Beach to Bay: A California Culinary Journey
love letter to the Golden State
The Huntington Beach AirRVnB
I wanted to take the RV on our road trip, to cook meals in its tiny kitchen as we leisurely drove up the California coast. But it wasn’t meant to be—we didn’t want to tow a car and the trip had been shortened by a few days—so I settle for a couple nights in the RV in her driveway before Cindy and I, longtime friends and former roomies, strike off for points north.
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This metal cannister, an ice cave on wheels, is chilly when I first wake up. From the little window at the little dinette table (in an RV, life is dollhouse-sized), I watch the neighborhood prepare for the day: backpacks, briefcases, lunchboxes. I’m still full from last night’s feast: halibut filet caught during Cindy’s Alaska fishing trip with lemon beurre Blanc. I edit a few pages of the book I’m writing, guzzle a mug of coffee, go for a jog.
Pastelitos & Petrichor
I spend the afternoon at Long Beach’s 4th Street with Cindy’s daughter, only to discover the culinary bookstore specializing in vintage reads I’ve been dying to visit, Kitchen Lingo Books, unexpectedly closed. At Gusto Bread, a jazz album’s playing on the vintage high-fi. Our order: pastelito filled with guava marmalade and cream cheese and mole empanada with oyster mushrooms. At the nearby Oh La Vache cheese shop, two hunks for the evening’s cheese board: Challerhocker, a dense, nutty Swiss with caramel undertones; and a gritty cheddar number that—no shade to cheese lovers—smells like my Maine mud cellar. The term for this, I later learn from the daughter’s boyfriend, a former cheese monger, is petrichor, defined as a “pleasant [okay, but not really] smell that accompanies the first rain after a long period of dry weather.”
Pea Soup to Petaluma
Even with an early start and carpool lanes, we couldn’t ditch the LA traffic. I moved from Southern California to Arizona thirty years ago this month and each time I visit I find I’ve sort of missed it—both state and traffic—the wistful, dreamy way an old friend you haven’t seen in years makes you yearn for the good old days.
A few hours up the 5 Freeway, we stop in Santa Nella for lunch at Pea Soup Andersen’s: Dutch-Scandinavian kitsch, windmills and wagon wheel chandeliers. A cup of pea soup, thick with a little kick. A giant macaroon dipped in chocolate and we’re gone, the windmill slowly spinning in the distance, the endless ribbon of asphalt stretching before us.
It's suppertime when we arrive in Petaluma, one of California’s oldest cities and also, according to my husband, the arm-wrestling capital of the world. It became a poultry powerhouse with the launch of the first commercial hatchery in the US in the late 19th century.
We stroll past an old bank building and brick buildings, remnants of the Gold Rush era. A lone protester on the corner practices for the next day’s nationwide “Hands Off” protest. His sign makes me think of the Lack of Apathy bumper sticker from the 80s, and I’m trying, I’m trying, but some days it’s just so damn hard.
Dinner at Wild Goat Bistro: quinoa sweet potato cakes with lemon tahini dipping sauce. A slice of “Oh. My. God” Italian lemon cake (it’s really called that) topped with velvety raspberry sauce.
The next morning, I’m at a food writing workshop at Silver Penny Farm, a property once owned by the Hearst family and used as a post-kidnapping haven for Patty. Lush green hills so vivid they look computer generated. A pair of turkeys waddle past, loud and insistent. I write about the protest, not food, while Cindy marches. There’s honey from the farm’s hives to drizzle over fresh berries, and later, cheese boards served by Sue Conley, founder of the nearby Cowgirl Creamery and workshop attendee.
Later, dinner at Risibisi. Ambiance baked into every brick in the wall. Pumpkin ravioli with sage brown butter. A slice of pistachio ricotta cake. Dreams of chickens and cheese.
On Goats, Goonies & Ghosts
Our third day is crammed with natural wonders. At the edge of the Russian River lies Anderson Redwoods State Natural Reserve, the original home of the Kashaya Pomo people before they were displaced by a nineteenth century lumber baron who bought 600 acres of redwood groves for his daughter. The land became a state park in 1936.
After a hike through the redwoods—the tallest living trees on the planet—we head for the Sonoma Coast, stopping first at Duncan’s Mills, population 85. A village so quaint it could be a movie set and maybe was—both “The Goonies” and “The Birds” were filmed at nearby Goat Rock Beach and Bodega Bay, respectively.
Besides the vintage shops, where I spy an ancient Marantz stereo receiver identical to the one I’d owned in my twenties, and the tiny bookstore I have to duck to enter, with its display of a book by Gladys Taber, who co-authored another book with my grandmother in the 1950s—on which much of the book I’m writing is based; these ghosts just follow me everywhere—there’s also a deli in the general store. We order sandwiches from the menu, an old door hanging above the counter, and head to Goat Rock for a picnic. The beach, invisible when we first arrive, gradually emerges from the fog like a spectral vision.
Rock Solid
We wind our way down the rocky shoreline, time getting away from us, there’s never enough time. Through San Francisco, where I ran my first marathon twenty-six years ago. Through the hills and valleys, rich in agriculture and migrant workers: Salinas, the nation’s salad bowl; Gilroy, the garlic capital; Castroville, the artichoke center of the world. And finally, a half-hour after sunset, we roll into Morro Bay, the spot where the first Filipinos landed in the continental US in 1587.
This trip isn’t just about food; it’s a sentimental journey layered with history. Reliving the past. Revealing the future.
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Our last morning on the road, coffee at Sun & Buns, the bakery on the bay: a large redeye (espresso and drip coffee) and an applejack turnover rolled like a burrito. The antidote to the soulless sterility of Starbucks. While Cindy works in the motel room, I run to Morro Rock, once the fiery heart of a volcano. A quick dip in the bay, sand in my shoes, a performance by a duo of sea otters.
Five hours later, we arrive in Huntington Beach in time to grab our coats and Cindy’s husband for a hockey game at LA’s Crypto Center. The last time I saw a Kings game? 1990, when they played at the Forum, when crypto wasn’t even a thought and the only Tesla I knew of was the heavy metal band.
Now Serving: An Hour in Chinatown
I leave for Phoenix the next day, everything coated in smog, the April morning warm already at 8 am. The usual freeway logjams and everyone gracefully coexisting; the camaraderie of passengers on a sinking ship.
A brief detour to Chinatown to visit Now Serving, a culinary bookstore tucked away in the back of an obscure plaza. Small, narrow booklined walls. Island in the center, kitchen gadgets, a collection of silver serving spoons. The air soft with sandalwood incense, women chattering in the Chinese restaurant kitchen next door.
I leave Chinatown and its fruit markets, barber shops and bakeries with a sesame seed-dotted Chinese donut and a battered Elizabeth David paperback.
A week later, three adult elephants at the San Diego Zoo form a tight circle around two 7-year-old calves, moments after an earthquake of 5.2 magnitude. Their “alert circle” is a strategy for banding together and protecting one another when danger is near.
Danger was no stranger during my years in California. I lived through freeway shootings, air quality alerts, water rationing, riots, mudslides, wildfires, earthquakes. Tectonic plates shift; fault lines grow deeper, the façade cracks. And still today, the feeling that somehow, in all this glorious imperfection, we are in it together. Forming our own alert circles, keeping each other close.
Your Tour Guide & Pantry Pal,
Amie
The Cook & Tell Library | Recipe Index | Owner’s Manual | Notes | the micromashup
I’m Im from CA, currently living in Spain- that felt like a drive through all our old haunts- so many memories- from Pea Soup to Petaluma!
That sounds like a fun trip!!