The spot for wine country dining

To an Angeleno, Santa Barbara feels like a city on quaaludes, a sleepy paradise of hillside gardens and indigo sea. The climate isn’t so bad either. Urban sprawl? It hardly exists. Downtown is as picturesque as they come, chock-full of preening red-tile buildings and an interlocking series of flowered courtyards.

After a while, it all seems so tasteful it begins to grate on anyone who revels in the heady and constantly changing spectacle that is Los Angeles. But for a day or two, Santa Barbara feels like Shangri-La.

The vineyards of the Santa Ynez and Santa Maria valleys and sexy, up-and-coming appellations like Santa Rita Hills are practically next door. And on Saturday morning and Tuesday afternoons, there’s an exuberant farmers market, one of the best around. Yet for all that, Santa Barbara isn’t a great restaurant town. It’s the same everywhere tourists go.

A seemingly inexhaustible supply of guidebook-toting visitors keeps restaurants alive without having to court regulars. Anybody who’s ever been to Provence or Tuscany knows what I’m talking about. You won’t eat terribly badly, but in general, you won’t eat terribly well either. Santa Barbara is not immune.

One restaurant name tourists are likely to have in hand when they arrive is the Wine Cask. Owner Doug Margerum has a good thing going with a wine shop and restaurant under the same name, plus a little cafe, Intermezzo, next door where he holds tastings and you can pick up a quick snack until late in the evening. The shop, cafe and restaurant are all off the same courtyard in El Paseo, a historic pedestrian promenade of shops and restaurants in the heart of downtown.

The wine shop is phenomenal, known all over the country not only for its comprehensive selection of Central Coast wines, many with limited availability, but also for its astute collection of Burgundies and Bordeaux, along with wines from the Rhone, Italy, Spain and further afield.

The Wine Cask is so identified with Santa Barbara wines that it even offers futures of these wines, based on barrel tastings heralded in the store’s newsletter.

Until recently, despite the handsome Mission Revival dining room with a 30-foot-high hand-stenciled ceiling, it’s been harder to appreciate the restaurant. The Wine Cask came of age in the ‘80s, just when California cuisine was forging a new identity, the more iconoclastic the better.

Chefs heaped on the ingredients and tried to outdo each other with improbable flavor combinations and dishes so tall they required scaffolding to construct. At a certain point the cuisine moved into parody, and that’s where the Wine Cask was stuck for a number of years. Unfortunately for a restaurant that is focused around its wine list, that kind of cooking was not the least bit wine-friendly either.

Recently, though, the kitchen seems to be concentrating on taste over flash. Longtime chef Alex Castillo’s menu seems more current with what’s going on in California’s best kitchens, namely, a move toward simplicity and superb products. At dinner, it’s not unusual to find a local winemaker or two entertaining guests, or wine buffs sending a glass of something special to another table. Servers in long-sleeved shirts and ties are entirely comfortable with wine and knowledgeable about the list.

Some nights it’s warm enough to sit out in the courtyard at dinner, but it’s a shame not to enjoy the very grand dining room. It could be a bit better arranged, but the room is swell. There’s a sense of volume and space, and French doors open onto the courtyard. The bar at the back never gets much use, and the maitre d’ station is in an awkward spot. But tables are widely spaced and the woven cane armchairs are awfully seductive.

You can’t go wrong with the baked Fanny Bay oysters, which are more warmed through than actually cooked, served in their shell with a swatch of intense green bok choy and nappa cabbage and a dab of citrus hollandaise. It’s fresh and interesting, good to share.

Pot stickers have a finely pleated dough and a sumptuous filling of veal and marrow. They could have done without the syrupy bordelaise glaze, though. Maine lobster roulade is pretty as anything, the red lobster curled around julienned celery root, avocado and mango. The taste is pleasant but somehow undefined.

Anybody would be happy with the lovely salad of arugula and baby frisee with cucumber and jicama for crunch, punctuated with blue cheese and a subtle Champagne vinaigrette. Shredded duck confit makes another fine salad with endive and perky local greens in a bright lemony dressing.

But the shrimp in an Asian shrimp salad are sad and limp. The best thing about it is the Asian slaw buried in the middle. But the “bowl” it’s served in, which may be made of fried wonton skins, looks more like a fried coffee filter.

Castillo thinks carefully about the accompaniments for each of the main courses. He pairs pan-seared Alaskan halibut with nutty red rice from the Camargue -- cowboy country in southwest France. I just wish he’d serve the rice without so much diced tomato, the better to taste the quality of the rice. Fennel-crusted lamb sirloin is a tepee of chops surrounding a butternut squash risotto. The only problem: The rice is gummy, and another over-reduced sauce drowns out the lamb’s delicate taste.

It would have been more credible to call the bouillabaisse on the menu a Santa Barbara fish soup. Bouillabaisse it is not. I couldn’t detect a taste of saffron, and the broth tasted more like clam juice than anything else. Though the bowl was brimming with huge green-lipped mussels, clams, scallops and langoustine, the effect was so dull, no one at our table wanted to finish it.

When the pork chop arrived, we all thought, uh-oh, here comes the tall food. The perfectly lovely Niman Ranch chop was propped up on what looked like a squishy tennis ball, which turned out to be a doughy guanciale (cured pork jowl) and goat cheese croquette. Alliteration aside, these two should never have met.

Although the Wine Cask no longer serves lunch on weekends, weekday diners can enjoy a consummate California experience: lunch outdoors in the courtyard. With trumpet vines twined overhead, hummingbirds and dappled sunlight under the umbrellas, it couldn’t be lovelier. Arrive early enough to take a quick spin through the wine shop and pick out a wine for lunch.

The menu includes a number of repeats from the dinner menu, along with a lunch-only selection of salads and sandwiches. A Cobb made with chunks of moist chicken, apple-smoked bacon and avocado is dressed in a whole-grain mustard vinaigrette that lifts it above the ordinary. What I thought would be a platter of prosciutto is also a salad, tossed with baby arugula, grilled Bosc pear and good Parmigiano.

When cooks try to elevate otherwise humble dishes by making them with deluxe ingredients, I’m usually dubious. But when I see filet mignon enchiladas on the menu, I have to order them. While I think a different cut of beef would be more in character, here the filet mignon makes a lighter enchilada than most. And it’s served with a little creme fraiche (otherwise known as crema fresca), a cilantro-laced tomato salsa and a ruddy adobo sauce. The rice is actually risotto, made with short grain Italian rice and black beans. This is one case where the Franco-Italian-Mexican thing does work.

The Wine Cask makes excellent sandwiches too, all served either with great French fries (skins on), thick golden onion rings or a simple green salad. My favorite is chipotle-marinated tri-tip with havarti cheese and a pugnacious horseradish aioli. The chipotle gives the beef a touch of smoke and heat and the cheese plays off the horseradish.

I was less entranced with the Dungeness crab sandwich because the crabmeat was so finely shredded. But the burger made with Kobe-style beef and charred portabello mushroom is a keeper.

The best dessert is a bowl of local berries, especially when Gaviota strawberries are in season. Second choice is the rather eggy creme brulee, followed by a pear napoleon that layers a flaky pastry with delicious chilled pastry cream.

Of course, if you want to linger over an after-dinner drink or a dessert wine, you should be able to find something on the Wine Cask’s lengthy list. Santa Barbara goes to bed early, though. By 10:30 when we saunter out one night, just three cars are left in the parking lot, and the only sign of life is coming from the bars along State Street.

*

The Wine Cask

Rating: **

Location: El Paseo, 813 Anacapa St., Santa Barbara; (805) 966-9463; (800) 436-9463; www.winecask.com.

Ambience: Grand but comfortable dining room with painted wood beams, a fireplace and French cane bistro chairs. At lunch or early evening, the courtyard patio is lovely. Come early enough to browse at the impressively stocked adjacent wine shop.

Service: Courtly and pleasant, though awfully quick to pour water by the bottle.

Price: Dinner appetizers, $9 to $40; main courses, $30 to $36; desserts, $8 to $12; lunch appetizers, $8 to $40; lunch entrees, $13 to $21.

Best dishes: Cobb salad, tri-tip sandwich, burger, baked Fanny Bay oysters, duck confit salad, baby frisee and arugula salad, fennel-crusted lamb sirloin, halibut with Camargue red rice, pear napoleon.

Wine list: Impressive selection of Central Coast wines and older vintages of Burgundy and Bordeaux. Corkage $25.

Best table: One in front of the fireplace or under a tree in the courtyard.

Details: Open for dinner daily from 5:30 to 10 p.m. (weekdays until 9 p.m. during the winter) and for lunch Monday through Friday from 11 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Full bar. Valet parking $6 at dinner; $1 per half hour at lunchtime.

Rating is based on food, service and ambience, with price taken into account in relation to quality. ****: Outstanding on every level. ***: Excellent. **: Very good. *: Good. No star: Poor to satisfactory.