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Restaurant (July 2005)
- Casa de Sevilla
Casa de Sevilla
428 Chapala Street
Santa Barbara, CA 93101
(805) 966-4370
A grand night out! Three of us from Carina
Cellars hit the town recently and decided to check out Case
de Sevilla restaurant. This medieval style gem in the heart
of Santa Barbara offers chic elegance along with an excellent array
of tapas and entrees. Sevilla has a full bar and an extensive wine
list.
As part of a monthly team building excuse
to get together and have some fun David, CT, and I decided to check
out Sevilla and also say hello to one of our Iconoclast Club
Members who is also the Executive Chef and a joint owner in this
hot, new venue.
Once we stepped inside the fortress-like
doorway I felt as if I’d entered a parallel dimension with
dim lighting and perhaps some Knights of the Roundtable hiding in
the back. The next reservation was at 10:30pm so we opted to head
for the bar instead. You can always cause more trouble at the bar
anyways. We landed some great seats with a 180-degree view of the
restaurant and since we are all big people watchers this was perfect.
Liz, our bartender/waitress, proved to be
a fantastic margarita blender (I am very picky with these) so we
decided to stay in the bar for dinner as well. We started with some
mixed, spicy nuts and Thai style prawns, both of which were excellent.
For our entrees we popped the cork on a bottle of Carina Cellars
2003 Watch Hill Vineyard Syrah, fabulous like always, and made
sure to share some with the staff. For my main course it was a toss
up between Pacific Red Snapper and Seared Ahi Tuna. I had to go
with the Ahi, which is a tried and true favorite, while CT stayed
loyal to Pork Medallions, and David decided on a filet. We were
all very happy with our choices and continued on with our evening
of socializing and enjoying fine food and wine. The crowd that night
was very friendly and we made quite a few new acquaintances.
Of course we couldn’t leave without
trying a few desserts and were quite intrigued by one with a “Carina”
sauce. Although we never found out what exactly a “Carina”
sauce is, we did enjoy some tantalizing dessert options that were
served in three separate parts on the same plate. I thought this
was very creative and had lots of fun dipping each part into the
next to produce a conclusive mix of chocolate tart, peanut butter
sorbet, and chocolate ice cream.
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