Southern California

While we find ourselves in Santa Barbara wine country, also known as the Santa Ynez Valley, about every other month or so, I can honestly say I had never been to the actual town of Santa Ynez until last month. I use the word “town” quite loosely to describe this 6-block, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it, gathering of small office buildings, shops and homes. I’ve seen it on the regional tasting map for years, but until S.Y. Kitchen moved in, there was no reason to ever go there…at least not for a tourist.

Despite its proliferation of wineries in the last  decade, the restaurant scene in the Valley just has not kept up the same pace of growth. Your high-end / non-chain options are few and far between (literally), so when we heard of this place - owned and operated by the team behind Toscana in Brentwood - we figured we would give its “modern, rustic” Italian food a try. The chefs - brothers Luca and Francesco Crestanelli - are direct from Verona, bringing their expertise to fruition in this tiny corner of wine country.

I'm an obsessive travel planner. I leave nothing to chance when venturing far away from my home. I need a lay of the new land to feel safe and happy. I don't always do everything or go to every place I research, but the last thing I want is to be bored when I'm away from home sitting in a generic hotel room. Since I've also been, at least until the last year, a fairly picky-eater I like to know my dining options. I will only eat fast-food in an emergency, i.e. when there is absolutely no other choice. As a result, my pre-trip planning involves many sessions on the Internet, trying to find the best and cheapest restaurants that also have a decent wine list and cuisine that isn't too ethnic (the Man won't eat Indian, Thai or Chinese that doesn't come from a container). This is not an easy task.

Our most recent road trip to Sonoma county meant an endlessly boring drive up the I-5 from L.A. We could have flown, but we wanted to spend our money on wine and since we needed a car anyway, we bit the bullet and hit the highway. Once you cross the Grapevine, Central California is mostly flat desert with nothing to see except the occasional gigantic farm or mass-producing vineyard. I hate this stretch of road more than the road to Las Vegas and believe me that's saying something because I hate Las Vegas. (Only the I-10 to Phoenix is worse.)

"Can I get real milk?"

"Honey, you're not in LA, it's creamers or black coffee for you."

He must have been expecting a brat face back because my smile caught him off guard. He had no idea that he had said the magic words and black diner coffee was exactly what I was after.

Thom and I had both woken up at 4am to work on set on different commercials, he is a stylist and I was working as a wardrobe assistant. After our respective jobs wrapped we met up at the Bootleg Theater to see Buffy Sainte Marie, who gave everyone in the audience an out of body experience. By 12:30am we were on the road to Palm Desert, picking up our friend Merrick on the way. We got to the desert by 3am, went straight to sleep, and woke up the next day to enter Coachella.

Nightmare upon nightmare it took us three hours to get into the festival (those con artists woudn't sell single day tickets this year and it's the only year the festival has sold out) so we waited in traffic and line upon line to enter a post apocalyptic like field filled with hipsters and, well, L.A.

Sushi Ota modestly calls itself the "premier sushi restaurant in San Diego." They rate the number 52 spot on Yelp’s Top 100 Places to Eat in the US but I didn't know this before. Their adamant fans insist they should have landed higher since the fish is gimmick-free without say, whimsical concoctions. I agree, fusion throws me too. How'd we end up destination dining? It's not easy finding just the right place and it's tough even where I live, let alone somewhere else.

How do you judge great sushi? Eat it everywhere with reason. Reason takes in authentic dining rooms that are busy, hopping even, and for me the longer the line the better. I had the best tuna that dropped from a chef's knife to my plate. We were sitting at the bar in a place whose name I no longer remember in a strip mall in Orinda where you had to show up in the morning to get a seat. Stunningly, West Coast tuna is nothing like what we get on the East Coast; ditto today's salmon and uni.

We start the day shopping for plants. After, we ask the mechanical lady to take us over to Mission Bay Drive. You have to convince her you're no longer in Boston; this takes more than a couple of whacks. Shortly, we all find Sushi Ota tucked beside a 7-Eleven in the far corner of a mini-mall that also houses Planned Parenthood. I get out first to see how it looks.