Santa Barbara Specialty

Locals swing by the Eddy on their way to a dinner party for nicely-packaged tinned fish, non-alcoholif spirits, and other cute and thoughtful gifts. There’s a wall of boutique magazines (like Mother Tongue, Pipette, and Emocean) and some plastic-free kitchen goods, too.

Santa Barbara has the best seafood, caught right off the coast. This is the place to get huge filets of local halibut, mahi mahi, swordfish, king salmon, scallops, the most gorgeous uni you’ve ever seen, and whatever’s just come in this morning. These guys also sell a small selection of prepared and packaged foods, like seaweed salad and crab cakes, plus pantry items that bring the whole feast together. (There’s a second location in Goleta.)

We love Rori’s for its ultra-creamy ice cream and fresh waffle cones, and we love it even more because they’re so passionate about organic, locally-sourced ingredients. Some of our favorite flavors include milk and cookies, super-dark dark chocolate, black pepper pistachio, and malted milk ball.

This family-owned organic market has a great café counter—solid smoothies, sandwiches, salads, and wraps, plus a great wine section.

Oat Bakery prioritizes organic ingredients and inventive twists on the classics, like loaves baked with charcoal, shiitake mushrooms, sage and garlic, or almonds and dates. They give a health-conscious treatment to classic baked goods, like their crowd-favorite hygge bun: a cinnamon roll that cuts back on white sugar and butter, instead using coconut butter, dates, and hemp-seed sprinkle. Get one of those, a drip coffee (the beans come from Handlebar), and a loaf for your kitchen counter. They have another location on Magnolia Avenue in Goleta.

Mesa Produce is like a little farmers market you can visit any day of the week. They carry regionally-grown produce, much of it organic. You’ll find the most succulent strawberries here, the snappiest snap peas, the most carrot-y carrots, and so on. This location is in Montecito; the original is in Alta Mesa in Santa Barbara.

Ask anyone—Bob’s Well Bread makes the best sourdough and pastries in the Santa Ynez Valley. Get cappuccinos, eggs benedict, and more blueberry scones than you can eat today (they freeze well). Their lunch menu is great, too. There’s another location in Ballard.

On Saturdays in Los Alamos, Priedite Barbecue pops up behind Bodega, and they make a kind of magic you don’t often find west of Texas. The smoker runs for days. If you get here right at opening, you’ll arrive to a line around the block; get here early for brisket, spare ribs, and pork shoulder by the pound, plus generous sides of baked beans, potato salad, slaw, and pickles. They do burgers on Sundays and tri-tip sandwiches on Thursdays.

Founded in Santa Barbara by a husband and wife team more than 70 years ago, McConnell's still uses many of the same farms and purveyors they did when they first began. You’ll find flavors ranging from sea salt cookies and cream to lemon and marionberry, as well as top-notch traditional flavors like mint chip and vanilla bean. If you can’t make it to this shop, you can find pints in many upscale grocery stores, and also at LA outposts in Studio City and Downtown LA.

Some of the best wine in the area comes from this winery in the Santa Rita Hills. Produced by a small team, the winery does not offer tastings, however they do recommend visiting Taste of Santa Rita Hills in nearby Lompoc to try Sea Smoke’s Pinot Noir and other hard-to-get wines of the area.