Seven Lands a Heavenly New Location

Interior of Seven Bar's new space | Photo: Ingrid Bostrom

When Seven Bar & Kitchen lost their lease in 2022 after 10 years of providing a fun and truly funky destination in the Funk Zone, shutting down that August, owner Michael Gomez, unsurprisingly, wasn’t pleased. Now Seven Bar (the “& Kitchen” is gone, even if food service isn’t) is settled into its new location — the spot once occupied by The Neighborhood on Montecito Street.

“This change wasn’t part of the plan,” Gomez says, “but it’s turned out to be a blessing in disguise.”

Care to read the rest than do at the Independent's site.

Culinary Icon Alice Waters Meets Santa Barbara Elite to Improve How We Eat

 On a lovely late summer afternoon from El Encanto, a Belmond Hotel’s perch on the Riviera, one might assume your focus would be on the enthralling city and seascape below. Instead, on August 19, all eyes looked back toward the fabled hotel, where legend of the slow food movement Alice Waters made her pitch for the Edible Schoolyard Project.

Waters, the force behind Berkeley’s culinary gem Chez Panisse, helped create the farm-to-table movement back in the 1970s. But providing delicious and nutritious dishes to restaurant patrons was merely the beginning of her life’s work. The one time Montessori teacher remains a powerful educator. And as she pointed out to the small if well-heeled crowd at the fundraiser, the Edible Schoolyard Project grew from one school in Oakland to more than 6,500 schools today.

Care to read the rest then do at the Independent's site.

Literary Libations Come to Santa Barbara’s Kingdom by the Sea

 

It’s not every day you get to make jokes about cooping with the creator of an immersive evening of entertainment that’s coming to Santa Barbara September 12-14. Then again, it’s also unusual to discuss the beloved 19th-century writer with someone who has studied him enough to put together a touring show called the “Edgar Allan Poe Speakeasy.” Fortunately, creative director Julia Tirinnanzi can promise that even with four spookily themed cocktails served up in 90 minutes or so, “There’s no cooping allowed.”

(For the 93 percent of the planet that has no idea what that’s referring to, one rumor about Poe’s still-mysterious death is that Baltimore ward workers marched him around from polling location to polling location, changing his outfit and keeping him drunk, causing his demise on election night 1849. This old-time political machine gambit was known as “cooping.”)

Care to read the rest then do at the Independent's site.

Good Lion Hospitality Roars Through the 10-Year Mark

 

When the Good Lion opened in December 2014, it not only reimagined the cocktail bar for Santa Barbara, but it also signaled the dawn of a Central Coast mini-empire. As they aptly put it on the Good Lion Hospitality (GLH) website, they have “a vision of exciting, comfortable, and dynamic eating, living, and drinking spaces featuring world-class hospitality.” That vision and hospitality begins with couple Brandon and Misty Orman Ristaino, curious, clever compadres in class and taste.

If everything goes to plan (and all “trying to open a business in these parts” warnings must apply), by year’s end, GLH will include the bars Good Lion, Test Pilot, and Shaker Mill in Santa Barbara; an as-yet-unnamed project in the Montecito Inn; Strange Beast, Bank of Italy Cocktail Trust, and Jaguar Moon in Ventura; and the “bed-and-beverage” Petit Soleil in S.L.O.

Turns out expansion was always the plan.

Care to read the rest then do so at the Independent's site.