The Hungry Cat and Santa Barbara Farmers Market
Brandon and I seem to find our way out to Santa Barbara pretty often. It’s far from where I live, but only 30 minutes away from where he lives, so when I visit him, which is often, we have a tendency to head up there to see what’s going on. We knew there was a farmer’s market there on Tuesdays, so we decided to drive up to see what kind of beautiful vegetables we could get and also have a nice dinner.
The season is showing its spring-like colors at the market with beautiful citrus, lots of wonderful radishes, rainbow tomatoes, and strawberries peeking around each stand. The wonderful smell of citrus and fresh picked greens always makes me have a little longing for a garden of my own one day, but I’m not sure that would work, seeing as I can barely keep a plant alive, but one can hope.
After we walked the market, we decided to stop in at The Hungry Cat. This beautiful, small restaurant captures the quaint and simplistic nature of Santa Barbara. We came in for a midday meal around 5:00 p.m. and it was still happy hour, so drinks were half off–a steal for such gourmet cocktails. I ordered the Greyhound Proper, which was Plymouth Gin, fresh grapefruit juice, and candied grapefruit; a deliciously prepared strong and wonderful cocktail.
The kitchen at The Hungry Cat is half-open with a conjoining bar and a long set of seats, set along the back side of the restaurant. Small decorations and open glass windows keep the restaurant open and inviting. We perused the midday menu to see what we would get. Brandon and I have been known to devour large towers of seafood together, so we decided to go with that again. We ordered the medium-sized seafood platter, which came with peel-and-eat shrimp, clams on the half shell, oysters, snow crab legs, a half Maine lobster, marinated mussels, rock crab claws, and caviar. The large tower was a fantastic sight to see, so wonderfully prepared, freshly shucked, flawless seafood done with just the right touches. We were also served accompaniments to aid in the seafood flavor development: housemade tartar sauce, housemade cocktail sauce, housemade thousand island, and mignonette. All the sauces were delicious and went well with everything. We had fun making small bites of delicious sauce and seafood and we were also given toast points with chives, hardboiled egg yolk and white, crème fraiche, and shallots, which made for some delicious seafood morsels. Everything was so wonderful. I’m still not the biggest fan of raw clams, but everything else was excellent, especially the most delicately poached and tender peel-and-eat shrimp; I could eat those every day.
A beautiful day in Santa Barbara with wonderful food and food adventures along with the best company a girl could ask for. I’m sure we’ll frequent The Hungry Cat again, you should too.
cheers
-Unrivaledkitch