The Ellwood, coming to 905 Sandspit Road in Goleta, the former home of Beachside Bar-Café, will undoubtedly be the South Coast’s biggest restaurant opening in 2025. Late January is the current target date. Today The Restaurant Guy sat down with Executive Chef Craig Riker.
TRG: Where have you worked as a chef before you joined The Ellwood?
Riker: I have worked at Finch & Fork. I worked at Oliver’s in Montecito for four years. I worked at the Bacara a long time ago when the restaurant was called Miro. I worked at Alisal Ranch before I started here. I have worked in Beverly Hills and Los Angeles. During the last four months I was working in Singapore while I was getting this place to the finish line.
TRG: Is there anything in particular you would like me share with my readers?
Riker: The one thing that I like, my style of cooking, is cooking whatever we want to cook, right? So we’re not saying like, hey, this is Italian, then we can only cook Italian. If we want to cook pasta and then all of sudden have an Asian dish next to that, to me, it speaks to California, which is so multicultural in different ways. I enjoy just cooking whatever I want to cook.
TRG: So, this is not just a seafood restaurant?
Riker: It’ll definitely be seafood. Can you imagine eating an oyster right there, 30 feet away from the ocean and you have a smell of the ocean hitting you. You’ve got Michelin star restaurants that pipe that stuff in. We have it right here 🙂 So we will definitely have seafood. We had to have a starting point. As we go, we’re going to keep on developing items and we’re going focus more on ingredients rather than doing a bunch of crazy techniques, which I also love doing. We are going to start by using the ingredients we have here, especially the wines and stuff like that. We have so much great produce. Obviously there are a lot of great wines in this area. We’re partnering with one of our investors who has a farm and so we’ll be growing some of the stuff we serve. We are definitely focused on ingredients. If we can get the best tomato from Italy, and that’s the best tomato we can get, then we’re going to get that. If we can get the best tomato in Santa Barbara, then we’re going to get that. It’s just a focus on ingredients. Some of the items will be familiar to the kind of crowd that are used to coming here, but it’s not going to be a carbon copy of it. It’s going to be our twists on things.
TRG: Meaning it won’t be just fish and chips. 🙂
Riker: It won’t be just fish and chips. 🙂 As a diner, of course, I would want to come here and have some fish and chips. That’s the great thing. This is going to be one thing at dinner, one thing at lunch and brunch. It’ll be more casual lunch while dinner will be a little fancier.
TRG: As I understand it, you’re going to start out with just dinner, then add lunch, brunch and a snack bar called “The Coop.”
Riker: We’ll have something for everyone. You’ll be able to get Santa Maria barbecue and wood-fired pizza, and sandwiches. Come with the family. I spent a good amount of time at the Alisal Ranch. It would be fun to do that outside.
TRG: Kind of like Cold Spring Tavern when they bring out the barbecue on weekends.
Riker: Yes, we’ll just bring out the barbecue. That will be a different element of fun plus you can have a different experience depending on where you’re dining within the building. We have a private dining room that’s a little more quiet, refined experience, and then outside, you have the ocean breathing on you. It could be anything from a fine dining experience to casual beers and wine with friends outside.
TRG: It’s an amazing location.
Riker: We’ve spruced it up a bit from how it used to be. Sometimes I just look out there. Last night we were looking at the sunset. It was just incredible. It was like a painting. That’s going to create like a lot of memorable moments. We’re all about the locals. That’s what we would want to capture for our market. That’s our people. Can you imagine having a wedding here?
TRG: Is there anything on the menu you can share?
Riker: The menu is not out yet so we’ll wait on that because we might change stuff at the last second. There will be familiar items. We’ll definitely have seafood. We’ll definitely have steaks and chicken and pasta and pork chops. We’re for sure going to have shrimp cocktail. We’re going to have different items on the bar. [Pointing across the room] and this area right here we’ll have the raw bar offering oysters, shrimp, and crudos. So, these two areas [the bar and the raw bar] will communicate with each other. We’re refining everything on the menu and then at the last second, we’ll just kind of drop it in there. As we go, we’ll kind of adjust to whatever we need to do.
TRG: That’s great, Craig. I appreciate your time.
Riker: Oh, thank you.
