Eating and Drinking Our Way Through Santa Barbara: Part One (Drinking)

amanda brow
Nov 28, 2020
3 min read

2020 has been a year for making lemonade, and Thanksgiving was no different. When the world seemed to be slowing down and taking a breath, we plunged into researching flights back home. We decided on an itinerary that involved seeing family in Kentucky and family in Ohio, with a little Pittsburgh day snuck in between. A week before our flight, I was texting my brother: “NINE MORE SLEEPS!!!” And then everything came tumbling down.

We had to cancel our trip. No more seeing family. No more grinning at the Pittsburgh skyline. No more hugging people we haven’t hugged in almost a year. But we still had all this time off.

We made lemonade.

Santa Barbara loomed glistening and high on our minds, and we decided now was finally the time to discover everything the little city had to offer us… to eat and drink, because that’s basically all we did there. And when I say that’s basically all we did there, I mean… that’s all we did there.

Let’s start with beverages, shall we?

Drinking: Coffee

Dart Coffee Co

On our first day adventuring, we pulled off the highway and onto Yanonali Street (admittedly looking for Figueroa Mountain). Eric sighed, glancing ahead to glimpse a sidewalk sign declaring a coffee shop’s presence under a veranda of white and pink paper lanterns. Right. Up. My. Alley.

A couple of days later, we returned to Dart Coffee Co and had an absolutely pleasant experience. The baristas were kind, the coffee (chai for me- spicy and full, mocha with churro syrup for Eric- freakin delicious) was amazing, and even better, the SECRET GARDEN WITH A FIRE PIT was everything in a coffee shop lover’s dream. We sat underneath a wide-arching tree (that somehow had cool flowers growing out of the trunk??) and eavesdropped in open air. It was a stellar half an hour.

For the COVID whisperer: this was also one of the safest experiences we had in SB. The coffee shop itself is a completely open layout, situated mainly on the sidewalk so people waiting could easily spread out along the street. The tables in the garden were marked with laminated pages that read “THIS TABLE HAS BEEN SANITIZED”, which the user would flip over at the end of their visit to read “THIS TABLE HAS NOT BEEN SANITIZED.”

Dune Coffee Roasters

Tucked away off the main stretch of shopping and eating, we found one of the locations of the quirky Dune Coffee Roasters. This is the kind of place where the barista who rings you up makes sure you know they make all their own syrups (wow) and almond milk (double wow). The menu reads like a typical coffee shop experience: latte, cappuccino, mocha, drip, and then at the bottom, vaguely: Fancy Drink. Well, I’m fancy. So I asked about it.

Turns out this “fancy drink” was an orange cardamom latte that BLEW MY MIND. MY favorite shop at home has a rose cardamom syrup, so of course I’m into that, but the orange added a bit of sweetness and citrus to the party and was absolutely delicious. Eric got a french press of their house coffee that we watched in awe as it was born from a little french-press shower the cup was positioned under. Amazing.

Drinking: Adult Beverages

J. Wilkes

Have you ever had a CHOCOLATE and WINE tasting?? Sounds like something fancy people do, right? Well, as I mentioned before, I am fancy, so of course we did it. Boy, did we do it.

J. Wilkes is a winery that operates with all seating street-side in the little lull between the hubbub of State Street and the expanse of ocean beyond. This tasting offered six wines- three white, three red- and a collection of six truffles to match these wines PHENOMENALLY. I’m a white-wine lady at heart, so my favorite was the 2018 Chard with the white chocolate rose truffle. Literally heaven.

The wine was delicious, our hostess was adorable, and the heater was hot. Can’t ask for much better than that.

Figueroa Mountain

We were absolutely STOKED about this one. We actually picked out Fig Mountain as a lunch destination, and were kind of bummed to find they weren’t serving the full menu (ahem, COVID), but we grabbed a drink and hung out in the back patio for a minute anyway.

I’m really glad we did. It’s super peaceful back there mid-day, with the picnic tables shaded by trees hanging overhead and the music streaming from a speaker in the corner. There’s a wood-slat wall separating the two sections, and it’s covered in these pretty orange flowers I took my typical Instagram pic of Eric’s beer with (lol).

Speaking of beer, Eric embarrassed himself by ordering the “I Dunkeled In My Pants” and I got the Passionfruit Elderflower seltzer because I’m absolutely tickled by anything with Elderflower in the title. Both were super tasty and would absolutely order again.