Joe Miller

* The proprietor of the California cuisine restaurant Joe’s in Venice.

Gone South: We frequently take short trips. One we did recently, which was really, really fun, is we got a room at the Four Seasons in Carlsbad. Our kids have a great love of Lego, so we’ve made numerous trips there to go to Legoland. We always look for a hotel that has a pool, which is almost as important, if not more so, than going to the amusement park. The child care they have is great, as are the massages, as well as their fine-dining restaurant and cafe.

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Gone North: We also enjoy going up to Santa Barbara. We’ve stayed at the El Encanto Hotel, which is a very charming, not super-expensive, sort of an old-time California-style place, unlike the new resorts up there such as the San Ysidro or the Four Seasons Hotel. The El Encanto has bungalow-type rooms stretched out over this property on the northern end of Santa Barbara, which is near the wine country. I love to ride my bike up there.

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Feed Bag: The Hitching Post in Buellton is a favorite place for me to eat. Frank Orsini has been there for years and makes Hitching Post wines. Both their chardonnay and pinot noirs are top-quality wines and we use them in my restaurant. It reminds me of small town--not a diner--but a small-town restaurant that you might have seen in the ‘70s. It has a ranch feel, a bar on one side and wood paneling. They’re known for their Santa Barbara grill cooking. They have a big open-hearth grill that you crank up and down to control the heat and they do a great quail with a yam puree with Jack Daniels.

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Desert Play: Memorial Day I took the kids out to Joshua Tree National Park. It was quite hot, though not unbearable because you’re in the high desert, not the low. We stayed at the 29 Palms Inn, which is very neat, the type of place you might see in Mexico; they have all these adobe-style bungalows. And there’s a bar by the pool that is the local hot spot at night. And just up the hill is Joshua Tree, which, if you have kids that like to climb things, has a thousand rocks to climb.