Outstanding in the Field

Eat spectacular farm-to-table meals—at the farms themselves

Sit down to an al fresco meal with farmers, gardeners, and artisanal food makers in the very setting where the foods were picked, plucked, and prepared with Outstanding in the Field. Think of it as a food truck for agriculture. A nomadic adventure in dining, Outstanding in the Field travels the state (and now the nation) in a 1953 retrofitted transit bus, setting its elongated dining table in orchards and farmland, on ranches, hilltops—even low-tide sandbars. It’s all meant to not just be a pretty setting, but a reminder of where our food comes from—the land, the sea, the sky.

Santa Cruz surfer and chef Jim Denevan orchestrates the dinners with the aplomb of an artist, which he is: a sand artist who creates swirling geometric patterns over miles of beach then watches as the tide reclaims them. The creative process is the art. And there is something of that transience in his farm-to-table feasts as well. The bus rolls into town, the age-old ritual unfolds: the harvesting and preparing food, the gathering around a table, the breaking of bread. It is a ritual as old as humankind itself. Only now, the food is better. So is the wine. And then it’s gone. Down the road to next spot, washed away like the tide.