who have made your way to the entrance of Sage Eastbluff past the dozers and backhoes of a spring remodeling of the Eastbluff Village Center. What for weeks had seemed the beginnings of a subway to the beach, and then, more thrillingly, an artificial lagoon, has turned unexpectedly into a tranquil piazzetta, referred to in Irvine Company memoranda, adorably, as the People Space. The concrete has been replaced by bricks and pavers, and the tall, graceful eucalyptus trees by broad, graceful olive trees, as if the courtyard of a remote manse in the Outback (like Drogheda, in The Thorn Birds), had been replaced by one more ancient and Mediterranean (say Donnafugata, in The Leopard). As of this writing, unweatherable pergolas of cinder block and steel are being raised. Your forbearance in the face of the barricades and machinery has been an example to us all. |
 Aged to PerfectionChef Rich has emerged cobwebbed from his cellar (who knew he had one?) with the wines he secretly and with unwonted restraint set aside to ripen with time. They are now available to you, dear Reader, at their peak. (And how often does that happen?) If you don’t see them on the wine list, motion to the sommelier. They run between $200 and $500, and include the Wine Spectator’s #2 pick of the 2006 “Top 100,” the 2003 Quilceda Creek Cabernet Sauvignon. “Arguably America’s greatest Cabernet,” wrote Wine Advocate’s Robert Parker, who rated it a perfect 100 points. Also available from this small, family-run winery in Snohomish, Washington, the 2004 Cab (rated 99 points) and the 2005 Cab, which winemakers Alex and Paul Golitzin describe as a “dream vintage.” The 2001 Rudd Cabernet, made from a Bordeaux clone grown at the corner of Oakville Crossroads and Silverado Trail, still needed, in 2005 Cellartracker tastings, a few more years in the cellar. Well, the time is at hand. The Rudd 2002-2004 vintages are also available, along with two vintages of the Lewis Cuvee L, Lewis Cellars Proprietary Red made from the single best barrels from their finest lots. Rich has a few bottles of the spectacular, inaugural 1997 vintage, as well as the 2001, awarded 90 points by Robert Parker for its “fragrant perfume of cedar, new saddle leather, black currants, plums and a hint of figs.” Allocations of the 2001 Lewis Cellars Reserve Cab were severely restricted, but you can still find it at Sage (for a while, anyway), and it remains “the finest bottle of Reserve Cabernet” Lewis ever produced. Cheers, everyone! |
| Quarterly Farmhouse Dinner: Wednesday, May 14 The next Farmhouse Dinner, the post-market, multiple-course, impromptu, chef-gone-wild shindig, will happen Wednesday night, May 14, on the patio at Sage Eastbluff. The seating is communal, the twilight lingering, and the garden in full flower. Come taste what all the new spring crops and a besotted imagination can come up with. The cost is $35 per person. If you want to walk the midway with Chef Rich that morning, make arrangements by calling 949-718-9650. |
 GalaOn Sunday, May 18, nineteen Los Angeles chefs (plus Chef Rich, clearly out of his depth), all darlings of the food press and long supporters of the Santa Monica Farmers’ Market, will finally share the limelight. At the annual fundraising event for the Southland Farmers’ Market Association, held this year in the Starlight Ballroom of the Fairmont Miramar Hotel, 101 Wilshire Blvd., each chef will collaborate with an unsung steward of the land to create an appetizer, main course, or dessert showcasing the local-sustainable-artisanal produce that’s been carrying them since day one. This year’s honorees will be chef Josie Leblach of Josie Restaurant and John Tenerelli of Tenerelli Family Orchards. Farm tours and chef dinners will be silently auctioned. Over five hundred ultra-refined palates are expected. Tickets are $125 can be purchased only in advance by calling 310-455-0181. |
| Feed Your Head: David West Imports Exotic Saturday Tasting David West, the Mushroom Man, introduced to you, dear Reader, in the June 2006 newsletter, will bring his imported olive oils, balsamic vinegars, honeys, preserves and mostardas for a tasting at Sage on the Coast on Saturday, June 7 at 2 pm. If you have never (or not recently) tasted authentic balsamic vinegars from Modena, the ones that retail for over a hundred dollars a bottle, this is your chance. The region’s traditional process hasn’t changed since the mid-1800s and every barrel is inspected by a single bottling consortium to maintain quality. You can also taste a range of Tuscan and Ligurian olive oils, from peppery to sweet, dipped in bread, drizzled on grilled meat and tossed in calamari salad. David will bring fruit preserves from an organic commune in Patagonia for use in vinaigrettes, as glazes, or on bread, including one made of murta berries, wild tree berries from the rain forest that taste something like kiwi and raspberry. There will be honeys from France and Spain and a Chilean one called Ulmo, which David is crazy over. Mostardas, savory fruit preserves from Italy made with mustard seed (like chutneys, but not as thick), are served on cheese or boiled meat. David’s come from an orchard owned by two sisters outside Modena, a twelve acre paradise where all the fruit is hand-picked and the mostardas complex and utterly unique. Treat yourself to an afternoon of exquisite tastes and edifying conversation. The cost is $35 per person. Please RSVP at 949-715-7243. |
 German Winemaker Dinner: Das Weingut ist AllesThree visiting producers of the highest quality German wine will each pour two of their best varieties at the next five-course Winemaker Dinner at Sage on the Coast, Wednesday, May 21st. Chef Rich and Chef Kris will create special dishes to complement food-friendly sparkling wine, Riesling, Riesling Spätlese, Gewürztraminer Spätlese, and Pinot Noir. All are born from hand-tended, hard-to-mechanize vineyards on the steep, rocky slopes of rivers in three of the nation’s 13 wine-producing regions. The Riesling grape, planted most often, produces wines of all sweetness levels, which are long-lived like red wines and develop in the bottle. Riesling has the uncanny ability to exhibit the character of minerals in the soil as well as exotic florals, honey and spice. Alice Fitz will be pouring the wines of Fitz-Ritter, an estate with 52 acres of vineyards arrayed around Bad Durkheim, in the Pfalz region of southwest Germany. Their 2003 dry Riesling received 90 points in the Wine Spectator for its “lovely aromas of mineral and apricot” and their 2003 Riesling Spätlese Halbtrocken, an off-dry white with “a combination of cream, vanilla custard and
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Eastbluff Shopping Center 2531 Eastbluff Newport Beach, CA 92660 949.718.9650 |
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Crystal Cove Promenade 7862 East Coast Highway Newport Beach, CA 92657 949.715.7243 |
mineral flavors” received 89 points. The estate, or “Weingut,” has been in the Fitz family for over 200 years and is part of the VdP, the oldest association of wine estates. Alice, an American, concentrates on exports and marketing now that she and husband Konrad have turned the estate over to their son Johann. With the help of oenologist and field manager Christian Klein and cellar master Bernd Henniger, Fitz-Ritter produces Riesling, Gewürztraminer, Pinot Blanc and Pinot Gris.
Also visiting will be Barbara Rundquist-Müller, owner of Dr. H. Thanisch Müller-Burggraef estate, founded in 1785 in the village of Bernkastel-Kues in the Mosel Valley. Under the direction of Dr. Hugo Thanisch, Barbara’s forebear, the winery gained an international reputation in the 19th Century. Her family cultivates the largest portion of the famed Bernkasteler Doctor vineyard, a steep, slate-ridden site in the mid-Mosel valley which produced the wine that legendarily cured an ailing Prince Bömond II of Trier. Frank Heyden, of Dr. Heyden, in Oppenhiem, Rheinhessen, will pour wines from the estate founded by his father, Dr. Karl Heyden in 1999. Frank, a graduate of the Geisenheim Viticultural Institute, believes in hand-picking, strict pruning, and low yields. He has taken over the reins of the family estate and devoted it to biodynamic principles, which we decadent Americans have but hours to compromise, so be prompt. The cost is only $65 for wine and food. Reserve a seat by calling 949-715-7243.