••• C. asked for an update on the restaurant coming to the new mixed-use building at 4745 Carpinteria Avenue in Carpinteria. Developer Justin Klentner says that it’ll be called Rincon General Bodega and Wine Bar, operated by restaurateurs who have been mentioned in the Michelin Guide, with counter service during the day and table service at night. They’re shooting for year end. (The photo is a few months old.)
••• The Ellwood has rethought its model: “We’ve completely reworked our menus. We’ve invested heavily in creating a more approachable and affordable experience while still delivering the food, hospitality, and setting that make The Ellwood special. We’re launching new dishes, new favorites, and a completely new frozen cocktail experience” called the Goletarita. Here’s the new lunch and dinner menu.
••• Glendale’s Mini Kabob is returning to Na Na Thai for another collaboration on October 6.
••• The eagerly anticipated Restaurant at Edna outside San Luis Obispo, with Jeremy Fox at the helm, opens November 5.
••• St. Bibiana is expanding into the space next door (19 W. Ortega Street): “We are so excited to announce we will soon have a larger dining area and beer and wine selection. That means we can guarantee a table for you and leave the delivery apps out of it. We do construction on our off days and have been slowly chipping away at this project.”
••• The Independent profiled Vic’s Wine Bar. As is often the case with the newspaper’s restaurant profiles, a free meal appears to have been involved.
••• Ditto for the Independent‘s profile of Ojai Mountain Farm.
••• From the White Buffalo Land Trust: “On Saturday, October 10, we’ll open the gates of our 1,000-acre Center for Regenerative Agriculture at Jalama Canyon Ranch for our annual Fall Open House & Ranch Cookout. The day offers a chance to explore the ranch, meet the people and partners behind the work, and experience regenerative agriculture firsthand through interactive stations focused on soil, water, biodiversity, habitat, conservation, and more. The day will also feature a ranch cookout with Chef Pierre Tremblay, and live music from Salty Strings.” The open house is free; the cookout is $25 with advance registration required.
••• Tap Thai in Goleta is closing, and Jeannine’s will expand into the space. —Restaurant Guy
••• Alma Fonda Fina rebranded as Tacos Alma—or Alma Tacos, depending on which sign you’re looking at—aligning it more closely with the Corazón family in spirit, if not yet in name.
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I had lunch at the Elwood last week: little gem caesar with added shrimp at $28 was crazy – esp considering the shrimp “add on” consisted of TWO tiny shrimp. They need more umbrellas for outdoor seating — we were in the sun and had to move inside, which felt like a cafeteria. And we waited about 15 minutes for someone to take our check to pay! All around, not a great experience, sadly. Convenient to the airport with nice ocean views – and a great walk after lunch on the pier, but not much else to recommend.
Rincon Bodega at that location? Sure fire failure.
I’m not sure if this post was trying to reveal some dark hidden secret (or just trolling for trolling’s sake), but The Indy has always been forthcoming about how we cover restaurants.
We don’t do restaurant reviews, which require multiple anonymous visits to conduct properly. We write restaurant features primarily about the people, the place, the history, and the context, but, yes, of course we also cover the cuisine.
We’ve never had the immense expense budget it would take to cover meals for our writers, so we welcome comped meals, whether on group press evenings with many other journalists, or on individual visits.
Major national magazines and large metropolitan newspapers — both of which are struggling immensely to survive — have policies against taking free meals, and that’s an ethically pure and proudly righteous (if not always followed) protocol. We applaud their ability to do so.
But that is not practical or even possible for most other media, including both massive international publications and smaller regional papers like ours. We regularly eat for free when reporting a story, though we should always leave big tips!
The vast majority of publications in this country (and plenty, if not most, international publications ) accept comps in some fashion, whether for food, travel, product samples, concert tickets, experiences, etc. It is a secret to no one.
The choice is between taking comped meals and writing about restaurants regularly, or enacting a policy against taking comped meals, and rarely cover restaurants at all. That doesn’t help anyone.
We feel that it’s critical for us to spread the word about Santa Barbara’s restaurants and support a thriving business community, which is why this formula works well for us and for most publications around here.
Making strategic decisions like this is also why the Independent is celebrating our 40th birthday this year, and why we are remain one of the most successful weekly newspapers in the country, when so many others have shut their doors.
I hope that clears that up. Let’s eat!
I was neither trying to troll the Independent nor reveal a secret: just pointing out that the praise in the articles—which is certainly review-adjacent—should be taken with a grain of salt if the meals were indeed comped. And there’s no reason the Independent can’t disclose who paid for the meal.
The same can be said for the vast majority of food/travel/concert/product/etc articles written by the vast majority of publications everywhere.
But we are happy to be the example, and to use this opportunity to educate those who may not understand how media works.
It is far from a perfect or ethically pristine system, but it is largely beneficial to all involved.
I’d like to ring in on this conversation as a longtime travel writer and restaurant reviewer, if you gentlemen don’t mind. It’s good to pull away the curtain on this practice.
I had a restaurant review budget when i did reviews for the Ventura County Reporter of $50. As you can imagine, that went a pretty long way in Mexican, Chinese, Thai and other inexp, restaurants (at least at the time!). Any place i wanted to review that went over that budget was on me. My pay was $100 as i recall.
I have traveled around the globe – both paying my own way and writing about it, with a budget provided by a magazine (in the good ol’ days, like Westways for example which has a 2 million or more circulation and Conde Nast Traveler). But for other assignments – say Bride’s magazine’s travel section (which was also owned by Conde Nast) i was comped at a number of Carribbean hotels who wanted the coverage. We are talking 1980s here – i am old. There is also the other side: I have been running a series of stories in the Montecito Journal in my Travel Buzz column about Japan. My airline ticket alone was $3,000 and I spent thousands more on hotels, restaurants, museums, etc. I did accept a few hotel nights comped and have or will include HONEST reporting on those places, whether i liked them or not. However, the other side that no one has mentioned: what we are paid for these hard researched, written and fact checked articles (since many publications no longer have fact checkers). In the 1980s i was paid $1 a word for my stories and could make a living. Today a person is VERY lucky to get $1 or 50 cents a word; locally it is ten cents a word or even less. What was once a way to make a living – albeit meager – is no longer feasible and I was lucky to have supported myself for decades as a freelance writer. My travel column pays $75. That’s the really little secret about journalism these days: writers are not well paid. I have also been cut back in one publication and earn about 25% of what i earned for years – not based on fee cuts, but assignment cuts and magazines try to survive. Perhaps England has the best system: if a writer was comped, that info is published at the end of the article; TV news here often notes if a press rate (reduced rate) was paid for a stay.
Besides the big problems that newspapers and magazines have, I think that online sites hastened their demise especially for things like restaurant reviews. When we traveled a lot I used fodor and Chowhound (now gone) message boards for advice for lodgings and food and sightseeing. Chowhound had Parisians or New Yorkers or Italians online recommending their favorite places or travelers whose taste you trusted. I do hope that the independent can continue forward and have a thriving online presence and I also really appreciate Siteline.
Also why can’t Corazon just open a place called Corazon with the exact same menu? They have my fave Mexican food in town.