The Monarch and Silver Bough Abruptly Close

(A halibut dished served at the Monarch at a March 2019 wine dinner with Liquid Farm and Kings Carey.)

In a somewhat shocking case of burying the lead, The Santa Barbara Independent and other media outlets received the news Friday afternoon that Scratch Restaurants “will begin swiftly expanding in 2020 by opening additional outposts of Sushi|Bar,” one of which is housed in the Montecito Inn.

The buried lead is that Phillip Frankland Lee and Margarita Kallas-Lee — the husband-and-wife chef duo who own Scratch Restaurants — have pulled the plug on The Monarch (which recently won this paper’s Foodie Award) and the lavish dinner-as-spectacle Silver Bough. Both restaurants are not just closed; their spaces have in fact been sold.

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

The Simply Named Sushi|Bar Is Far from Generic

Your mind will compare fish bites with the finest sips of wines, as both have delicious, lingering finishes. Your fish will come gracefully scored by the deftest of knife slashes to help hold its sauce, to tenderize. Your kitchen knowledge will grow, as you will now know why to score fish at home. Your cup will runneth over, as it’s a celebration of abundance. Your sense of an outside world will fade away amid a soundtrack of 1930s and ’40s Japanese jazz and the centering presence of a room rich in wood and golden tones.

You are dining at Sushi|Bar, the third attempt to make the old bar space of the Montecito Inn work — RIP Frankland’s Crab & Co. and Chaplin’s Martini Bar. This one sort of has to make it, as it’s practically perfect, if certainly dear. Now a 10-seat jewel box of an omakase restaurant — that is, the chef serves you what he thinks you need — it’s the second such sushi spot owned by Phillip Frankland Lee, whose original is in Encino.

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