A Restaurant for People Who Love Restaurants

Little Mountain, which opens tomorrow, is the most ambitious, most polished, and most exciting restaurant to debut here in many years.

Unlike so many of the new establishments in Montecito, it’s not a chain or brand extension—in fact, the folks behind it had never operated a restaurant. And when co-owner Graham Duncan started looking for a space, a restaurant wasn’t even his intent. The informal coffee klatch he hosted outside his office was such a hit that he thought a café in the Upper Village might be nice. But then he learned the former Montecito Wine Bistro was available.

“This corner feels like it’s the center of this community,” he says. “And I had recently been in Berkeley, thinking about how if I lived there, Chez Panisse would be a big part of my life. I wished we had something like that here.”

Knowing better than to go it alone (“my thing in life is finding people who are better at something than I am”), Duncan partnered with Eva and Bryan Schreier, who have hospitality experience as the proprietors of two exclusive-use resorts, Hacienda Los Milagros in Punta Mita and Smith Fork Ranch in Colorado. The Schreiers had repeatedly been warned never to open a restaurant, but working with Duncan on the project held irresistible appeal. They share similar life experiences, in that they have roots in Santa Barbara and decided to settle here within the past five years. “At dinner with Graham, we would always talk about how welcomed we felt and how lucky we are to get to live here,” says Eva. “So it felt great to create something for the community.”

A handful of restaurants emerged as inspiration: Chez Panisse, naturally, and also Zuni Café, Rory’s Place, Bell’s, and Bettina. “One North Star is that we want to be proud of it, and we want the team to be proud of it, and we want the community to be proud of it,” says Duncan.

The space was totally overhauled, with the kitchen moved to the southern end, where a gorgeous grill is the focal point; the bar made into a cozy jewel box; and the terraces in back cleaned up so that they’re no longer an afterthought. “Andrew Cosbie was the mastermind,” says Eva, who acted as creative director. “He provided the real genius of the design.” Evoking the classic Montecito residences of George Washington Smith and Lutah Maria Riggs, with materials like salvaged redwood, hammered copper, custom ironwork, and antique terra cotta, the restaurant is stunning and sophisticated, with flattering lighting and comfortable acoustics. “We wanted it to look like a home,” says Eva. “But even more than that, we want it to feel like one.”

The spark of excitement comes from chef Diego Moya’s food. “Diego is an ingredients-first guy,” says Eva. “His sourcing is impeccable, and he’s deeply passionate about his connections with local farmers. I’ve never seen anyone get so thrilled about a vegetable.”

I was a huge fan of Moya’s cooking at Hemlock in New York City, one of my favorite restaurants. (He has also worked at Astrid y Gastón in Lima, Nahm in Bangkok, Le Comptoir and L’Arpège in Paris, and Casa Mono and June in New York.) And what he’s doing at Little Mountain is akin to Hemlock: burnishing the ingredients so they shine as brightly as possible.

“We’re describing the food as coastal Santa Barbara,” says Moya. “But really, it’s my interpretation of elemental cooking in Southern California—taking inspiration from the place without trying to overcomplicate it. There’s so much history here, and the ghost of Mexico has been pretty apparent to me—the architecture, the street names, the abundance of Mexican families in the community. I’m thinking about that when thinking about the complexity of flavor. There’s a lot of grilling, olive oil, herbs, and smoke.”

So don’t be fooled by the terse menu: much effort and finesse is involved. Take the bread, a riff on focaccia with roasted white or purple sweet potatoes folded in, “so it’s a little gooey and sticky,” says Moya. It’s served with cultured butter made with three-week-aged crème fraîche and glazed with hoja santa oil.

Or the bean dish based off the Three Sisters growing method, which Moya describes as “fresh coco beans, perfectly cooked, delicata squash roasted over the hearth, and a vinaigrette made in a molcajete with passion fruit, corn, and corn miso that all get tossed with anise hyssop, torpedo shallots, and lots of Meyer lemon juice.”

Or the grilled pork loin with roasted apples: “The pork is from Peads & Barnetts, Berkshire pork that we get a little bit of age on, and gently warm over the coals with dry brine—very, very simple. We use the grilled bones to make a vinegar stock with all kinds of aromatics, mostly a ton of fig leaves, garlic, shallots, and garleek tops. Then we season it with a bit of brown sugar to become a gastrique and add cultured butter to make a light, sweet beurre blanc. It’s served with grilled Honeycrisp apples, the outsides nearly burned but insides completely raw, with a stack of sesame leaves.”

At a friends-and-family dinner, three dishes would’ve earned spots on my “best dishes” roundups: that pork and its luscious sauce, as well as two desserts—the café de olla cheesecake made with coffee, chocolate, and spices (pictured below) and the bay leaf panna cotta with wild fennel caramel.

Little Mountain is the kind of restaurant I loved in New York City, that I seek out when I travel, and that I have long wished would open here. While I understand the comfort of a menu with recognizable shapes and forms—tri-tip, grilled branzino, quarter chicken, etc.—I also crave the thrill of unfamiliar ingredients and creative preparations. We have such an extraordinary bounty in this part of the world; what a delight to be in the hands of a talented chef who wants to make the most of it all, and to be surprised, and dazzled, by what he comes up with.

Bean salad photo by Danielle Rubi and the rest by Kort Havens, all courtesy Little Mountain.

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