We can argue about whether The Lark is Santa Barbara’s answer to The French Laundry in Napa — if nothing else, it’s less expensive and easier to get into — but the just-published Around the Table: Recipes & Stories from The Lark in Santa Barbara is certainly as amazing as The French Laundry Cookbook. With more than 160 recipes, gorgeous photos by Macduff Everton, and tales of Santa Barbara past and present, it’s no surprise to learn that this accomplishment was part of Acme Hospitality founder and managing partner Sherry Villanueva’s dream before she even opened The Lark.
“The intensity of building the restaurant was all-encompassing and unlike anything I’d ever done, and I was blown away by the dedication of the cast of characters involved,” explained Villanueva. “I knew there was a story to tell, and I wanted to tell it.” During the development, Villanueva had a very moving conversation with one of the construction workers while Everton took his portrait, one of the many stirring photographs that shape the heart of the book, like a 21st-century answer to Walker Evans’s work in Let Us Now Praise Famous Men.
“He asked me why we were taking his picture, and I told him we were going to write a book and we wanted him to be in it,” said Villanueva. “He started crying and commented that on other jobs no one had ever even asked him his name, much less taken his picture to be in a book. For me, he represents all the hundreds of stories that are behind The Lark.”