A GASTRONOMIC JOURNEY
BOSSA NOVA BRUNCH SUNDAYS FROM 11:30AM TO 3:00PM
While away your Sunday morning with an exploration of Latin American flavors, craft cocktails and artisanal desserts. Live music and stunning views complete this full sensory experience. A special Bossa Nova Brunch will also be served on New Year’s Day.
A LOCAL Journey
The Path from Tech Entrepreneur to Restaurateur by Jeff Wing
“I
cooked my way through college. I was the cook in our fraternity for a while because our actual cook quit, along with a couple other guys. So I made meals for 50 guys, six days a week. That teaches you how to cook pretty fast.” Not to worry; “Frat House Epicure” does not define the vibe or the menu at Mike Sheldon’s place – the cozy “basement bistro” called LOCAL [1187 Coast Village Road]. And anyway, his culinary leanings evolved – to say the least… “When I left investment banking, my initial thought was to go to cooking school.” Renaissance Man? Restless Pilgrim? Yeah. “I’d enrolled in the French Culinary Institute in New York,” he continues. Mike Sheldon is an enjoyably emphatic guy who speaks the same way he seems to have lived his life: in a carefully articulated hurry. Here he continues his flashback. “I’d been to the institute’s orientation – I mean, I was going! Oh my god…” The guy’s arc has been an unlikely series of such moments, a whirlwind whose unlikely denouement (excuse me) was to deposit our hero onto our lovely Coast Village Road. Think Dorothy’s house in The Wizard of Oz, but without the scary little witches feet poking out. By the time Sheldon realized he wasn’t in Kansas anymore… it was too late. “I found this
800 Alvarado Place, Santa Barbara, CA 93103 805 770 3175 | concierge.ele@belmond.com @elencantohotel @belmondelencanto Belmond.com
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Take a stroll down the staircase and feel welcome at LOCAL (courtesy photo)
Montecito JOURNAL
“Winter collapsed on us that year. It knelt, exhausted, and stayed.” — Emily Fridlund
Mike Sheldon standing at LOCAL’s curved bar that caught his eye (courtesy photo)
spot on Coast Village Road,” he says. “And I literally just sat on the stairs for a while and stared at it. I stared and I stared. And I started thinking about what it could be.”
LOCAL Area Network LOCAL is a gently roaring rendezvous, a conversation pit with a kitchen. Think Renoir’s Bal du Moulin de la Galette, minus the straw hats and petticoats. There is a big round bar, palate-seducing cuisine, and a patio whose feng shui eddies around and embraces the gathered guests as they sip libations and lean into each other in warm fits of laughter. This is LOCAL: a lamplit divot right in the middle of the world’s coziest main street; the suspiciously marvelous Coast Village Road. You descend a staircase to enter LOCAL, which like any respectable meal-and-martini cave is set back and below street level. The place is a self-contained world unto itself down there – an effect reinforced by relaxed cuisine, a heady cocktail, and the company of your pals. LOCAL’s story flows from Mike Sheldon’s story; from his “journey,” to invoke the wandering pilgrim. We all know from public television that the hero’s journey includes taking on
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21 – 28 December 2023