M.F.K. Fisher’s Among Friends describes her early 20th-century childhood in Whittier, CA (part of Los Angeles County), taking a train all the way from her family’s house to Laguna Beach to go musseling. Kids in pinafores rolled up and plucking, steaming seaweed and mussels over hot coals right on the beach. She wrote so tenderly about this food memory that it got me thinking about my own.
The abundance of flavors available in Beachtown Bohemia means that one is pressed to nail down a singular ingredient that summarizes one’s childhood. How can you choose between backyard persimmons and passionfruit? Avocado and artichoke? Scallops and salmon? So ill-equipped do I feel to narrow this down that we are going to pivot straight to dessert: one memory from the past, and one from the present.
If I ever speak to someone older than myself who grew up in San Francisco, I ask them if they remember Blum’s. Blum’s was a San Francisco institution for much of the 20th century. Their longtime location at California and Polk was a standard city-person’s venue for a Sunday outing with your grandmother, a pre-theatre supper, a post-graduation lunch. Blum’s was a female fantasy with pretty booths and beautifully packaged candies that women in Evan Picone pantsuits took to dinner parties as hostess gifts. The mood was an ebullient pink pinstripe fantasy à la the carousel scene in Mary Poppins.
Any time we took the car journey north to The City from Santa Cruz, I’d beg to go to Blum’s after whatever cultural reason (the ballet, a museum, I. Magnin) lured us out of our small town. To a kid from the land of surf shops and sprouted alfalfa sandwiches, Blum’s was the epitome of urban sophistication and girly excess. Its recipe for Coffee Crunch Cake is still spoken of in hushed tones across the internet (Blum’s closed in 1985). Crunch cake was a treat beyond other treats—I often ordered it after a chicken salad sandwich — another dinosaur menu item. I associated Blum’s coffee crunch cake with lipstick, the red velvet curtains at the Opera House, and aspirational ‘80s women with silky dresses and geometric earrings. A longing for a glamorous adulthood in each crunchy bite.
My own children are forming California food memories. I anticipate they will always associate a chic, breezy lunch with the menu and energy at our petite neighborhood treasure, Merci Montecito in the Montecito Country Mart. Merci has two things in common with Blum’s: pink branding (albeit Merci’s is a very pale, beige-pink) and an irresistible rotating repertoire of both savory items and memorable desserts.
Elizabeth Colling, founder of Merci Montecito, is stylish and good at everything in the kitchen but trained as a pastry chef, so a guest navigates Merci in terms of what thoughtful sugar invention your meal will end with. The things I know my daughters will always remember are the chicken paillard (crunchy with a lovely sauce vert ) and any new seasonal dessert Colling has brought forth. Just this November it was a gingersnap cookie so buttery, chewy, and otherworldly that you sort of lost track of yourself. Elizabeth is feminine even in her baking. Merci’s cakes are delicate food memory triggers: soft and only sweet enough to have you begging for more, with her feather-like penmanship on top. The Blum’s of my childhood may have been more of a Marilyn Monroe experience overall - over the top and almost arch with ice cream sundaes the size of your head. Merci is more like Françoise Hardy—understated, spare, yet still irresistibly female.
I’ve just learned that Merci, always a hot ticket for breakfast and lunch, will be opening for dinner this January. In an era of terrifying norm-shattering, immigration raids, and unholy acts of anti-democratic lawlessness, Merci opening for dinner in 2026 is like a window into a world I find comfort in. As M. Gustave says in Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel after he and the lobby boy have just dodged arrest by fascists:
“You see, there are still faint glimmers of civilization left in this barbaric slaughterhouse that was once known as humanity.”
I’ll be ordering the chicken paillard with the Storm Sauvignon Blanc. And Merci’s salted caramels, if they are not sold out.
I recently collaborated with author Shira Gill on a charming zine about how to create a childcare cooperative. Click the button below to order a pretty printed version of Building Your Village. Perfect for holiday stockings or gift for stressed out parents of young children.
Please share this post with someone you think would benefit from it, thank you to Shira Gill for your friendship and great ideas — and thank you for reading this!
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