••• Silvergreens Cafe, in the Amazon building at State Street and Carrillo Street, opened yesterday. From the press release:
In 1995, shortly after graduating from UC Santa Barbara, Ferro co-founded Silvergreens in Isla Vista, creating what would become one of the first salad-focused restaurant concepts anywhere in the world. More than three decades later, the pioneering local brand is entering an exciting new chapter with the launch of Silvergreens Cafe; a reimagined hybrid of grab-and-go dining combined with the warmth of a neighborhood café [….] Silvergreens Cafe will serve breakfast and lunch daily from 7:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., offering a curated menu of fresh salads, wraps, soups, sandwiches, breakfast items, and healthy snack boxes. […] Grab thoughtfully pre-packaged meals for life on-the-go or choose to have select items heated and served on dine-in plateware inside the café or at outdoor sidewalk seating.
Online ordering isn’t available yet, but you can get a sense of the menu here (and some screenshots below).
••• The California Wine Festival is July 17-18 at the Hilton Santa Barbara Beachfront Resort. Participating wineries include “Alma Rosa, Aperture Cellars, Brick Barn Wine Estate, Caymus Vineyards, Cakebread Cellars, Trefethen Family Vineyards, Williams Selyem and dozens more from California’s premier wine regions.”
••• The Neighborhood Grill, in the former La Cantina space at Turnpike Center, will most likely open this Wednesday (despite a report that it has already done so). Keep an eye on Instagram for the official word.
••• I’m no fan of AI, but my husband finds it very useful when dealing with restaurant wine lists. He trained ChatGPT to understand what he likes in wine, and he shows it the list and asks it what it recommends as the best value, mid-range, and splurge options given his personal tastes. The recommendations have been spot on—often things he wouldn’t have chosen on his own. And the somm can obviously help decide among AI’s choices.
••• Thanks to M. for pointing out that Gelson’s has installed a Thrifty Ice Cream counter in the front of the store. It’s due to open any moment—the store is just waiting on the city. (There’s still time to update the photo on the wall.) A single scoop costs $2.49—a far cry from the nickel I remember at Thrifty drugstores as a kid, but way less than at fancier scoop shops.
••• I finally tried Colombini Bakery, which bakes sourdough bread, English muffins, and bagels. I thought the “simple sourdough bread” would be great for BLT season (and I’m thinking of getting the Castelvetrano sourdough to make pressed sandwiches with), and the English muffins were a huge hit with my mother-in-law. Picking up one’s order during at Cold Spring School during the drop-off scrum does require some fortitude.
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