Retired / Dining / Foodchain
Fishy and Flavorful
Viva Las Vegas, election food fun and super flavor on the South Coast.
Hope reported for duty in a strange place last Saturday. It turned up in the heart of the Monstrosity the Mob Built, the Disneyland of Skin, the Elvis impersanator oasis known as The City of ...
Hope Floats
Reigning in locavore extremists with help from a different “slow” food movement.
Locavore fundamentalists might call it blasphemy, but there’s no reason why a meal made with local foods can’t also contain ingredients from the other side of the world. Homegrown vegetables like broccoli and garlic stir-fried ...
Foodchain
Retiring His Number
LAST LINK IN THE CHAIN… I’m sure there is no important correlation between the outgoing presidential administration leaving the White House after eight years and me leaving the Weekly House after just about the same ...
Foodchain
Eaten Up
STEWING OVER IT… Phil’s Fish Market in Moss Landing received a visit from the Food Channel’s Bobby Flay last week to film an episode of Throwdown. That’s the show where Flay shows up and challenges ...
Foodchain
In Costume
HALLO AT ME… I’m sitting here writing this for the Halloween issue dressed up like a politician running for president of the United States. I am wearing a navy blue suit, white shirt and conservative ...
Foodchain
Don’t Be Scared
KNOWING THE SCORE… I sit here realizing that summer seems to have neglected us this year. It is beginning to get colder, the days are noticeably shorter, yet I don’t remember any extended stretch of ...
Food Chain
Forkful of Freedom
NIBBLING AWAY… As we grudgingly face the ever-more possible possibilities made clear by all economic indicators in a world gone wrong, along with the many depressing realities already plaguing more of the world, it becomes ...
Food Chain
Still Biting
EAT YOUR HEART OUT… Wow, 20 years of Weekly weekly, never weakly. I came aboard in the summer of 2000 after I answered an ad in the Coast Weekly looking for a restaurant reviewer. My ...
Food Chain
Fall Out
A LITTLE SEASONING… It’s October. I don’t remember the last time I saw rain around here, felt its freshness wash over me. I feel dried out, brown and droopy, my movements hampered by limbs turned ...
Foodchain
Food: Medicine for the Madness
FEEL THE PAIN… Amidst the flailing (that’s correct) financial markets and institutions (“I’m not ready for an institution”– Mae West), the military unrest throughout the world’s hot spots, the blatant government-sanctioned theft by conscienceless corporate ...
Food Chain
Vote for Fun
POPULAR Election… Life should be pretty fun these next eight weeks or so as the final act of our presidential comedy performance– er, election– plays itself out. The farcical popularity contest between representatives from both ...
Food Chain
Another Peace
SAME STUFF, very DIFFERENT DAY… Each week I submit this conglomeration of bars, stripes and star-spangled banners for a deadline that allows the editorial and artistic folks down at Weekly central to plug it into ...
Food chain
Run for Cover
APOCALYPSE NOW… September has arrived. With it comes scorching summer days upon a landscape bereft of moisture, dehydrated beyond normal capacity. Our decreasing water index exacerbates the increasing stress levels presented by a societal egosystem ...
Food chain
Dead Ringer
TOP OF HIS GAME… Watching the Olympics has reminded me just how much I love sport. The searing heat of competition, the camaraderie among participants, the excruciating emotional risk, the exhaustive expansion of individual and ...
Food Chain
Ready to Roll
ON RAMPING UP… Well, I’m sitting here inspecting the dozen or so vintage, classic, extremely rare automobiles I bought at the various auctions during car week. This year I tried to buy according to color ...
Food chain
Heart of the Party
SIX HUNDRED FOR SUR… “The winds of change blow through, and leave me in the clear blue sky of mind more quickly when I greet them with an open heart.” A friend of mine, Beth ...
Food Chain
Fringe Benefits
HOPE FLOATS… As sunshine begins to crack through the foggy days here in never-never land and smoke recedes, rebuilding proceeds and our summer accedes, word of special tributes and fundraisers abounds as we neighborly folk ...
Food Chain
Up and at ’Em
RISING THOUGHT… This morning was one of those mornings– awake too early to truly be called morning, later than what normal people would call night. So I sit here clicking away at this keyboard and ...
Food chain
South Rising
FROM THE ASHES… Hit the south coast last week– bloodies at River Inn, lunch at Big Sur Bakery. It was uplifting to see business going on in Big Sur, folks picking up where Mother Nature ...
Food Chain
Still Cookin’
FIGHTING BACK… As the wildfires and blistering heat scorch the world around us, we here in idyllic Never-Never Land by the Sea remain seemingly oblivious to the plight of others less fortunate in their choice ...
Food Chain
Feel the Freedom
INDEPENDENT THINKING… When in the Course of human Events it becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the Political Bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the Powers of the Earth, ...
food chain
Happy to Be Nappy
CRUSHING DRIVE… In the past, I have periodically focused on some of the more vile members of the sub-class of species running our world into the compost heap of history and fired a few volleys ...
Food chain
Cool It
TOO HOT TO HANDLE… Fires seem to be spontaneously combusting nearby and around the state. It looks like we are headed for a difficult, fire-filled year unless we miraculously receive a few straight weeks of ...
Food Chain
Hospitality, Period.
REALITY CHECK… As I sit here, hands holding a heavy head, visualizing our little corner of paradise, I’m trying to get a sense of what this whole crazy industry, this hospitality branch of the unarmed ...
Food Chain
Drink It In
WHO’S MY DADDY… First of all, a shout out to Papa Nap on his 86th birthday. The man’s been through the depression, WWII and a whole bunch of life. Still about the sharpest mind I ...
Food Chain
All Aboard
PLAY TIME… I’m sitting here thinking I should be on the golf course, usually Quail Lodge, playing in the California Restaurant Association Golf Tournament. Actually, I was sitting here not thinking much at all and ...
Food Chain
Sustain the Game
TAKE NOTES… With the past week’s Cooking for Solutions still cacophonizing inside the expansive chamber of my mind, I find myself (yeah right, Martha, this guy’s so lost he’ll never find himself) thinking about the ...
Food Chain
Major Players
STORY SONG… It’s the most wonderful time of the year – sorry, I’m channeling Christmas songs. Got to get a new receiver or something. I love it when a completely inane song captures the DJ ...
Food Chain
Time to Eat
SLOW GOING… Been a lot of talk lately from everyone about the sluggishness of the local economy – a microcosm of the larger economic scene we are facing around the country. On one hand I ...
FoodChain
A Lil’ Seasoning
BOUNCE IN THE STEP… Spring is definitely springing. Noticed a few mosquitoes in the house the past week; spiders also are showing up unannounced. It’s fascinating how they just appear out of nowhere, fully formed ...
Food Chain
Natural High
FROM THE NORTH… Just got back from a weeklong trip to the lake country about 100 miles north of Toronto (that’s in Canada). In an area majestically carpeted by trees, blotched by outcroppings of pre-Cambrian ...
Food Chain
Death, Taxes, My Synapses
Money Man… Well, the taxman hath come and gone, bless his heart. Hopefully you all found a way to recoup a good amount of the tithing you all so patriotically committed to the many important ...
Foodchain
Back for More
Where The Legends Go… Although it has been two weeks, post-partum waves of euphoric joy, laughter, fond memories and flowering legends still ripple across the Monterey Peninsula and the rest of the food and wine ...
Food Chain
A Legend is Born
In The Beginning… I had been anticipating opening day at the first ever Pebble Beach Food & Wine for a while. I remember sitting on the patio at Spanish Bay on a magnificent afternoon about ...
Food Chain
Flavor Fireworks
READY FOR THE BIG ONE… Something loud, noxious and flaming should accompany everything everyone does this weekend. There ought to be fireworks. I personally have enlisted the aid of a long-standing Italian family of fireworks ...
Food Chain
Still Cookin’
Editor’s Note: Raymond Napolitano gets a rare week off this week, but not without giving his readers a quick reminder about upcoming food events. In his place comes a word on wine from Weekly contributor ...
Food Chain
Class Act
School’s In Session… Beware the Ides of March. All I really remember was March 15, something to do with trouble closing in on Julius Caesar. You know how certain things make an impression on you ...
Great Taste(s)
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Food Chain
No Whining
Quit Yo’ Bitchin’… The Weekly’s Best Of issue is almost here. Each year – this is either my eighth or ninth one – the community inevitably gets all in a snit about the selections. Stop ...
Food Chain
Bring the Heat
HOT AND BOTHERED… I was hanging around annoying the guys in the kitchen at Bernardus Lodge the other day, interfering with Chef de Cuisine Christophe “Hurricane” Grosjean while he was preparing for the pending evening ...
Food Chain
Smug Check
Not Just On V-Day… This issue kisses the stands on Valentine’s Day. Ohhhwwweeeeeeee. Remember the old Donna Summer song, I Love to Love You Baby… sing it with me… love to love you baby… I… ...
Food Chain
Well Putt
Ready… Bing!… Oh Bing. If only we could wish upon a star-studded cast of hapless hackers for one more weekend singsong stroll behind you, the joyful warbler, Godfather of Clambake Central, Bada Bing, doobee doobee ...
So Much Flavor
Language Art… As I sit here a’spinnin’ and a’grinnin’, thinkin’ ‘bout how ‘tis in this life, how I’m a’gonna keep on winnin’, it occurs to me: first step oughta be to start my waist a’thinnin’. ...
So So Pretty
Food Chain
Don’t Be Blue… Welcome to another weekly journ(al)ey through the morass. (I really don’t entirely know what that word means and am not going to look it up, I just like the way it sounds, ...
Gray Area
Calendar Boy… It still kind of freaks me out when I think it’s the year 2008. Whatever happened to Y2K? Which brings me to a natural wine segue, whatever happened to wine Tokai? It’s a ...
Grindin
Ahead In The Distance… It is a fascinating feeling, facing the future. With each change of our constraining calendaric device there is a sense of looking forward, of projecting our proposals upon an unsuspecting yet ...
Food Chain
Power Outing
Better Late… I just got home. The clock in the downtown right-hand side of the screen says 2:50am. That’s absurd. You can’t go out around here and get home at 2:50am. The night – actually, ...
Power Outing
Better Late… I just got home. The clock in the downtown right-hand side of the screen says 2:50am. That’s absurd. You can’t go out around here and get home at 2:50am. The night – actually, ...
Foodchain
Stirred Up
Ballin’ With Chain… Every year during the holidays I like to vary up the Chain a bit, sometimes wondering into various reflections about the holiday season, sometimes ruminating on the state of the restaurant, wine ...
Food Chain
Grand Designs
Count It… This fine publication that so graciously allows me this weekly rant recently put out its 1,000th issue. That’s consecutive, friends, with nary a burp. That translates into 19 straight years of bringing you ...
Cheer Schmeer
Cheer Schmeer
Merry Me… This time of year really starts the emotional sap oozing out of our family trees. The holiday season exposes my innards (emotionally speaking) more so than any other time, excepting of course those ...
Stretch Out
Foodchain
Serious Celebration… We are officially in the stretch run between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day. I have already been visited by 2,000 Santas, elves, reindeer and other Christmas aberrations imploring me to buy, buy, buy. ...
Mad Thanks
Mad Thanks
Something To Give… It’s time to give thanks. Intuitively I understand how gargantuan the vessel full of thanks I carry with me is, yet when I try to spill them out individually they remain congealed, ...
Now Serving
Now Serving
Going Birding… Well, Thanksgiving is next week. You know what that means: Time begins to accelerate with each passing minute until suddenly it’s New Year’s Day, you’re making a pitcher of Bloody Marys for yourself ...
Hot Spotting
Hot Spotting
RAY OF LOVE… I am so proud of Joe and Lynn Cingari. I first met Joe about eight years ago while I was running Terranova Fine Wines in downtown Monterey (although he thinks he ran ...
Silver Screen Dreams
Silver Screen Dreams
FOOD CHAINLIFE ON TOP…I was sitting here crawled up inside my own head (for a change), thinking about movies. Somehow I got on the subject of the determining what movie is the best of all ...
Natural Reactor
Natural Reactor
OH THE HUMANITY… Life is fascinating. Trying to thrive in today’s world is so complex. There are opportunities to create and express the most profound examples of human kindness, decency, creativity and love. Yet the ...
Hot Like Chocolate
Hot Like Chocolate
CAREFUL WHAT YOU ASK FOR… Got a text message from Michael “T-Rex” Staley complaining that I’ve been writing too much fluff and should be going off on society more. Another reader, Lou Panetta, wrote to ...
Lean and Mean
Lean and Mean
BUGGING OUT… I’m a little worried about Sweet Thing. Normally she is a loving, caring, non-aggressive individual who spends reflective time trying to improve herself as a human and stay close to the tenets set ...
Top Flight
Top Flight
DEVELOPING NEWS...So I’m flying in a little four-seat Cirrus SR22 on my way back from the Napa Valley with a few friends one afternoon (just another typical lazy afternoon) and as would be expected, from ...
Ballin’ in Fall
Ballin’ in Fall
STRAIGHT SHOOTIN’… Well, it’s officially autumn. That was always a special time for me growing up (no wisecracks). As a true sports nut it was just about the best time of year. We’d still be ...
Deeper Into It
Deeper Into It
LOSS OF A GREAT… Seems to be plenty of tragedy to write about in life – guess there always has been. Today’s no different. Last week saw a tragic end to one of the local ...
Workin’ It
Workin’ It
DIRECT HEADING...It’s the day before I leave with my Sweet Thing to go away on a four-day group therapy thing we do a few times a year. It’s a retreat-type setting where none of the ...
Raw and Ready
Raw and Ready
CATCH UP...The Carmel TomatoFest is right around the corner. It arrives on Sept. 16, at Quail Lodge, a yearly wonderland of those magical orbs we call heirloom tomatoes, thanks to the vision of Gary Ibsen, ...
Serious Game
Serious Game
TRAVELING TYPE...I’m sitting in the complimentary computer room at one of those Suites Something or Other-style hotels in Tampa, Florida—or F-L-A as the locals like to say. Took a red-eye via LA from Monterey last ...
Factory Fresh
Factory Fresh
WIDGETS OF WISDOM...It’s an interesting thing, sitting in front of a blank screen (inside my head) assuming that eventually something will present itself and make its way through the maze of synaptic signal switching to ...
Motor Running
Motor Running
THE ART OF THE AUTO...Car week is here again. Time to polish up that little two-seater in the garage and cruise the main drags and soak up adoration. Each year I am progressively amazed at ...
Real As It Gets
Real As It Gets
SAD NEWS… Another seemingly senseless tragedy occurred a couple of weeks ago when the two sons of local hospitality industry veteran John Narigi, who is GM of Monterey Plaza Hotel, rolled their SUV while leaving ...
The Life
The Life
THE FABRIC OF LIFE... The coarse, black threads of tragedy interweave each human tapestry, adding dimension, texture, accents of darkness and strength. Those threads come in varying thickness and lengths, and in different shades of ...
Feel the Heat
Feel the Heat
HOT STUFF…This heat wave we’re experiencing sure isn’t doing the poor vegetation any good. Things around here are drier than Patrick Schrady’s wit. If the landscape gets any more baked, California will have to be ...
The Big Time
The Big Time
WALL TO WALL RED CARPETING... I’m still reverberating from the power of last Wednesday’s kickoff event for the fledgling Carmel Film Fest and the Carmel Film Society, and its premier showing of the movie Talk ...
Free Thinking
CELEBRATED OPINION...It is Wednesday, eight days prior to the release date of the Weekly. My normal routine has me sitting at the computer in the early morning quietly pattering across the keyboard as words find ...
Beer Fest Plus
Beer Fest Plus
CAR TROUBLE… I’m experiencing an interesting foray into the Wonderland where modern (sic) bureaucracy intersects psychotic, ethically bankrupt opportunism. A few months back (reminds me of a STOOGES routine) I received one of those correctable ...
Summer Lovin’
Summer Lovin’
POPPIN’ OFF...I am awash in Monterey Pop Festival history after last week’s great night at Golden State Theatre with DA PENNEBAKER and his epic documentary, Monterey Pop. Our local music man, MAC MCDONALD, editor of ...
Warmth and Kindness
Warmth and Kindness
HEAD CASE OF WHINE… I don’t know what’s wrong with me lately (lately?). It might be a by-product of getting older, but it has become increasingly more difficult for me to do stuff I really ...
People, Places and Cool Things
People, Places and Cool Things
SELF PRESERVATION… Today I feel like an old blues song. Seems I overindulged a bit last night, now I’m paying the tariff. I’m glad I’ve cut back considerably. Increased liver function is a good thing. ...
The Party Never Ends
The Party Never Ends
DAY TRIPPIN’… I’m off to see the wizard, the wonderful Wizard of Oz. I hear he is a wiz of a wiz if ever a wiz there was. I wish I was Dorothy standing there, ...
Staying Warm
Staying Warm
GET TO WORK… May was a fascinating month, calendarily speaking. It was one of those months that had two full moons in it. Also, we had five Weeklys (Weeklies?) in May, so ERIK CUSHMAN (the ...
Summer’s Really Here
Summer’s Really Here
HARD TRUTH…Memorial Day weekend is here. This signifies the unofficial beginning of summer, especially in the areas of the country with more extreme seasonal weather patterns. It’s a weekend for barbecuing with the family, tending ...
Just Another Huge Week
Just Another Huge Week
SET ’EM UP, ZOLE… My sweetie and I are still in the throes of confusion over our new satellite TV and exactly what channels are available and for how much. We agree that all these ...
The Big Time
The Big Time
POWER CHECK... I spend a lot of my thinking energy—a supply dwindling faster than Gulf of Mexico crude—focused upon our world and its inhabitants, trying to engineer creative ways to solve the systemic inequities that ...
A Better World
A Better World
SOME BAD STUFF… It’s a good thing I didn’t write this diatribe yesterday. I woke up hissing and screeching about everything in society. I almost hit the keys with one of my vitriolic assaults on ...
Happy to Be Here
Happy to Be Here
UCHAINED… I heard the other day that rainfall is something like 11 inches less than usual this year. That’s not good, especially when looking ahead to the really hot and dry weather in the coming ...
One Big Night
One Big Night
FEELING LUCKY… As I write this, it’s Friday the 13th, SWEET THING’S favorite day, and I’m riding her coattails (watch yourself). I’m filing a day late so my editor is pissed at me—he’s been sending ...
All Good Fun
All Good Fun
SO SWEET… A 20-ounce Starbucks Caffe Mocca with whipped cream has 490 calories, equivalent to a McDonald’s Quarter Pounder with Cheese. (Hey man, you know what they call a McDonald’s Quarter Pounder in France?). A ...
Much Too Much Fun
Much Too Much Fun
LET’S GET TO IT… Normally I roll out the red carpet in the first few paragraphs of Food Chain for a parade of thoughts to sashay into this weekly party. This week, there is so ...
The People Have Spoken
The People Have Spoken
BEHIND THE CURTAIN… It’s the Best Of MC issue and that means one thing: controversy. Whenever this issue comes out I get bombarded with: “How could so-and-so be Best This, or such-and-such be Best That?” ...
Pre-Spring Training
Pre-Spring Training
SHOWTIME… It’s March Madness time, when universities across America vibrate with anticipation and excitement as their gangly warriors chase down their hoop dreams. College basketball is pretty big business in many institutions. It doesn’t have ...
The Story Continues
The Story Continues
ENDINGS AND BEGINNINGS… It was a big week around here with the final Masters of Food and Wine, the first Big Sur Chanterelle Cook-Off and latest editions of the various Academy Awards extravaganzas. After 21 ...
Masters Memories
It’s all over, except for the telling.
LET THE STORIES BEGIN… each dressed in timeworn, mothball-tinged embellishment: “I remember when that Michelin 3-star French chef insisted his ducks be brought in from Gastony, or Normandy, or somewhere. I heard they were smuggled ...
The Last Best Weekend
The Last Best Weekend
NOSTALGIA AND NOW… Today I am a butterfly (no wisecracks). Today I flutter around in my little butterfly home, preening my beautiful butterfly wings, polishing my cute little butterfly shoes, freshening my delicate butterfly senses. ...
Freak Out
Freak Out
STOP THE MADNESS… When I woke up for the first time this morning, at about 2am, I thought about starting to write this, getting a jump on the deadline I’d be facing later on, knowing ...
Another Big Weekend
Another Big Weekend
DON’T WORRY ABOUT ME… So here I am, at the time of this writing just one lousy week away from the opening salvo of the AT&T International Pro Golfers Commune with Amateur Celebrities, Corporate Honchos ...
Eyes on the Horizon
Eyes on the Horizon
BLESSED COAST... It is late in the Todos Santos afternoon. The Bajamon horizon—a metaphorically brackish intermingling of Pacific’s grand ocean and Señor Cortez’s noble sea—pulls El Sol lovingly into its awaiting bosom. Like La SEÑORA ...
Good Weather Report
PLAYING THROUGH…Rather a quiet winter. Even the El Niño rains have not yet materialized. I hope Mother Nature doesn’t wait until the AT&T to water these gardens. A little touch of weather here and there ...
The Way We Live
The Way We Live
GO GO GO…I think we are shooting the wild rapids of deadline river, thrashing about in a heightened adrenaline frenzy, deludedly (that’s made up) presuming we are controlling our vessels. Each day, we make it ...
Life Goes On
Life Goes On
HARD WORK… It’s a rainy morning and I’m sitting here enjoying the solemnity it brings. Simultaneously, I worry about the many businesses in town facing the harsh realities of winter on the Monterey Peninsula. Of ...
Let’s Get Started
Let’s Get Started
NEW YEAR’S REVOLUTIONS… Happy New Year’s everyone. It still blows my mind when I look at the date and see the year two thousand seven. I know the calendar is only an arbitrary form of ...
TomatoFest celebrates the stuff of sauces, the backbone of Bloody Marys.
Photo by Randy Tunnell: Juicy Crop: Gary Ibsen shows off some heirlooms. What Concours d''Elegance is to classic cars, so the Carmel TomatoFest is to classic tomatoes. Begun 12 years ago as a backyard garden ...
Pasta Mia branches out with wood-fired pizzas.
Photos by Randy Tunnel: Dough-See-Dough: Pasta Mia serves up the pies in its new pizza grotto.Downtown Butterfly Town just started to feel a little more bright lights and big city. Pasta Mia recently installed eight ...
