Catalina Cuisine

Chef Paul Hancock of Avalon Grille has ambitions beyond beach food

Comments (0) By Amy Scattergood Thursday, Aug 30 2012

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Sitting in the dining room, the breeze blowing in off the harbor through the Avalon's full-length accordion windows, which open just feet from the beach, Hancock considers the lay of the land — emphasis on land.

In the past, Catalina pretty much shut down in the off-season. But these days, businesses operate year-round, catering to locals and passing cruise ships and the people who prefer the place when summer crowds subside. Avalon Grille is open seven days a week year-round.

PHOTO BY AMY SCATTERGOOD

Cioppino at Avalon Grille on Catalina Island

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In the summers, Hancock is pretty busy. But once the weather cools and the tourists go elsewhere, he has time to get over to the farmers markets on the mainland, heading to the Santa Monica markets twice a week.

He grows or harvests or forages whatever he can: Nasturtiums and avocados, oranges and shallots, duck eggs and fennel, Meyer lemons and fennel pollen, even local lemonade berries. He wants to raise his own quail and, if he can sort out the vicissitudes of the wind blowing in off the ocean, has plans for a rooftop garden.

The one thing Hancock doesn't have to worry about is wine. Bottles of pinot noir and chardonnay from Rusack Winery line the restaurant bar — and beneath them, wooden wine boxes are stacked like the Prohibition contraband that drifted ashore when smugglers frequented Catalina's many coves and coastal caves.

The boxes are stamped not with Rusack's Santa Ynez label but that of Santa Catalina Island Vineyards, the vineyard that Geoff Rusack and his wife, Alison Wrigley Rusack (yes, that Wrigley), built on the island itself. The first Catalina wines were bottled three years ago, and the Rusacks have in the works an ambitious tasting room.

Unsurprisingly, when you have that much quality local wine available, it trickles down into the menu as well. The remarkable cioppino is built with wine and tomatoes and spice, the heady sauce pooling into a bright red bath for the salmon and prawns and clams and black mussels, the obsidian color of the mussel shells in stark contrast to the reds and whites of the rest of the dish.

It's a dish that in some ways encapsulates the restaurant, the chef and the island itself: The contents of the sea triangulated by other fixed points, in this case California, North Carolina, France and maybe a few other harbors.

"Now I'm down to earth, I've got the best of both worlds," Hancock observes without irony.

He is not wrong.