Santa Barbara Shellfish Company

The Santa Barbara Shellfish Company is at the end of the Santa Barbara pier, in a spot where you'd expect to find only tourist tat and terrible food. But, surprisingly, the food is pretty good, and you can sit just feet from the water. The seagull scavengers were preoccupied with a big dumpster we passed on the way in so they left us alone.

We didn't know the difference between spider crab and rock crab so the waiter brought us a sample of a spider crab. It was thrashing around.

(Photo by Melody)

The waiter said that the four pound spider crab he was holding wouldn't be enough food for two people. Instead, he recommended two orders of the rock crab special. Two orders of the special was more food than we could possibly eat.



The crab was good, and fun to disassemble. But I had forgotten that eating an enormous amount of crab becomes a chore and the sweetness of the crab eventually becomes cloying. I longed for more onion rings or something else salty to offset the sweetness of the crab.

La Super-Rica

La Super-Rica in Santa Barbara.

We waited probably 45 minutes for lunch, and it was more or less worth it. I really didn't mind the waiting, since I had company. I think the long wait is explained by the tiny kitchen:



Once we ordered, the food was ready quickly (with the exception of a gordita which took about ten minutes). The corn tortillas smelled fantastic and the pinto beans were spicy and savory. Our favorite item was the roasted pepper and cheese item in the upper left corner of the picture below, but the beef and pork tacos were also good. We were worried when the food arrived that it wouldn't be enough, because the tacos are small. But we learned that there was plenty of food and that we're not particulary good at estimating how much is required to satisfy our appetite.



If it were raining, the wait probably would have been shorter.

Tracks

It's easy to get lost when you leave the car and start walking around in California. We took a wrong turn on the way to a place to have breakfast and ended up crossing some train tracks and running into the 101, which is an impassible obstacle for foot traffic.

(Though the freeway is not impossible to navigate by foot--on a recent trip to LA, I saw a friend of a friend run across five lanes of traffic on the 101 to rescue two bags of luggage that fell off the roof of our van into the car pool lane. He rescued one bag intact, and, amazingly, retrieved the contents of the second which were spread over several lanes after it got hit by a car. He was then trapped on the center concrete divider, but some friendly person stopped in her car to give him a lift to safety. The whole situation made me think of Concrete Island.)

Hitching Post II

The Hitching Post II in Buellton, CA. They have good steaks, but Melody said the quail was rubbery. They bottle their own wine. And they were in Sideways.

LAX In-N-Out

Just got back from a California trip. We managed two trips to the LAX In-N-Out, one right after we picked up our rental car and one right before we returned it.