The Butler’s Pantry

Mother's Day is the gentlest holiday on the Santa Barbara calendar. It arrives quietly, asks little, and passes by Sunday evening. Memorial Day weekend is something else entirely — the moment the summer hosting season unlocks, the al fresco tables finally go out on the lawn, and the city's quietest hostesses begin a ten-week run of Saturday dinners. What follows is the guide we send our private clients each year in mid-May: a pâtissier's notes on the first long dinner of summer, in three movements — the Saturday dinner, the Sunday lunch by the pool, and the small ribboned box pressed into a houseguest's hand on Monday morning.