CITY GUIDES | CALIFORNIA

The Best Tables Along the American Riviera

The best restaurants in Santa Barbara and Montecito run from an intimate chef’s tasting menu to a glorious by-the-slice pizza.

By Mei Chen | Sept. 24, 2026

Barbareno

AUTHOR BIO: Mei Chen has worked for nearly a dozen start-ups in as many years, taking her to several West Coast cities. While she’s sure her current day job is permanent, she also has her eye on Carmel.

For years, my Santa Barbara visits had a familiar rhythm: walk State Street, head down toward Stearns Wharf, then start wondering where dinner would fit between the ocean and the hills. These days, the answer might be Turkish mezze downtown, a tasting menu behind an old Spanish Revival facade, or tacos eaten with salsa on your fingers and no reservation in sight. Montecito adds its own compelling detours, including a kitchen where the hearth does much of the talking. The best restaurants in Santa Barbara now reward a trip planned around dinner, so here are the 12 places I’d start with.

Aegean

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Turkish-born chef Efe Onoglu started Aegean as a pop-up before giving it a permanent home downtown. The cooking moves easily between mezze and larger plates: falafel with lemon tahini, hummus with zhoug, and chicken kebab marinated in harissa and yogurt. There’s Santa Barbara in the ingredients, but the meal has a point of view that reaches well beyond California. Come with someone willing to order several things for the table.

Best for: A long dinner built around mezze

Barbareno Santa Barbara California Best Restaurants

Barbareño

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Barbareño has been around since 2014, but a decade-plus in, it still cooks like a restaurant with something to say. The menu can move from an egg yolk raviolo to Santa Maria barbecue with tri-tip, pinquito beans, and garlic bread, a combination that tells you more about this stretch of California than another generic plate of local fish would. Chef Julian Martinez and partner Jesse Gaddy have since opened Bistro Amasa; Barbareño remains the place to see where their Santa Barbara story began.

Best for: A dinner with a strong sense of place

Bistro Amasa

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At the historic Upham Hotel, the Barbareño team has given the neighborhood bistro a mischievous streak. Cool ranch crudo pairs hamachi with buttermilk-lime crème and masa; gnocchi gets the mac-and-cheese treatment; and spaghetti-O bolognese makes a familiar childhood shape do grown-up work. You could also take the straightforward route with steak frites and a cocktail. Either way, Bistro Amasa has enough personality to keep dinner from becoming a polite exercise in admiring the hotel.

Best for: Playful comfort food and cocktails

The Chanticlair

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The Chanticlair borrows its name from a Santa Barbara restaurant and bakery that opened in 1948, but this is a new project from chefs Jake Reimer and Jeremy Tummel. They’ve filled an old Spanish Revival building with vintage wares, a changing market menu, and several ways to eat: order small plates, go family style, hire them to cater events, or turn dinner over to the chefs with a tasting menu. Wednesday’s supper club offers another reason to return. There’s a lot happening here, and the food is allowed to change with it.

Best for: A tasting menu with a little unpredictability

Corazón Cocina

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The Santa Barbara Public Market has plenty of temptations, but Corazón Cocina gives you a good reason to stop looking at the other counters. Chef Ramon Velazquez draws on the street food of Guadalajara, building tacos and other casual dishes around produce from nearby markets. It’s the kind of meal where ordering one thing feels overly cautious. Michelin has given Corazón Cocina a Bib Gourmand, recognition for good cooking at a reasonable price; you can also judge it by how quickly you start planning a return visit.

Best for: An affordable lunch with options to share

Dom’s Taverna

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Chef Dom Crisp’s downtown taverna takes its cues from Basque cooking and Santa Barbara seafood. Start with a gilda—an olive, pepper, and anchovy on a skewer—then see where the menu leads: prawn ajo blanco, clams or mussels with chistorra, or oven-baked rice with a choice of local crab, chicken, or morcilla. Crisp has spent years cooking seafood, and Dom’s gives that experience a lively setting. It’s a useful place to bring friends who agree that ordering for the table is the best part of dinner.

Best for: Seafood, pintxos, and a group dinner

Little Mountain

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In Montecito, chef Diego Moya works a large hearth and a menu that pays close attention to what’s in season. One September lineup paired hiramasa with fermented pepper and pluot aguachile, then offered a pork chop with coal-roasted apple or wood-fired chicken with yuzu and smoked chile. The sourcing is unusually specific, with local farms, seafood suppliers, and other producers named on the restaurant’s site. Little Mountain has already joined the Michelin Guide, but the stronger reason to go is to see what Moya does with this week’s catch and harvest.

Best for: A special dinner centered on the hearth

Manifattura

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The people behind Aperitivo opened Manifattura on lower State Street in 2025, adding another good reason to slow down before reaching the waterfront. This is an Italian dinner built around wine, antipasti, pizza, and pasta; you can watch some of that pasta being made through the front window. The restaurant has earned attention without needing a sweeping ocean view or a famous name on the sign. Order a spritz, settle in, and let lower State Street do its thing outside.

Best for: Pasta and Italian wine downtown

Monte’s

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Monte’s gives Montecito a restaurant where chef Daniel Kim’s California cooking picks up Korean accents without losing sight of the local farms. His résumé includes Providence and the Restaurant at Meadowood, but the useful details are on the table: prawn toast with kimchi, soy garlic mushrooms, and pork katsu with a crackling puffed-rice crust. Open since March 2026, Monte’s has already drawn strong reviews. It’s an excellent excuse to spend an evening in Montecito without treating dinner as a formality.

Best for: A Montecito dinner with surprising flavors

Rozzi Pizza

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After cooking at Daniel and Balthazar in New York, among other places, chef David Rosner opened the sort of pizza shop that keeps dinner simple. Rozzi sells foldable New York-style slices, including cheese for $5 and pepperoni for $6, alongside pies with rather more going on. It opened in 2025 and has already attracted a following well beyond its immediate neighborhood. Santa Barbara has plenty of meals that call for a reservation and a credit-card deep breath. This one calls for another slice.

Best for: A quick, affordable slice

Seoulmate Kitchen

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Seoulmate Kitchen opened in the Santa Barbara Public Market in 2025, adding Korean comfort food to a building already good at making lunch decisions difficult. Order japchae with sweet potato noodles and vegetables, a savory pajeon pancake, or a Korean fried chicken sandwich with gochujang aioli and gochugaru fries. There are also changing noodle specials and a coffee counter, so an intended quick stop could stretch into the afternoon. Most of the main dishes cost less than $20, a welcome change from the pricier dinners elsewhere on this list.

Best for: Korean noodles and a casual lunch

Yoichi’s

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Yoichi’s takes a different approach to dinner: reserve a table, sit down, and let the sequence of Japanese courses unfold. There’s no need to assemble a meal from an à la carte menu, which makes it a welcome change of pace in a city full of shareable plates. This is one of the older restaurants on the list, kept here because a dedicated Japanese prix fixe experience remains distinctive in Santa Barbara. Give it the evening rather than squeezing it in before other plans.

Best for: An unhurried Japanese tasting menu