“Is the connection OK?” surf photographer Patrick Trefz asks me, and honestly, it’s not great. Although he’s only in the Seabright neighborhood of Santa Cruz and not some far-flung locale, he keeps cutting in and out as we discuss his newest project, “Ode to Travel,” a cookbook with recipes and photographs gleaned from four decades of traveling all over the world.
His phone just hasn’t been the same since it spent 18 hours in a Samoan-style umu, an oven dug into the earth, Trefz explains through patchy static.
This took place a couple of years ago in the Santa Cruz Mountains, when he and his friend Jeff Larkey, the owner of Route 1 Farms, dug an umu in Trefz’s backyard on Sims Road outside of Scotts Valley. They made an 8-foot pit, lined it with rocks, built a fire in the center and filled the pit with chickens, a whole pig, papayas, pineapples and other ingredients that would be roasted for more than a day until tender. Larkey had learned the process in Hawaii, where umus are used for celebrations.
But late that night, a raincloud moved in. Larkey and Trefz rushed out to protect the oven so the water wouldn’t extinguish their hard work. “As we were hustling to cover it up, my phone fell into the umu and it hasn’t been the same since,” says Trefz. “It was in there from about 11 o’clock at night to 5 p.m. the next day when we dug up the umu. Jeff found it and he’s like, ‘Hey Patrick, I found your phone – and it’s charged’!”
“Ode to Travel” is filled with stories like this, along with never-before-seen images from Trefz’s personal collection of photographs from his travels, starting from his first overseas trip to Tunisia in 1986, when he was 15. Through 36 locales, shared alphabetically from Argentina to New York, Trefz shares his personal culinary experiences and along with a recipe that, to him, epitomizes a particular region — a whole steamed fish with ginger and scallion in Hong Kong; gruyère escargot in Switzerland; carne espeto, skewers of beef, bell pepper and zucchini, in Portugal; and som tum papaya salad in Thailand.
On Friday, Trefz will sign advance copies of “Ode to Travel” at Minnow Arts in downtown Santa Cruz at an early release party. Most of the books won’t be available until February, he says, but the celebration of food, art and wine will include others who have contributed to the book, plus small bites and libations by pop-up Eat Dwaeji. Trefz will also showcase photography and recipes from the book.
For those who are familiar with Trefz’s work as a surf photographer and videographer, a cookbook might seem like a deviation. A former staff member at Surfer magazine, his full-length surf documentaries “Thread” (2007), “Idiosyncrasies” (2010) and “Surfers’ Blood” (2016) earned critical acclaim, and he has published three other books in addition to having his work published in Geo, the New York Times and numerous other publications. But he explains that his interest in food began when he was a young man, and grew more recently as he worked with Outstanding in the Field founder, chef and artist Jim Denevan on a multiyear project to create a documentary about Denevan’s life. The film, “Man in the Field,” was released in 2021. “I got more and more interested in food and I was very interested in having dinner parties at my home and cooking for a lot of people,” says Trefz.
The pandemic brought an abrupt halt to Trefz’s dinner parties and travel routine. In the book, he describes how he and his neighbors created a community garden while in lockdown. “At least we knew that if the world would go upside down, we’d have carrots, lettuce, tomatoes and artichokes to chew on,” he writes. “Cooking gave me a sense of purpose.”
Later that summer, he almost lost his house when the CZU Lightning Complex fires ripped through the Santa Cruz Mountains. Miraculously, his home was unharmed, including boxes and boxes of film negatives from his life abroad. As he looked at the photos for the first time in years, he focused the lens on food as a path to experience the culture he had captured on camera. “Ode to Travel” began to take shape.
Part cookbook and part travel journal, “Ode to Travel” is filled with hand-written notes and moody, evocative photographs, most in the muted tones Trefz is known for, others in black and white. Some are physically marred by age, but the damage just adds character to the story the pages tell, as if they, too, bear the scars of a life well-lived.
The recipes range from ambitious to humble. In the chapter on Samoa, Trefz tells the reader how to build an umu while describing how the Samoan people gained independence from New Zealand’s colonial control. The traditional oven has become a sacred symbol of tribal sovereignty, and on his visit, Trefz must ask the chief for permission to surf on Sunday, the day of rest.
Another dish close to Trefz’s heart is the salda badago from the southern Basque Country in northern Spain. The name for this clear beef broth directly translates to “we got broth,” he says. While the area has become well-known for its concentration of Michelin-starred restaurants, this working-class dish is still available everywhere.
Larkey isn’t the only character from Santa Cruz’s food scene the reader will find in the pages of this book. Chef David Kinch, the Santa Cruz resident, world-renowned chef and owner of Aptos’ Mentone, wrote a foreword. Kinch earned three Michelin stars at his Los Gatos restaurant Manresa before it closed in December, and lent Trefz a hand behind the scenes with culinary advice that helped the recipes in the book come to life. Denevan also wrote a foreword, as did writer and surfboard shaper Christian Beamish. John Locke, co-owner of Birichino winery, helped pair wines with the recipes.
Trefz tested all of the recipes at home, guided and joined by friends like Hans Havemen, co-owner of H&H Fresh Fish, Joe Schirmer from Dirty Girl Produce and Nesh Dhillon, director of Santa Cruz Community Farmers’ Markets. Occasionally, recreating the recipe at home became as memorable as what Trefz experienced abroad, like the time he and Dhillon roasted a whole lamb for the chapter on Chile. Dhillon procured the lamb from Bill Rodoni of Rodoni Farms, and Trefz and Dhillon spatchcocked and spindled the lamb to roast over an open fire.
“It turned out really, really good. And then luckily, David Kinch showed up late at night, just when it got ready to be cut up,” says Trefz. “It would have been a difficult task to take it apart, but he did some real precise cutting and cut the lamb up beautifully.”
“Ode to Travel” opens with a hand-written declaration by Trefz: “The world offers endless opportunities for exploration and discovery, which can serve as inspiration for anyone looking to broaden their horizons.” While the book shows how his travels have broadened Trefz’s culinary exploration, it’s also clear that its creation instigated many profound food memories at home, literally in his own backyard.
“That process was super interesting,” says Trefz. “It was almost more interesting than putting the photographs together because I got pushed into a whole different world that I never thought it would be part of.”
An art show and book signing for “Ode to Travel” will be held at Minnow Arts, at 204 Locust St. in Santa Cruz, on Friday, Dec. 1, at 6 p.m.
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