Like so many food companies conceived during the pandemic, the frozen dinner delivery service Kitchenette blends convenience with quality, preparing family-sized, one-pan meals of fresh, healthy ingredients that customers merely heat up in their ovens. Since launching last April, Kitchenette added smaller portions aimed at busy couples or single professionals without much time to cook,…
Solvang may be the “Danish Capital of America,” but it’s throwing a serious, Old Spanish Days-style fiesta this weekend, complete with mariachis, Mexican cuisine, and some of the country’s finest fermented grape juice. The inaugural Sabor del Valle Latino Food & Wine Festival goes down this Saturday, just in time to celebrate the last week…
Executive Chef Augusto Caudillo | Credit: Ingrid Bostrom Despite sitting at the bustling confluence of two highways and Old Town Goleta, and being home to one of the most legendary mansions in Goleta Valley history, the hotel known for decades as Pacifica Suites was never all that inviting to the neighboring community. That mentality flipped…
Santa Barbara Is Burrito Boomtown Seven Days of $8 Burritos During the Santa Barbara Independent’s Third Annual Burrito Week By Indy Staff | September 21, 2023 Credit: Ben Ciccati For the next seven days, Santa Barbara shall be officially called “Burrito Boomtown.” From now through September 27, you’ll find more than 25 different burritos being…
John Belfy of Buona Terra Farming Company | Photo: MacDuff Everton Vineyard manager John Belfy, who founded Buona Terra Farming in 1997 and planted many of Santa Barbara County’s top vineyards, died on September 12. He was 72 years old. “We always had a great relationship and I truly thought of him as ohana,” said…
Billed as the oldest wine festival in California, the Santa Barbara Vintners Festival celebrates its 39th affair this October 14. As it’s being held at a brand-new location in an era when the popularity and critical appreciation for the region’s wine are at an all-time high, there’s plenty of reason to believe that this could…
Hidden on the flat, alluvial plains between Santa Maria’s suburban tracts, strip malls, senior centers, and ballfields, the Allan Hancock College Vineyard doesn’t boast the steep hillsides or stellar views that typify so much of Central Coast wine country. But these four acres, where 50 different varieties and clones of wine grapes grow, serve as…
Credit: Silas Fallstitch Upon opening nearly a decade ago, Barbareño’s founders Julian Martinez and Jesse Gaddy aimed to celebrate Central Coast cuisine, a style of direct sourcing and live fire cooking more than 200 years in the making that’s only now getting the broader attention it deserves. Their menu elevates regionally rooted dishes like Santa…
Since becoming a resident of Santa Barbara’s Upper East Side in 2015, whenever people ask for recommendations in the Theater District, or for S.B. in general, The Good Lion and Sama Sama Kitchen are the first names to leave my lips. Two rights certainly can’t make a wrong, and this is proven by Good Lion…
Jeff Olsson, the cofounder of Industrial Eats and New West Catering, died on Saturday, September 2. Considered the driving force for elevating Santa Barbara County wine country’s cuisine over the past two decades, he succumbed to a fast-moving colon cancer that was just diagnosed in December. Olsson and his wife, Janet Olsson, purchased New West…
