harbourfront of palm-lined Santa Barbara, chatting
with Stephanie Mutz, a former marine biologist
and the state’s only female sea urchin diver. Maude’s
executive chef Justin Hilbert, pastry chef Yesenia
Cruz, head sommelier Andrey Tolmachyov, restaurant
director Ben Aviram and Stone are here to taste Mutz’s
hand-picked red and purple urchin – affectionately
known as California Gold. Mutz’s urchins appear at
LA’s top restaurants: as uni butter with salmon eggs
and tofu on Niki Nakayama’s kaiseki menu at N/Naka,
perhaps, or accented with lemongrass, walnut and
Pedro Ximénez powder at Jordan Kahn’s Vespertine.
With her business partner Harry Liquornik, Mutz
dives a couple of times a week in the waters off the
Channel Islands, armed only with a rake and a bag.
“We go down 30 to 40 feet max, sometimes 60 if we
know they’re there,” she says, “and can pick anywhere
between 500 and 1,000 per day.” Stone pops a bright
orange tongue of urchin onto the fleshy part of his
thumb and slurps it like caviar. Mutz calls the clean,
custardy taste “merroir”, a kind of terroir of the sea.
At the Santa Barbara Farmers Market, a sign on
one of the stalls reads “please do not pet the sprouts”.
Tom Shepherd has been selling his produce here for
close to 40 years. “I was one of the first to do salad mix
in this area,” he says proudly, pointing to baskets of his
rainbow chard, fresh and dried herbs, and salad leaves.
Stone buys a bag of freshly ground herbes de Provence
and stops at another stall to taste Gaviota strawberries,
which are almost as sweet as bubblegum. “And this isn’t
even as good as they get,” says Stone.
Executive chef Justin Hilbert was the chief instigator
of Maude’s new regional approach. After time at
restaurants including Mugaritz in Spain and WD~50 in
New York, Hilbert joined Maude’s pastry section. He
moved to the executive position in 2016 when Stone
added Gwen, a West Hollywood butcher shop and
restaurant he runs with his brother Luke, to his portfolio.
The regional menus are served for three months
with smaller seasonal changes throughout. “The
storyline of each menu comes from the experiences,
though,” says Hilbert, referring to the research trips.
One of the “storylines” during the Rioja trip was
inspired by winemaker Juan Carlos Sancha. The
winemaker tends 120-year-old vines in Baños de
Río Tobía, the coolest zone of Rioja Alta, and after
a day outdoors with him, the Maude team returned
to Sancha’s home for a pot of sticky pork and white
beans. Hilbert tweaked the idea for the Rioja menu,
creating a consommé of Iberian ham, setting it into
a jelly and then cutting it into discs that melted over
the beans as the plate hit the table.
The approach in California is characteristically
sunny and casual. Someone mentions Handlebar
Coffee Roasters in Santa Barbara and we jump in the
car, tucking bags of abalone and broad-bean stalks next
to each other on the back seat, and visit the roaster.➤
PREVIOUS
PAGES Left:
Morro Bay Oyster
Company. Right:
Curtis Stone
shucking their
oysters. THIS
PAGE Bien
Nacido Vineyards
in Santa Maria.
Opposite from
top: Morro
Bay Oyster
Company’s
Pacific Gold
oysters; produce
at Santa Barbara
Farmers Market;
Stephanie Mutz’s
California Gold
sea urchins.