This edition of Full Belly Files was originally emailed to subscribers on March 22, 2024. To receive Matt Kettmann’s food newsletter in your inbox each Friday, sign up at independent.com/newsletters.
The whole point of the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden ’s annual Beer Garden fundraiser crystallized while my wife, Joanna, and I were standing by Mission Creek beneath the shade of redwoods in the far corner of the garden. As Tarantula Hill Brewing ’s co-owner and brewer Mike Richmond served us his Cali Coastal IPA, he explained that it was flavored with redwood tips.
"Redwood?" Joanna asked.
"Yeah," replied Richmond, pointing to the other side of the trail, about five feet away. "From that tree right there."
The Botanic Garden Beer Garden is not your usual beer or food festival. The breweries and restaurants are curated by an advisory committee — I’m a member of that — and then each participant must use a native plant as one or more of the ingredients in whatever brew or bite is being served. That’s led to an aura of friendly creative competition, and it’s not uncommon to see brewers and chefs checking in on the other booths to see which plants were used and how.
Meanwhile, due to the attendance limitations of the Botanic Garden’s permits, the always sold-out event — tickets were gone in less than an hour this year — doesn’t feel crowded. There were many times when Joanna and I were walking from one booth to the next on a path with no one else around. Just the walking around part, past the popping poppies, aromatic sages, and colorful signs indicating which edible native plant is where, is a treat itself, especially compared to the usual beer festival setting of booths on a lawn.