Taste of Santa Monica includes a molecular ice cream exhibit
By CHRISTINA YOON Special to the Daily Press
SM PIER Even in a city that boasts over 450 restaurants and was named last year’s number one dining spot in California by Zagat, it can be difficult to venture out and try new places to eat when the tried and true burger joint down the street beckons.
This Sunday, the Santa Monica Chamber of Commerce will make branching out a bit easier when it hosts the seventh annual Taste of Santa Monica event on the Santa Monica Pier. Forty local restaurants, from family-owned favorites like El Cholo to national chains like Panera Bread, will set up shop for four hours, beginning at noon.
“This is one of those really important signature events of the city,” said Laurel Rosen, the president of the Chamber of Commerce and former chair of the Taste of Santa Monica event.
In addition to being one of the community’s most recognized traditions, the Taste of Santa Monica is also the chamber’s largest fundraising event. At $40 to $45 a person, the event gathered 2,500 attendees last year and expects to have a similar turnout on Sunday.
“One of the ways that we survive is through this event,” Rosen said.
Organizers and participating restaurants say that the event presents a win-win situation. Visitors have the opportunity to try food from places they may have heard of but haven’t visited yet for a bargain, while the restaurants have a chance to show off their favorite dishes and gather new fans.
In order to encourage variety, attendees will be given a checklist of the 40 restaurants, which will be stamped every time they visit a table. Once the entire checklist is stamped, visitors can go back for seconds.
“When I go to the events, there are always those restaurants that I’ve always wanted to try, and I’m like, ‘Well what’s stopping me now?’” said Lynne Thomas, the director of sales and marketing at The Lobster on Ocean Avenue.
The restaurant has participated in the Taste of Santa Monica since it began. Thomas said the connection that the event establishes between the restaurants and the community is what keeps The Lobster coming back year after year.
“Some people think we’re just a big tourist trap,” Thomas said of the restaurant. “This is a chance to make our marketing a little more personal than a brochure, be very hands-on and we can say, ‘Here’s who we are.’”
The event can also be helpful to the new kids on the block, who often have to try even harder than the established restaurants to make an impression.
“We thought it’d be a great way to expose new people to our restaurant,” said Evan Silver, the co-founder of Buddha’s Belly restaurant on Broadway and Second Street.
Silver and his business partner Jonathan Chu have run Buddha’s Belly out of Los Angeles for five years and opened the Santa Monica branch in January.
“We’re really excited about it,” Silver said of Sunday’s event.“We’re looking forward to meeting more of our new neighbors.”
In addition to food, the event will feature a wine garden for an extra $15, live music by the band Route 66 and a raffle giving away prizes including restaurant gift certificates and Cirque du Soleil tickets.
For the first time this year, the event will also include a molecular ice cream lab. The interactive lab will allow attendees to create their own ice cream concoctions at workshops run by the International Culinary School at the Art Institute of California, Los Angeles.
“Molecular cooking is pretty new and really popular right now,” said Kevin McLearry, one of this year’s event co-chairs. “It’s something you see in shows like ‘Iron Chef.’”
McLearry and Rosen agreed, though, that the best feature of Taste of Santa Monica is the pleasure of enjoying the eclectic menu outdoors, overlooking the beach.
“This is Santa Monica’s backyard,” Rosen said.“It’s like a nice afternoon party at someone’s nice house.”
In order to help the crowd enjoy the event’s pier venue fully, the organizers have decided to establish two entrance points so that attendees don’t move in one huge crowd from one table to the next, overwhelming the first tables and leaving others abandoned.
“I guess it’s the American way — you see a line and you get in it,” McLearry said with a laugh. “This way we’ll at least split the crowd in half.”
Members of the Taste of Santa Monica committee say that small improvements such as this have continued to improve the event over the past seven years.
“When you’re dealing with so many people and so many variables you have to learn to go with the flow,” said Rosen, who had a background in catering and event planning before becoming involved with the Chamber of Commerce.“I always like to say, ‘You never let the client know that the kitchen’s on fire,’ and I think that’s true here as well.”
McLearry said that this laid-back mood is the underlying mode of the event.
“All you need to do is bring a couple of bucks for cocktails and enjoy the sun and the blue skies,” he said.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on September 13, 2008. Read the original PDF.