Continuing a 52-year Santa Barbara tradition, the new Esau’s Café will open Wednesday within the new Paseo Chapala project at 729 Chapala St. in Santa Barbara.
Scott and Arti Stanley, purveyors of fine food in the South Coast area for more than three decades, are pleased to reopen Esau’s in the downtown area and will bring the best of their fine culinary talents to their loyal following of local customers.
“We will be serving the same great breakfasts and lunches that have made us famous, but also we will be offering new courses of fine dinner dining,” owner Scott Stanley said. The Stanleys will continue to operate their Esau’s Café restaurant in Carpinteria.
The new Esau’s restaurant features interior and exterior patio dining and is a visual treat of warm, inviting dining spaces and high-end surf photography gallery.
The new facility was designed by local award-winning architect Michael Holliday AIA and features artwork by Carpinteria surfer and artist Rick Sharp.
“Unique back-lighting of the traditional oil paintings by Rick Sharp create an illusion of windows to another world and bring a classic Santa Barbara feel to the interiors, which highlight local surf breaks from Rincon to North County,” Holliday said.
In addition to the oil painting artwork, both dining rooms feature surf photography from an elite list of Santa Barbara surf photographers. Hand-selected pieces from renowned surf photographers David Pu’u, Scott Price, David Orias, Sean Collins, Nick Alker and others showcase Santa Barbara surf breaks and Santa Barbara surfers in their aquatic element around the world.
The ceiling features select handcrafted surfboards from Santa Barbara shapers Al Merrick, Renny Yater, Dave Johnson and others.
The new cafe also features two large-screen, high-definition televisions that will feature a continuous display of Santa Barbara photographic images and also can be used to showcase local sports teams images for private parties or gatherings.
Michael Holliday is principal architect of J.M. Holliday Associates Inc.