Mollie Does Deli

Chef Mollie Ahlstrand has been a local icon for three decades. Her treasured Trattoria Mollie on Coast Village Road set the bar for Italian cuisine in the region, and welcomed patrons like Oprah Winfrey, Barack Obama, and Ahlstrand’s personal favorite customer ever, Kirk Douglas. In 2018, she moved from Montecito to Santa Barbara proper, opening Mollie’s on State Street next to The Granada Theater. But, as she pointed out in a recent interview, “There was the mudslide and the Thomas Fire and COVID … and the rent and the taxes.” Ahlstrand closed the spot in 2021.

So it might seem surprising she’s back with Mollie’s Italian Deli in the Shepard Place Shops in Carpinteria. The strip mall storefront has seating for a dozen people, plus a few more outside, and is squeezed between the Culture Skate Factory and an animal medical clinic. Coast Village Road the location decidedly is not, despite the attractive white tile walls inside and the homey copper pots, clearly functional and not just decorative, along the walls.

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Make Mine a Margarita

A should-be-classic, there might not be a cocktail as maligned as the margarita. Instead of existing as a bracing and bright accompaniment to serious Mexican food, it’s become a by-the-pitcher fuel for sweet-sippin’ inebriation, often in frozen and be-berried forms. So this year, celebrate Cinco de Mayo properly; put away that Jimmy Buffett CD, pour those pre-concocted mixes down the drain (do you really want high-fructose corn syrup in your cocktails?), and take off that sombrero that makes you look like an idiot anyway. It’s time for a dignified drink, up, that allows for some variations but is all built from a standard base.

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Finch Takes Flight

The Canary Hotel’s website describes the new Finch & Fork, formerly Coast, as a corner grill, and they really mean it. After years of having to enter the restaurant via the hotel’s driveway, the main entrance is now on the corner of Carrillo and Chapala, a clear sign locals are more than welcome. “It’s a casual setting for social dining and a family environment that caters to being able to relax,” is how executive chef James Siao puts it. “We hope locals and guests can have great conversations together over cocktails.”

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The Spa Is Spot On

The Bacara Resort sort of resembles a village — admittedly a very upscale village — so it’s easy to miss all the dining options that welcome locals, too. The resort recently reopened the Spa Café as a full-service restaurant, and now the pool-view veranda and warming stone interior offer a nice spot to enjoy scrumptious, good-for-you breakfasts and lunches.

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A Sea Change at Seagrass

You weren’t dreaming if for a month at the beginning of the year you got the idea that Seagrass Restaurant was trying to be a mid-level, small-plates, drop-in kind of joint. There was even a legendary burger, sadly gone now, but perhaps back for another menu, for Seagrass is more than willing to keep changing. “The [January] change didn’t go with the Seagrass name and the white-linen atmosphere,” explained Ruben Perez, who holds the owner slot in his family’s business (father Robert is the chef, mom Marianna Perez is the GM, and brother Richard is running the new wine bar Taste … more on that in a bit).

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Douglas Does Dinner

Come six o’clock, who hasn’t thought how great it would be to demand from someone, “Make me dinner!” — without getting laughed at or punched? In this new series, we’ll do just that — with pros doing the cooking in the humble home kitchens of regular folks, while keeping costs low, technique not too tricky, and end results tasty. And while we can’t share the actual spoils with you (sorry, no leftovers!), we’ll do the next best thing: We’ll introduce you to the players, let you know what we learned, what we ate and drank, and send you away with a recipe or two.

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Splendor of the Grass

This Brahma is a lot of bull, with horns that look like they could open a car like a tin can, but also droopy ears that make him look like an oversized goat. Alex Fleming has no problem going right up to him — while I maintain respectful, journalistic distance from those horns — to give him a pet. “He’s kind of the babysitter here,” Fleming says. “I always feel he should be decorated in flowers on some street in New Delhi.” This approximately 25-year-old senior is sort of a mascot for the Zaca Ranch Cattle Co., a boutique beef operation out on Foxen Canyon Road in the midst of wine country (and, no, the ranch isn’t connected to Zaca Mesa Winery).

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Wat's New at Petit Valentien

Serkaddis Alemu, despite having lived in the U.S. for nearly two decades, remains Ethiopian at heart. She admits, “If you sit with any Ethiopian for long, don’t be surprised if the discussion ends up about food. To know the food is to know the people.” She’s helping Santa Barbara know both the food and the people, serving Ethiopian lunch on the weekends at Petit Valentien, the restaurant owned by her partner, Robert Dixon.

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I Drink, Therefore Iamb

So John Milton, Edgar Allen Poe, Edwin Arnold, Robert Frost, Stevie Smith, and Shel Silverstein walk into a bar. Well, they don’t actually walk, as they’re all versifying in the hereafter now, but poems by all six are being celebrated by Santa Barbara mixologists in honor of National Poetry Month. After all, for centuries the arts have inspired, intertwined, and cross-pollinated in a host of scared and profane ways, so what seems more natural than flipping the typical paradigm and having poetry lead to some cocktails?

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Downtown Dose of Mimosa

“About a year ago, when we started seeing new businesses opening up on State Street, Chris and I would say, ‘How crazy people are!’” said Derrick Melton, chef and co-owner of Restaurant Mimosa with his pastry-chef wife, Chris Melton. But that’s exactly where he is today, many blocks from the corner spot on De la Vina Street where the longtime French restaurant lived for its first 28 years. The new Mimosa’s only been open since November, but it already feels like home, said Melton, pointing to a new feature in the remodeled location, formerly home to Piranha, Matador, and Chino’s Rock & Tacos. “My wife wanted it, so I etched a compass rose into the concrete floor,” he explained. “It’s symbolic of how this place feels like home.”

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