RESTAURANT NEWS | CALIFORNIA
The Chanticlair Fits Three Restaurants Under One Roof
Santa Barbara chefs Jake Reimer and Jeremy Tummel reunite for tasting menus, an oyster bar, and a private dining hideaway.
THE CHANTICLAIR | MAP | INSTAGRAM
By Mei Chen
12:35 p.m. PT, Aug. 24, 2026
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.
The Chanticlair contains three restaurants, two chefs, and enough vintage china that diners can buy a plate on the way out.
The new Santa Barbara restaurant begins with a 28-seat dining room, where menus change according to what chefs Jake Reimer and Jeremy Tummel find at nearby farms and fishing boats. Diners can order à la carte, share dishes family style, or hand the evening over to the chefs for a market tasting menu. The early cooking has included chilacayote squash roasted over pecan wood with a stuffed squash blossom, mole amarillo, and pepita crujido, as well as grass-fed hanger steak with an oxtail flauta, sweet corn, and ancho emulsion.
Keep walking and the restaurant changes its mind.
Alley Cat Oyster & Po’ Boy occupies an 18-seat space behind the main dining room, with a black-and-white floor, a view into the shucking station, and the loose premise of a 1960s New Orleans oyster bar that somehow landed near the Pacific. Local oysters share the menu with Santa Barbara uni parfaits, seafood gumbo, shrimp and grits, sourdough po’boys, and beignets. Out back, Casa de la Paz handles private dinners in a garden setting with an Old West streak.
The chefs needed most of a century-old Spanish Revival building to hold all of this. Antique sconces, carved banisters, mismatched tables, and an upright piano fill the main dining room. Plates, glasses, and silverware came from estate sales, donations, and consignment shops. Nearly all of it is for sale, making dinner one of the more elaborate ways to shop for a replacement soup bowl.
Reimer and Tummel first cooked together at Santa Barbara’s Wine Cask in 2004. Tummel went on to work at Bacara Resort & Spa, Pebble Beach Resorts, The Bear and Star, Rosewood Miramar Beach, and La Paloma Cafe. Reimer’s path included Miro at Bacara, Pierre Lafond, and The Black Sheep. They reunited more than 20 years later with long-standing connections to local farmers, ranchers, fishermen, and winemakers.
The name reaches back even further. The Chanticlair pays tribute to a Santa Barbara bakery and restaurant that opened in 1948 and became popular with the film crowd before following Hollywood south.
This version plans to stay put. It already has plenty happening under one roof.
