Julia Child spent the last years of her life here, so of course Santa Barbara is still throwing her birthday parties — this past Sunday, August 15, would have been her 109th.
The Santa Barbara Culinary Experience , in partnership with the Julia Child Foundation for Gastronomy and the Culinary Arts , celebrated in a variety of ways, the capstone being a blowout dinner on the Canary Hotel rooftop featuring Finch & Fork’s recently hired executive chef Craig Riker.
While many at the event shared stories of Child’s kindness and giving nature, it was winemaker Greg Brewer’s reminiscence that summed up her truly larger-than-life stature, and not just because she was 6’2”. To quickly summarize an anecdote Brewer put much more charmingly — of course, we’d all enjoyed his 2012 Brewer-Clifton 3D sparkling to start the evening, so that surely helped — after 9/11, famed wine critic Robert Parker was so shaken, he almost gave up on what he saw as a trifling profession, or so he told Brewer as he tasted with him. Evidently after that, Parker ran into Child, and she insisted his work was of great value, buoying him up.
