A Bit of Excitement and Some Kick-Ass Food...

I came down to Santa Barbara yesterday, and things ended up being a bit more exciting than I had anticipated.... The afternoon started tamely enough, as we picked up the rental car and went to get some good picnicking groceries for our trip to Paso Robles today. We were driving our separate cars downtown to Steph's apartment, and I noticed as soon as I turned onto Carillo that there was a pretty big fire on the side of the mountain in front of us. (Somehow Steph failed to notice this, even as she listened to the radio in her car reporting on said fire.)

It's extremely dry and windy here, and within 2 hours (my first sighting of the fire was apparently within 15 minutes of when it started) the fire had grown seriously bigger. It's hard to photograph, but there were some ridiculously high flames on that mountain. If it wasn't for the fact that it was destroying hundreds of acres and over 80 homes, I would say it's absolutely beautiful. The night took on a bit of the feeling of being in a town in a state of emergency. The power was going out all over town... The streets were filled with people standing around watching the fire burn (pictures above were taken outside of Steph's apartment as we did the same)... Ash fluttered through the air and landed in eyes... The entire city reeked of smoke (and still does)... We could hear helicopters flying over fairly regularly (and still can, actually)... The fire has moved across the mountain and out of sight towards Montecito now, but apparently it's still burning strong...

Our immediate concern when we saw the power going out all around us as we drove to get dinner was that Super Cuca's might lose power and thus not be able to provide us with delicious trashy Mexican food, which would have been tragic (though not on the scale of a massive wildfire). Luckily, the power outages didn't reach that neighborhood and we were able to order our traditional Emily's-first-night-in-Santa-Barbara dinner...
Super Cuca's seems to be a bit of a controversial choice for the title of Favorite Trashy Mexican Food in Santa Barbara (with many supporters of La Superica Taqueria out there), but I maintain that there's none better. Tradition dictates that Steph and I each order a Super Plate (she the carne asada, me the carnitas) and a Shrimp Quesadilla to split (which ensures ample leftovers for lunch the next day). The Super Plate is your basic pile of goodness featuring rice, beans, meat, pico de galla, and a little bit of cheese, and served with freshly made corn and/or flour tortillas (carnitas version pictured below).
The Shrimp Quesadilla is sort of genius (although it got a bit mangled on it's trip to the cutting board when we got home, it's usually beautiful as well as delicious...). When we first ordered this a couple years ago, we thought it would be one of those lame ones with a few bay shrimp and a handful of orange cheese melted between tortillas. We were very very wrong. One of the restaurant's giant homemade flour tortillas is filled with large grilled shrimp, cheese, lightly caramelized sliced onion and zucchini, green bell pepper, mushroom, and tomato. The onions and zucchini are absolutely brilliant and match perfectly with the shrimp. So very yummy...
As we listened to the sounds of the state of emergency outside, we sat at a table featuring this lovely spread of tasty, tasty food and waited to see if the power would stay on long enough to provide entertainment for us until the jet-lagged among us had to go to bed... (It did.) All in all, an interesting welcome back to the US city that feels most like "home" to me... In a few hours we're heading up to Paso Robles for a bit of wine-tasting and a reunion with an old friend...
Update: Steph just received a 5am reverse-911 call warning that people in this neighborhood may need to evacuate (although that seems unlikely given that the fire looks like it's moved over the ridge of the mountains and away from us). They said "on the north side of [Steph's Street]," but Steph lives on the south side of tha street, so it should be fine either way... Fires can't cross streets, right?