Julia Child is commemorated the world over, but in the quaint town of Santa Barbara where she resided from 2001 until her death in 2004 at the age of 91, she lives on. Her presence is felt in the lengthy lines that regularly build up outside of La Super-Rica Taqueria, in the A.C. Postel Memorial Rose Garden where roses carrying her name perennially bloom and in the minds of the chefs and vintners who likewise call this region home.
This is particularly true during the Taste of Santa Barbara (TOSB). For the third time in as many years, the community gathered together for a week of eating, drinking and reminiscing with the explicit intention of remembering Child and celebrating her outsize impact on this slice of California that she loved so well.
“Many long-time Santa Barbarans have a lot of stories about seeing Julia around town,” said Todd Schulkin, executive director of the Julia Child Foundation for Gastronomy & the Culinary Arts. “So, I think a lot of people here feel that her legacy is still imbuing the spirit of the hospitality industry, and that’s why we do the Taste of Santa Barbara. It really encapsulates these things that Julia loved and valued, which have only fostered and gotten bigger over time.”
Nowhere was this more on display than Saturday night’s “Lights, Camera, Julia!” screening, where Chris Keyser, executive producer of MAX’s series “Julia,” discussed Child’s living legacy both onscreen and off with series director Jenée LaMarque and Alex Prud’homme, grand-nephew of Child and co-author of her memoir, “My Life in France.” Viewers enjoyed a glass of Fess Parker wine with bags of buttery popcorn, one of Child’s favorite snacks, as Keyser screened clips from “Julia” juxtaposed with original footage from PBS’s “The French Chef.” Then and now, Julia continues to dazzle audiences.
Schulkin has spent a lifetime in pursuit of honoring Child’s legacy and home. He sees how her positivity and infectious sense of humor have, to this day, inspired generations of people to cook and live in her image. Through events like TOSB, he hopes to continue facilitating this community-wide connection to Child, while simultaneously drawing attention to the American Riviera.
“The food, the wine, the palm trees, the hills, the kind of rugged rocks, the dustiness with occasional tremendous rainstorms, it all is very Provençal,” said Prud’homme. “And I think one of the reasons that she came back to settle here was for that.”
Prud’homme recalls taking her around the farmers markets during the last year of her life, and the joy that inevitably sparked in the wake of this connection with the people and the land. Child might have been a world-renowned celebrity, but in Santa Barbara she was a neighbor and friend.
“She knew the olive guy and the strawberry lady and the lavender person, and she just loved it. She was such a people person,” he said.
Both in the kitchen and outside of it, Child led a life worth emulating. Her recipes are so much more than ingredients and methods, they are instructions for living.
She said it best herself: “This is my invariable advice to people: Learn how to cook—try new recipes, learn from your mistakes, be fearless and above all have fun.”