Our usual focus here at Team Let’s Go Eat is talking to the people who put food in the pan.

This time, we decided to talk to the people who make the actual pan.

Readers, meet Santa Barbara Forge.

Hat tip to one of our most trusted team members, Richard Lambert of Richard Lambert Tamales, for cluing us in on this. He told us he uses his Sonora Large every day for roasting vegetables to make his fresh salsa.

Dan Patterson and his brothers, Andy and Joel, co-own Santa Barbara Forge, at 626 E. Gutierrez St., where years of creating custom ornamental metalwork have led to a second, rapidly growing business: carbon steel cookware.

“Our pans are handmade in our forge, using techniques we acquired through years in the ornamental iron business,” Patterson shared with us.

His route to the kitchen started with a studio art degree from Hope College in Holland, Michigan, followed by the familiar art graduate’s question: Now what?

Construction work came first. Later, while his wife pursued a master’s in education in New York, he worked at a high-end furniture shop in Brooklyn, discovering how much he enjoyed industrial design.

After having moved back to California, an important piece of equipment arrived courtesy of his wife.

“My wife bought me our first welder,” Patterson said.

Working from a shop on a Summerland avocado ranch, he began taking metalworking projects.

There were plenty of skilled woodworkers around, he noticed, but fewer people doing good work in metal.

“I decided to make a go of it,” he said.

Andy joined, initially part time, and a public art commission on Cabrillo Boulevard gave the fledgling business a boost. The brothers handled the bronze portion of a sculpture combining bronze and tile.

That project helped finance their first downtown shop, at Anacapa and East Ortega streets, in the since-demolished Craviotto Brothers building.

“That’s when we got on the First Thursday art walk,” Patterson recalled.

“It got us on the map of designers and architects,” who could envision these skills in their clients’ homes.

Commissions grew. 

Then, in 2019, an employee with a chef’s background looked around the shop and suggested making carbon steel pans. They already had the tools. Why not?

So they made a test batch of 50, which sold quickly.

“That was a surprise to me,” Patterson said. 

The cookware gave Patterson a fresh outlet for design, engineering and manufacturing, drawing on skills developed through years of custom work.

“This stuff floats my boat,” he said.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, when seemingly everyone discovered their kitchen, orders increased, and the brothers found themselves making a lot of pans.

Improvements in production eventually shortened manufacturing time substantially, so the brothers decided to go all in in 2024.

Good choice. In 2025, cookware volume increased fivefold.

“The business is on track to double again in 2026, and cookware now represents roughly half the overall operation,” Patterson said.

So what’s the attraction of carbon steel?

“It’s much lighter than cast iron, heats quickly and evenly, and cools fast,” Patterson explained. “Proper seasoning also give the pans a nonstick surface without Teflon or other synthetic coatings.”

More on that below.

What Team LGE noticed on our first visit was how ornately beautiful yet rustically charming each handmade piece is. The kind of thing one can pass down in the family.

The pans, which come in a variety of sizes, arrive pre-seasoned. Seasoning is the process that gives them a nonstick surface. The company also recommends additional seasoning at home and offers a video demonstrating how.

You can buy the pans online or at the brothers’ newly remodeled show room.

The brothers are also working on new products, like deeper pans, plus versions suited to open-fire cooking with longer handles, and flatware.

For Patterson, the most surprising and satisfying development is the customer response.

“At year end we run a contest where customers send photos of the creative ways they’re using our pans,” he said. “People making pizzas, giant chocolate chip cookies, even cooking grapes.

“We’ve had more palpable joy generated from people loving our products,” he continued. “When customers invite us, through our products, into their kitchen, they invite into their homes in the most meaningful sense of it.”

We spend a lot of time in this column celebrating the care that goes into a meal. It’s nice to discover that some of that care starts before the ingredients even arrive.

And nice to find someone, um, forging a legacy that will last.

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