The deck at 1198 Coast Village Road still has the good afternoon light it always had. The trellis is the same one that shaded outdoor tables through the Bar Lou years, though a roof went in this spring to trap evening warmth and cut the midday glare. New tabletops, refreshed restrooms, a coat of paint. If you walked past without reading the sign, you might not clock that anything had changed at all.
Something did change, and it has nothing to do with the paint. That address has cycled through Peabody's, then Oliver's, then Bar Lou, each one a different concept in the same room. The newest tenant, Monte's, which opened for dinner on March 18, is organized around something other than a concept. It has a supply contract with a specific eight-acre farm down the coast in Carpinteria, and the kitchen builds its menu around whatever that farm cut that morning.
Four Restaurants, One Deck
Peabody's, Oliver's, and Bar Lou each took a turn at 1198 Coast Village Road, and Monte's is the fourth. Each brought its own take on the room, and the deck has stayed a favorite constant through all of them. What sets the newest chapter apart is the operator, Endwell Hospitality, and the way it has tied the kitchen to a farm.
Endwell is a New York-based company, and Monte's is its first project in California. The group also has three more restaurants in the works inside the Palms building in Carpinteria, a Korean barbecue concept on the ground floor, a fine dining room upstairs, and a rooftop bar, a project that has taken longer to complete than the company expected. When the Bar Lou owners were looking for someone to take over the lease, Endwell saw a way to get started on the South Coast sooner.
Where the Menu Actually Comes From
The mechanism behind Monte's is Rincon Hill Farm, an eight-acre former avocado orchard in Carpinteria that Endwell converted into a working farm with an indoor and outdoor mushroom program, citrus and fruit orchards, annual plantings, an avocado grove, a fermentation room, and a live fire grill. It is the same model the company runs in New York, where its own Rigor Hill Farm supplies produce directly to its restaurant One White Street.
Executive Chef Daniel Kim runs the kitchen. His résumé includes Providence in Los Angeles and The Restaurant at Meadowood in Napa Valley, and he built the Monte's menu in coordination with the farm team rather than the other way around.
"When you're involved with the farm from the beginning, it changes how you think about food."
The current menu runs prawn toast, maitake mushrooms, roasted cabbage, pork katsu, wagyu sirloin, and a smash burger, with dishes shifting as the season on the farm shifts. Suzanne DeStio oversees the wine and bar program. A happy hour was announced as forthcoming when the restaurant opened and is worth confirming by phone before you plan around it.
What that means for anyone who eats on this street regularly is that Monte's menu will not hold still the way a fixed menu does. A kitchen tied to what came off a field that week is a different kind of commitment than a restaurant simply trying out a new concept, and it is also a more fragile one in a village where a lot of covers depend on second-home traffic and out-of-town guests filling the room on any given night.
The Winery That Finally Made the Drive Unnecessary
One block over, Sunstone Wine Lounge opened March 19 at 1294 Coast Village Road, a few doors from Lucky's, the Montecito Inn, Honor Bar, and the Lion's Tale, and close to the Rosewood Miramar Beach. Sunstone has been making wine in the Santa Ynez Valley for 35 years. This is its first location outside that estate, open seven days a week to the public and to wine club members.
The lounge also pours Solis, Sunstone's line of non-alcoholic wine cocktails made with functional mushrooms and nootropics, positioned alongside the regular wine list rather than tucked into a separate menu. For a street that already leans toward wellness offerings like Groove Pilates and Skin Prophecy, adding a full non-alcoholic cocktail program to a wine bar is a specific bet on who is actually walking in the door on a given evening.
The Retailer That Finally Said Yes
A Free People store has also opened on the corridor this year, and the detail worth knowing is not the brand itself but the fact that it chose Coast Village Road at all. National soft-goods retailers have historically skipped this stretch in favor of the Montecito Country Mart or Fig at 7th downtown. The lease is the story here more than the merchandise.
The building at 1080 Coast Village Road, previously home to Menelli Tile & Stone, The Well, and Mad Dogs & Englishmen bike shop, is being converted into Sally Boy's Montecito, a pizza concept extended from a Red Bank, New Jersey original co-founded in 2023 by Sal Basile of Artichoke Basille's in New York. Developer Dave Cantin has described the plan as a hybrid of a New York slice counter, Eataly-style presentation, and Round Swamp Farm in the Hamptons, with a coffee bar planned for the morning crowd and seating limited to a rear patio. Construction was expected to begin in late summer with a goal of opening before the end of the year, so as of now this is still a storefront in progress rather than a table you can walk up to. Worth watching, not yet worth planning a dinner around.
What's Actually on the Calendar This Fall
The street's own rhythm runs alongside the restaurant and retail turnover, and a few dates are worth having on hand if you live within walking distance:
- Caldwell Snyder Gallery's Montecito location is showing recent paintings by Brendan Stuart Burns, with a reception that poured Folded Hills wine and live music on September 12. The exhibit closes September 30, so this week is what's left of it.
- Ghost Village Road returns on Coast Village Road on October 31. The event draws roughly 2,000 costumed kids, parents, and pets each year, with business owners along the street handing out candy.
- Montecito Country Mart hosts designer Sheldon Harte for a signing of his new book, The Refined Home, on October 9 from 3:30 to 5:30 p.m.
- The Mart is also running its first annual pie baking contest this season, inviting home bakers to drop off entries for judging, with cash prizes for the top finishers.
- The Mart's outdoor Movie Night series closed its season this week with a screening of Luca, the last of that run until it picks back up next year.
- In past years, the Coast Village Tree Lighting has landed in early December, with a Santa Barbara Youth Symphony quartet providing carols and a hot chocolate cart from Miramar for the crowd. Expect a similar gathering this year, though an exact date had not been posted as of this writing.
The Read
None of these are isolated openings. A farm on retainer, a 35-year winery finally showing up in person, and a national retailer breaking a decade-long pattern of choosing somewhere else are three different signals pointing at the same thing: businesses are treating this mile as worth a real commitment rather than a short lease to test. That is a different kind of turnover than what came before it at 1198 Coast Village Road, and it changes what you can expect to still be there a year from now.
If you're deciding where to spend an evening on the street this fall, or just want to know what's actually open before you make a reservation, the team at Goodwin & Thyne Properties keeps a close eye on what's changing along Coast Village Road and is always glad to talk through it.
