Summer 2015

Monterey Meringues plans sweet music
with youth violence-prevention group

Playing in the kitchen:
from left, Domenick Allen, Leigh Zimmerman and Stephen Vagnini.

By Lisa Crawford Watson
Photo by Margaux Gibbons

If award-winning actress Leigh Zimmerman and her husband, musician Domenick Allen, were going to take on a new project, it had to mean something. It had to be fun, and it had to allow them to engage in their community and fund their mission to make a difference through music education.

So after careers that took them across Europe and the U.S., they studied at Waitrose Cookery School in London and Le Cordon Bleu in Paris. Their daughter, Cayleigh, studied culinary arts at Westminster Kingsway College. Finally, in private master classes with renowned French chef Nicolas Houchet, they learned to … Read More

In case you’ve forgotten how lucky you are to eat here
—or need a reason to come

Culinary Ambassadors: from left, Ted Walter, Tim Wood, Tammy
Blount, John Cox and Ted Glennon.

By Lisa Crawford Watson
Photo courtesy of the MCCVB

Sometimes chef Tim Wood comes home from a night of cooking at his acclaimed farm-totable restaurant at Carmel Valley Ranch and pulls out packaged American cheese to grill himself a sandwich. Because he can. But most of the time, he instead uses some of the überfresh local ingredients that fill his fridge—diverse produce, pristine sustainable seafood and flavorful grassfed beef—arguably some of the finest-quality ingredients in the world. Also because he can.

Whether you cook at home or dine out, if you live in our region, it’s easy to … Read More

Cultivating a better world for 25 years

By Kathryn McKenzie
Photography by Margaux Gibbons

A recently built toolshed, thousands of seedlings, new trainees—signs of a new season abound at the Homeless Garden Project’s farm near Natural Bridges in Santa Cruz as executive director Darrie Ganzhorn leads a tour, pointing out the nuts and bolts of what makes this organic garden grow.

But it is the larger story of what this garden has nurtured over the past 25 years that I’ve come for: a grassroots organization that has helped hundreds of people who were homeless find their place in the world through learning to grow food; thousands of volunteers who have helped further the local organic movement; community members who have gathered here to enrich their own lives as they help … Read More

The time traveler’s life

Chef Domingo Santamaria

By Lisa Crawford Watson
Photography by Michelle Magdalena

In the early 1930s, Helmuth Deetjen, using reclaimed wood from Cannery Row, built a barn in the vernacular architecture of his native Norway near the tent home he and his wife Helen Haight Deetjen had erected on Castro Canyon Creek. In 1939, following the completion of Highway 1 right out front, the barn was converted into the restaurant that remains today. Together with the board-and-good batten guest buildings Deetjen also built to create his Big Sur Inn, the restaurant has remained a beloved retreat for locals and visitors alike for more than 80 years.

Big Sur isn’t short on iconic dining destinations— after all, it’s home to Post Ranch Inn, Ventana Inn, Big Sur Bakery … Read More

Research by Amber Turpin