Welcome to the "805 Eats" dining blog where we'll keep you up-to-date on restaurant and food happenings in the 805. To send tips and comments, email edit@805Living.com.

Thanks for the memories

DEC. 31
For two restaurants in the 805, New Year’s Eve 2011 will be the last.

Andy Brooks, executive chef at BROOKS in downtown Ventura, announced in an email to patrons in December that he and wife Jayme had decided to close the eatery at the end of the month. In a separate phone call, chef Brooks cited the recession as a major cause behind the closure of the restaurant, which debuted in May 2007.

The email invited patrons to “come and join us one last time,” either by ordering from the regular menu from 5 p.m. to closing Dec. 28-30, or by booking a table for the four-course New Year’s Eve tasting menu on Dec. 31.

The holiday menu will start with crispy fried oysters served with fennel red onion slaw and caviar white wine butter sauce. Second course will be a mixed field green salad with fresh pear, candied pecans and blue cheese crumbles. Third course will be diners’ choice of  wood-grilled filet with jalapeno sausage, cranberry stuffing and grilled asparagus or pan-roasted halibut with red potato butternut hash brown and cauliflower gratin with champage shallot cream or portobello and porcini mushroom ravioli with sauteed spinach and caramelized onions with mixed herb port sauce. Dessert will feature flourless chocolate cake with mascarpone cream and raspberry puree. Reservations are $85 per person or $115 including paired wines. (545 E. Thompson Blvd., Ventura. 805-652-7070)

With plans to move down the street and around the corner this spring, Matt and Jeff Nichols of the aptly named Brothers Restaurant at Mattei’s Tavern in Los Olivos will be marking the eatery’s final New Year’s Eve at the historic stagecoach stop.

Reservations from 5-9 p.m. Dec. 31 will give revelers plenty of time to order items from the a la carte menu and still make it to their respective parties. Menu items include kabocha squash soup with creme fraiche, slow-roasted prime rib of beef, grilled Iowa pork chop with apple sauce and honey butter and horseradish-crusted Irish salmon with whole grain mustard sauce. Desserts will include Brothers’ Mud Pie prepared by pastry chef Stephanie Jackson.

The Nichols will open a new, as-yet-unnamed restaurant at the former site of Patrick’s Side Street Cafe, which closed in January. The owners of Mattei’s Tavern, meanwhile, plan to build a resort hotel on the property.

(2350 Railway Ave., Los Olivos. 805-688-4820)

Take a walk on the foodie side

Dec. 28, Jan. 7 and …

Have guests for the holidays? Here’s a way to (nicely) get them out of the house for a few hours while also checking out new places to eat: Sign everyone up for the midweek Ventura Food Tours event taking place from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Dec. 28.

Led by local writer Allison Costa, the on-foot excursion will include stops at six food-centric businesses in downtown Ventura. Some include sit-down tastings; others feature a quick bite and a chat with the on-site chef, food artisan or proprietor. You may find yourself peering into the tandoori oven at Bollywood Cafe , watching how truffles are made at  Trufflehound’s Fine Chocolates, and/or learning how to pair French cheeses with California wines at Paradise Pantry.

Can’t make it on Wednesday? Costa also offers Ventura Food Tours on weekends (next up: 11 a.m. Jan. 7) and by appointment.

Check the website, too,  for information about her Eating Ojai Tours, which often include microbrews at the Ojai Beverage Company and pastries from Knead Baking Co. on the edible itinerary.

($59 per person, or $49 each for two people; 805-295-TOUR or http://www.venturafoodtours.com)

An easy-as-pie Hanukkah dinner

Dec. 22 (and beyond)
Los Angeles-area chef and guiding foodie Evan Kleiman has a lot on her plate. But that’s not keeping her from serving a Festival of Lights holiday meal at her Melrose Avenue restaurant, Angeli Caffe.
The Dec. 22 dinner will include latkes with homemade applesauce, pot roast and what Kleiman calls “an assortment of vegetable dishes from the Diaspora.” Dessert will be ricotta doughnuts with homemade preserves. Service starts at 7:30 p.m. and will be family style, with diners seated at long, communal tables — just in case you didn’t already have that Hanukkah experience when the eight-day holiday began at sundown Dec. 20. Reservations, $35 per person, are highly recommended.

So, what else is keeping Kleiman, the host of “Good Food” on KCRW, busy? In addition to marking her restaurant’s 27th anniversary early this month, she recently launched a new app, Easy as Pie, for the iPad and iPhone. The $4.99 app offers step-by-step videos on the making of 20 pies (including Chai Spice Pumpkin and Nutella Hand Pies) and includes recipes for five pie crusts and five toppings. But if you’d rather eat pie than make it, Kleiman also is running a “Pie Pop Up” at the cafe: Stop by for eat-in slices or take-home whole pies both savory (Chicken Pot Pie) and sweet (Apple Cidedr Maple Crumble).

7274 Melrose Ave., Los Angeles. 323-936-9086

Freebirds World Burrito spreads its wings

Dec. 19-20
After opening this summer in Ventura, the Freebirds World Burrito chain continues its march into the VC by unveiling two new locations in as many days this week. A sneak preview event at one of those sites will double as a fundraiser for Food Share of Ventura County, a local food bank.

The first site and its assembly line-style service counter will go into action at 11 a.m. Dec. 19  at  The Shops at Oak Creek in Agoura Hills. (The shopping center also is home to Urbane Cafe, Stone Ground Bakery and The Olive Vineyard, among others.) Hours will be 11 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays, 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sundays. (29125 Canwood St., Agoura Hills. 818-874-9171)

The Simi Valley site of Freebirds World Burrito will debut the very next day, aka Dec. 20. But during soft-opening events from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. and again from 5-7 p.m. the previous day (aka Dec. 19), the first 250 people in line for each time slot will receive free food and drinks in exchange for a $5 donation to Food Share. Regular hours at the Simi Valley location will be 11 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays, 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sundays. (In the Sycamore Square shopping center at 2490 Sycamore Drive. 805-581-1689.)

Gonna buy five copies for my mother …

DEC. 10-11

As the co-founder and “mind behind” Au Bon Climat Winery on the Central Coast, Jim Clendenen is something of a rock star among California winemakers.
So don’t be surprised if hordes of adoring oenophiles show up this weekend just to get the wild-maned winemaker’s autograph when he  appears from 1-4 p.m. Dec. 10 and 11 at the winery’s tasting room and library in downtown Santa Barbara. Clendenen will be signing bottles of ABC pinot noir  and chardonnay, making each an instant collector’s item, a most excellent holiday gift or a really rockin’ combination of the two.

813 Anacapa St., Santa Barbara (next to The Wine Cask). 805-845-8435. Open daily from noon to 6 p.m.

Hot tamales

DEC. 2-3

It’s beginning to look a lot like … well, you know: Tamale season.
Wrapped in corn husks and often tied with different-colored strings to denote their fillings, the little packets of masa mixed with ingredients both savory and sweet are tailor-made for the holidays. Their resemblance to small gifts aside, tamales also are an inexpensive way to feed a crowd — once you know what you’re doing.

That’s where the Christmas tamale workshop being offered from 6:30 p.m. Dec. 2 at Let’s Get Cookin’ comes in. Nancy Zaslavsky, author of “A Cook’s Tour of Mexico,” will visit the Westlake Village shop and cooking school to share tips for organizing a “tamalada,” or tamale making party. The proper care and feeding of your masa dough will be discussed, but so, too, will be ideas for getting the party started with appetizers and a tequila tasting. Reservations for the class, $85 per person, include samples of and recipes for such dishes as Smoky-Spicy-Cheesy Vegetarian Tamales with Herbed Masa and Yucatan Shredded Pork and Chorizo Tamales wrapped in Banana Leaves. (818-991-3940)

More interested in eating tamales than in making them? The fourth annual Oxnard Tamale Festival will provide plenty of opportunity to do just that when it runs from 9 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. Dec. 3 in Plaza Park. More than a baker’s dozen of tamale vendors will be on site to sell their edible wares to the public while also competing in a tamale taste-off  judged by local officials. A tamale-eating contest will start at 2:30 p.m. (register by 1:30 if you’re into that sort of thing), and cooking demos will be offered throughout the day. But it’s not all just about the tamales: the Santa Barbara-based O Street Food Truck will be there with its French-Mex-Vietnamese fare, while the folks from Ventura’s The Jolly Oyster will be serving oysters on the half-shell, Baja-style oyster cocktails and, yes, oyster tamales. (500 South C Street at Fifth Street. 805-766-4906)