Big Sur Food & Wine 5.0 bodes bigger flavor than ever before

Get a load of the what’s now appearing on a Big Sur menu: Something squooshy and slippery, with a side of that-looks-outright-disgusting.

It’s also called sea cucumber, that long snail of the sea. Sierra Mar Exec Chef John Cox stands in his kitchen and slices into one with a chef knife, deflating the tubular creature as his cut releases a pool of briny water.

We’re about to eat it raw with a little white soy and yuzu juice—first the bands of muscle that help hold it together, taste like the sea and enjoy the texture of thin calamari sashimi, then pieces of its outer casing after they’ve been cooked for a day, dehydrated, puffed up and kissed with a kick of espelette pepper.

“It’s pretty wild,” Cox says.

Breaking news: People—chefs included—do wild things in Big Sur.

That’s dramatically apparent at Sierra Mar (667-2800), in Cox’s mad chef scientist kitchen, where it took him three months of sous viding, frying, dissecting, marathon boiling and internet searching to figure out a way to make something this different this delicious—and where rattlesnake confit and moon jellies are also among the most popular plates. It’s also deliciously apparent at several other stops I made on a hike-and-eat mission ahead of Big Sur Food & Wine’s fifth installment this weekend (667-0800)—and its rambling Hikes With Stemware ($125), big grand public tasting ($95), ambitious Magic Mystery Tours ($185) and boisterous Wine & Swine ($105)—to get a just a whiff of what’s coming.

Aengus Wagner lived in a trailer in Big Sur for 15 years just so he could call South Coast his home. He’s the shortstop and captain on the Big Sur softball league champions. He has worked at landmark Nepenthe (667-2345) as a server and all-around ringleader for decades. He bathtubs on its seaside cliffs and sanctions Big Sur Marathon matches between Partington and Apple Pie Ridge enclaves. He’s so Big Sur, in fact, that his body hair fluffs like redwood understory and smells of chanterelles.

That also makes him the ideal person to fill his dual role as event vice president and chief ambassador of instigation—and to lay out some handy ways to know you’re at Big Sur Food & Wine, and not any other epicurious event in…existence.

In honor of BSFW’s fifth year, his five best appear here:

Five Ways You Know You’re at Big Sur Food & Wine

5 “When you go hiking in the mountains with glasses of wine and one of the guests is winemaking legend Tim Mondavi and he is second fiddle to some guy named Aubert de Villaine, co-owner and co-director of the Domaine de la Romanee-Conti, and he is leading the charge to the top.”

4 “When you walk on dirt the entire time.”

3 “When one minute you are gasping at the grand Pacific, then you turn to sample the goat cheese that was made on the land you are standing on and you look up and—there to the east—are the Ventana Cones staring back at you.”

2 “You are on the side of the great Highway 1 and a somm is sabering a bottle of Roederer Brut and as the cork and glass goes skyward, you notice a shadow pass over and it’s one of those darn condors checking you out.”

1 “When you convince an Alabama couple dining at Nepenthe to buy a bottle of Pisoni Estate and then invite them to the first Big Sur Food & Wine, then they decide to get married the day before the festival, start coming every year and become the poster children for all we do!”

Five years ago, Big Sur was better known for its fires than its food—though that was changing, even nationally, thanks to New York Times buzz about wood-fired Big Sur Bakery (667-0520) and its breakthrough cookbook, both a tome of braised rabbit and brown butter rhubarb bars and a journal of the resilience and local sources needed to survive as a business through Big Sur’s seasons.

Hence a key stop on our swing through Big Sur ahead of the festival was the former rickety purple, orange and blue roadhouse that is now BSB, for the bread that launched the restaurant that formalized the foodification of Big Sur.

While they are now an institution, with a full 13 years in place dishing life-affirming roasted quail, arugula pizzas and nine-grain bread, they haven’t lost their renegade edge. Their two dinners for BSFW are designed to be anti-wine dinners, seeping character, independence and accessibility that doesn’t happen at Aspen or Pebble Beach.

The first one, a Friday night five-courser with ROAR, will cost a pretty penny ($200) but promises plenty of South Coast raucousness with some of the area’s very best Pinots (and Viognier, Chard and Syrah) and chilled seafood salads, pork shoulder confit and roast squab—and that’s before any alleged after parties start. Saturday comes large-format Wind Gap and Pax wines with all-you-can-eat downhome, wood-fired, rancho-style grub ($65; $95 with wine): huge dripping plates of Mexican-flavored barbecued chicken, braised beef, smoky brisket, slow-cooked greens, buttermilk biscuits, hush puppies, house pickles, links and s’mores, all done over fire.

With the once-underdog bakery now the established power—hiring more management than ever, with big changes ahead soon—the new Big Sur Roadhouse (667-2370) is now the edgy upstart, crafting catchy Cajun-California fusion food like the world-beating 88-second blackened Monterey Bay salmon. That’s fitting, as it’s a relative of sorts, with former BSB GM Matt Glazer steering the ship and former BSB sous chef Brendan Esons running the kitchen.

As we tried the zingy fennel salad ($8), off-menu organic turkey po’ boy ($12), cheesy grits ($6) and kale Caesar ($10), we learned that the Roadhouse isn’t going to do status quo either for BSFW, with a pair of meals that flip traditional tasting scripts. One’s a wine grower rather than a wine maker celebration ($100), where four earthy personalities like Steve McIntyre (McIntyre) and Matt Shea (Bernardus) toting along roots and soils and more while things like venison and pork belly mate with grapes in inventive ways on the plate. Saturday brings a different somms dinner ($150) with a barrel of characters from Manresa to Casanova—Ted Glennon, Thomas Perez, Jeff Bareilles and Jeff Birkemeier—leading a blind tasting and talking trade secrets while nine carefully paired courses (poached white fish! stewed lamb!) fly out of the kitchen with bold flavors chosen to blow away traditional boundaries.

More good news: The zesty umami melange of roasted root veggies, smoked halibut, andouille sausage and okra that is the BSR gumbo will be featured in the sculpture-and-indulgence-filled tent at Sunday’s grand public tasting ($95).

The sea cucumber cracklin’s won’t appear at the public tasting, as the limited stash of snail means it’s reserved for sold-out dinners at Sierra Mar for folks coughing up thousands for stay-and-graze packages. But Cox will furnish the foods for the event that represents the best value out of the dozens of events, which start with the Gateway to Big Sur tonight. That event: The Pinot Walkabout ($65) in Post Ranch’s lush kitchen garden. Beneath the massive heirloom apple tree and among the chard and redwood strawberries gather some of the most exciting small-batch Pinot players in the area, from Cargasacchi to Fink to Calera, all pouring personally. Cox’s garden-herbed creations will include crispy sunchokes and Piedmontese beef tartare, while co-event chef Justin Everett of Murray Circle at Cavallo Point will dish out rabbit with preserved walnuts, yellowfin tuna crudo and Liberty duck liver pâté. It’s Cox’s Mangalitsa ham with his own homemade acorn bread and petit Basque cheese—smoked in hay from the field the garden sits in—that furnishes yet another reminder that the tastiest ingredients of this annual epicurean landslide of events are those things that just don’t happen anywhere else.

QUICKBITES

Get a load of the what’s now appearing on a Big Sur menu: Something squooshy and slippery, with a side of that-looks-outright-disgusting.

It’s also called sea cucumber, that long snail of the sea. Sierra Mar Exec Chef John Cox stands in his kitchen and slices into one with a chef knife, deflating the tubular creature as his cut releases a pool of briny water.

We’re about to eat it raw with a little white soy and yuzu juice—first the bands of muscle that help hold it together, taste like the sea and enjoy the texture of thin calamari sashimi, then pieces of its outer casing after they’ve been cooked for a day, dehydrated, puffed up and kissed with a kick of espelette pepper.

“It’s pretty wild,” Cox says.

Breaking news: People—chefs included—do wild things in Big Sur.

That’s dramatically apparent at Sierra Mar (667-2800), in Cox’s mad chef scientist kitchen, where it took him three months of sous viding, frying, dissecting, marathon boiling and internet searching to figure out a way to make something this different this delicious—and where rattlesnake confit and moon jellies are also among the most popular plates. It’s also deliciously apparent at several other stops I made on a hike-and-eat mission ahead of Big Sur Food & Wine’s fifth installment this weekend (667-0800)—and its rambling Hikes With Stemware ($125), big grand public tasting ($95), ambitious Magic Mystery Tours ($185) and boisterous Wine & Swine ($105)—to get a just a whiff of what’s coming.

Aengus Wagner lived in a trailer in Big Sur for 15 years just so he could call South Coast his home. He’s the shortstop and captain on the Big Sur softball league champions. He has worked at landmarkNepenthe (667-2345) as a server and all-around ringleader for decades. He bathtubs on its seaside cliffs and sanctions Big Sur Marathon matches between Partington and Apple Pie Ridge enclaves. He’s so Big Sur, in fact, that his body hair fluffs like redwood understory and smells of chanterelles.

That also makes him the ideal person to fill his dual role as event vice president and chief ambassador of instigation—and to lay out some handy ways to know you’re at Big Sur Food & Wine, and not any other epicurious event in…existence.

In honor of BSFW’s fifth year, his five best appear here:

Five Ways You Know You’re 

at Big Sur Food & Wine

5 “When you go hiking in the mountains with glasses of wine and one of the guests is winemaking legend Tim Mondavi and he is second fiddle to some guy named Aubert de Villaine, co-owner and co-director of the Domaine de la Romanee-Conti, and he is leading the charge to the top.”

4 “When you walk on dirt the entire time.”

3 “When one minute you are gasping at the grand Pacific, then you turn to sample the goat cheese that was made on the land you are standing on and you look up and—there to the east—are the Ventana Cones staring back at you.”

2 “You are on the side of the great Highway 1 and a somm is sabering a bottle of Roederer Brut and as the cork and glass goes skyward, you notice a shadow pass over and it’s one of those darn condors checking you out.”

1 “When you convince an Alabama couple dining at Nepenthe to buy a bottle of Pisoni Estate and then invite them to the first Big Sur Food & Wine, then they decide to get married the day before the festival, start coming every year and become the poster children for all we do!”

Five years ago, Big Sur was better known for its fires than its food—though that was changing, even nationally, thanks to New York Times buzz about wood-fired Big Sur Bakery (667-0520) and its breakthrough cookbook, both a tome of braised rabbit and brown butter rhubarb bars and a journal of the resilience and local sources needed to survive as a business through Big Sur’s seasons.

Hence a key stop on our swing through Big Sur ahead of the festival was the former rickety purple, orange and blue roadhouse that is now BSB, for the bread that launched the restaurant that formalized the foodification of Big Sur.

While they are now an institution, with a full 13 years in place dishing life-affirming roasted quail, arugula pizzas and nine-grain bread, they haven’t lost their renegade edge. Their two dinners for BSFW are designed to be anti-wine dinners, seeping character, independence and accessibility that doesn’t happen at Aspen or Pebble Beach.

The first one, a Friday night five-courser with ROAR, will cost a pretty penny ($200) but promises plenty of South Coast raucousness with some of the area’s very best Pinots (and Viognier, Chard and Syrah) and chilled seafood salads, pork shoulder confit and roast squab—and that’s before any alleged after parties start. Saturday comes large-format Wind Gap and Pax wines with all-you-can-eat downhome, wood-fired, rancho-style grub ($65; $95 with wine): huge dripping plates of Mexican-flavored barbecued chicken, braised beef, smoky brisket, slow-cooked greens, buttermilk biscuits, hush puppies, house pickles, links and s’mores, all done over fire.

With the once-underdog bakery now the established power—hiring more management than ever, with big changes ahead soon—the new Big Sur Roadhouse (667-2370) is now the edgy upstart, crafting catchy Cajun-California fusion food like the world-beating 88-second blackened Monterey Bay salmon. That’s fitting, as it’s a relative of sorts, with former BSB GM Matt Glazer steering the ship and former BSB sous chef Brendan Esons running the kitchen.

As we tried the zingy fennel salad ($8), off-menu organic turkey po’ boy ($12), cheesy grits ($6) and kale Caesar ($10), we learned that the Roadhouse isn’t going to do status quo either for BSFW, with a pair of meals that flip traditional tasting scripts. One’s a wine grower rather than a wine maker celebration ($100), where four earthy personalities like Steve McIntyre (McIntyre) and Matt Shea (Bernardus) toting along roots and soils and more while things like venison and pork belly mate with grapes in inventive ways on the plate. Saturday brings a different somms dinner ($150) with a barrel of characters from Manresa to Casanova—Ted Glennon, Thomas Perez, Jeff Bareilles and Jeff Birkemeier—leading a blind tasting and talking trade secrets while nine carefully paired courses (poached white fish! stewed lamb!) fly out of the kitchen with bold flavors chosen to blow away traditional boundaries.

More good news: The zesty umami melange of roasted root veggies, smoked halibut, andouille sausage and okra that is the BSR gumbo will be featured in the sculpture-and-indulgence-filled tent at Sunday’s grand public tasting ($95).

The sea cucumber cracklin’s won’t appear at the public tasting, as the limited stash of snail means it’s reserved for sold-out dinners at Sierra Mar for folks coughing up thousands for stay-and-graze packages. But Cox will furnish the foods for the event that represents the best value out of the dozens of events, which start with the Gateway to Big Sur tonight. That event: The Pinot Walkabout ($65) in Post Ranch’s lush kitchen garden. Beneath the massive heirloom apple tree and among the chard and redwood strawberries gather some of the most exciting small-batch Pinot players in the area, fromCargasacchi to Fink to Calera, all pouring personally. Cox’s garden-herbed creations will include crispy sunchokes and Piedmontese beef tartare, while co-event chef Justin Everett of Murray Circle at Cavallo Point will dish out rabbit with preserved walnuts, yellowfin tuna crudo and Liberty duck liver pâté. It’s Cox’s Mangalitsa ham with his own homemade acorn bread and petit Basque cheese - smoked in hay from the field the garden sits in - that furnishes yet another reminder that the tastiest ingredients of this annual epicurean landslide of events are those things that just don’t happen anywhere else.