Santa Barbara: Spa Culture & Minors in Possession
Written: Nov 15 '00 (Updated Sep 30 '02)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Great food, nice hotel.
Cons: Face lists frighten me
The Bottom Line: Even after all this time, I am disturbed by my lust for Britney Spears
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| Mr.Eyore's Full Review: Santa Barbara |
Review Topic: OverviewSanta Barbara may well be the nicest little college town you'll ever visit. And I'm surprised that I find myself saying that, because it's also a tourist town that caters to very wealthy Angelenos with as much torque built up in their faces from repeated plastic surgery as you'd find in Beverly Hills. Worse, the main drags of the city have the sort of well scrubbed, pre-fab homogeneity that, in San Francisco, invites bricks and Molotov cocktails through windows. Somehow, here it works. The town is uniformly Spanish tudor. State street could very easily have turned into a row of Starbucks and California Pizza Kitchens, but instead, the businesses all appear to be independently run. There are plenty of cute little overpriced art and antique shops, an incredible variety of attractive, quality restaurants, coffee shops and the like. Even the Santa Barbara Art Museum is on State Street. It's small, and as far as I know they don't carry big-ticket exhibits, but they had a perfectly respectable Asian Art exhibit while I was there.
What's more, the upscale nature of State Street is offset by the fact that college students make up a huge proportion of the city population. Hence, there are at least three taquerias, two used record stores and perhaps a dozen bars along the 8-10 block stretch. They're upscale-ish bars, but that doesn't stop the kids from doing the State Street Crawl near every night of the week. There is a sort of attractive tension between the two worlds co-existing in Santa Barbara: Chi Chi Tourists and Drunken Youth. The tourists bring a lot of money in to town, and the quality of the restaurants and the accommodations are clearly so high because of them. But the college kids work at many of these places, and they are a friendly, attractive and sarcastic lot. This town wouldn't be so nice without either group. The kids keep the attitude of plastic surgery set in check, and the cops are diligent about keeping the kids from getting too out of hand.
For reasons that, as far as you know, have nothing to do with me getting into any sort of trouble, I spent a morning in Santa Barbara Municipal Court, where fully half of the people making appearances were there on Minor in Possession charges. Several more were there on failure to appear charges stemming from their initial Minor in Possession tickets. More than twenty kids, on just one day, getting busted for drinking or smoking pot in public. So, as I said, the cops take "keeping the streets clean" pretty serious.
I stayed at the The Montecito Del Mar (316 West Montecito Street, 805-962-2006) which is two blocks away from the Santa Barbara Amtrak station (perhaps the nicest station in California). Two blocks in the other direction takes you to the harbor. Four blocks to State Street, the lifeblood of the city.
According to the AAA of California's Tour Book, rooms in Santa Barbara generally run from about $90 to $170, for motel-style accommodations. Hotels cost significantly more. The Montecito Del Mar costs $65.00. The rooms are very small, but that takes nothing away from the delight of staying at this place. Each of the rooms is tiled in terra-cotta, broken up by occasional inlaid hand-painted Mexican glazed tiles. The furnishings are classic Hacienda style: Bulky, hand-carved oak and pine with wrought-iron accents. The night stand is topped with lovely blue and white inlaid tile. The lamps are shaded with handmade paper. The ceiling is lined with attractive - if distressed - stripped wood beams, and the walls are sponged with an almost peach tint, with white accents at the doors and windows. But the best part is the headboard: a massive half-circle of carved oak with beams of wrought iron across the middle.
Outside, the hacienda look remains intact. The dark wood overhangs are lined with bougainvillaea and ivy. The walls are stucco painted to resemble adobe. The parking lot is rustically covered in loose stone.
The two men that appear to run the place are very friendly and extraordinarily accommodating. They take their role pretty seriously, insisting that they help at every turn. Is there anything else I can get for you. Anything I can help you with. Where are you headed today? Do you know how to get there? Feel free to stop back for some more pastries, or coffee or orange juice. It's the sort of service that you can't get from training a stand-in. It's the sort of service that makes you think these people really do want you to tell your friends about the place, because THEIR livelihood depends on you doing so.
The Motel also apparently has suites. I took a peek into one of them and it had a gorgeous four poster bed and gauzy veils and the rest of the oak furniture and wrought iron that I had in my room.
There are also two hot tubs, incongruously nesting under a pair of tiki-esque palm frond gazebos. I don't care one way or another about hot tubs, but you might, so all I can say is they seem clean.
I tried two restaurants in town, both of which were very good.
The Beerhouse
The Beerhouse is an attractive if unremarkable little place. It's set up like a brew-pub, with small copper tanks along the walls in the front, but it is not (yet) a functioning brew-pub. They do, however, carry a respectable selection of micro-brewed beers.
For $2.95, the first item on the menu is called "cruel prawn" and it is. It's a single jumbo shrimp topped with a habanero pepper paste that will knock your socks off. I'm not kidding here. If you've never eaten anything made with habanero or scotch bonnet peppers, or tried Dave's Insanity hot sauce, don't even think about trying this thing.
I also tried their artichoke, which was as good as any I've eaten. It's coated in kosher salt and cooked in a brick oven, then served with drawn butter and a cilantro aioli. Well worth the 6 bucks it cost.
The beer house also serves a number of fish, meat and chicken dishes, all with interesting and original ingredients at a very reasonable price.
Palazzio
Palazzio, on State Street, appears to stay open later than any other restaurant on the row. It's a good thing, too, because they're a great place to stop for a late night meal.
Super Bon Bon insisted that we order the mussels. They were the largest mussels I've ever seen on a plate. I've seen bigger ones attached to trashy looking strands of seaweed washed up on the beach, but I wouldn't eat those. I'm not sure how I feel about the ones that Palazzio served.
For dinner, I had a spinach salad with goat cheese, flash fried proscioutto and toasted pine nuts in a viniagrette. It was fantastic. The greens were perfectly dressed, and I really liked the effect that a little cooking had on the prosciutto, which was crisp and salty and frankly a better topping to a spinach salad than bacon.
Super Bon Bon had a fettucini thing with prawns that looked pretty good, in spite of its creamy sauce. It was a huge portion, and she said it was delicious, but I don't really trust her opinion on such things, so I'm not willing to vouch for the dish.
However, there were a ton of other pasta, fowl and meat dishes on the menu, and the descriptions gave me the impression that this was a legitimate, if not extraordinary Italian place.
I liked Santa Barbara so much that I wanted to stay for a few more days. Alas, the Montecito Del Mar was sold out for my third night there, and Bakersfield was calling me.
Recommended:
Yes
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Mr.Eyore
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Reviews written: 129
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I come for the pervasive sense of elitist self-importance and semi-witty expressions of faux camaraderie
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