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Robert Perez has lived around the world and cooked a wide array of food along the way, but the place and cuisine he’s had his eye on for decades — Santa Barbara and Latin cuisine — intersected for the first time on April 15 with the soft opening of Oveja Blanca Restaurante.
After nearly six years operating Seagrass Restaurant at 30 E. Ortega St., Perez opened in Seagrass’ place a sister restaurant to next door’s The Black Sheep.
“I’ve been around the restaurant industry my whole life. It’s in my DNA,” said Perez, who comes from a family of cooks and restaurateurs. His wife and one of his sons help run Oveja Blanca.
The restaurant’s menu spans the breadth of Latin America, including cuisine representative of Mexico, Peru, Colombia, and Brazil.
“We wanted to create an environment that has good energy, bright flavors, exciting flavors, very clean, very light,” he said. “We still wanted to focus on seafood, because that’s something we excel in.”
After learning Dutch and graduating culinary school in the Netherlands, Perez spent 15 years working in various hotels and restaurants in the country, before returning to the United States in 1988 and working as executive chef at the prestigious Auberge du Soleil in Napa County.
He later opened an establishment in Nevada City, Calif., and closed it in 2010, searching “from basically Seattle to Santa Fe for a suitable location” for another restaurant.
“And Santa Barbara kept popping up on the map,” he said.
After taking over Seagrass in 2010, Perez decided that the restaurant’s very formal style didn’t suit him or his patrons.
“It was a fine-dining establishment,” he said. “It was a very pretty restaurant, it was expensive, it was special-occasion, and unless you change the name and the décor, you can’t just do it by changing the menu.
“We felt now with the way The Black Sheep is doing the small plates — a lot more approachable, a lot more casual — that it allowed us the opportunity to be able to close Seagrass finally, not miss the revenues, and be able to make the changes that we finally did.”
Ike’s Place becomes Isla Vista’s latest sandwich establishment
Perhaps no place in the county sees higher restaurant turnover than Isla Vista. As common as pizzerias and Mexican eateries are here, one of the most popular — and fickle — sub-categories of restaurant in the college town is the sandwich shop.
The latest newcomer is Ike’s Place, a Northern California chain founded in 2007 and named after owner Ike Shehadeh.
Ike’s “Santa Barbara” location, which opened last month at 6530 Seville Rd. in I.V., offers an extensive menu of creatively named sandwiches that include numerous vegetarian options.
Ike’s Place takes over the spot that was previously occupied by Firehouse Subs, a sandwich shop that called Isla Vista home from October 2013 to December 2014.
As Ike’s Place is settling in, yet another sandwich place, Jimmy John’s, just closed its doors after 25 months at 901 Embarcadero del Mar.
Despite the struggles of I.V.’s most recent sandwich eateries, the community’s “downtown” restaurant district is home to a few classic sandwich shops.
Sam’s To Go, which has locations in Goleta, the Mesa, and on Milpas Street, has been at 6560 Pardall Rd. for over 30 years. South Coast Deli, with three other locations in Santa Barbara and Goleta, has been at 6521 Pardall Rd. since 2011.
Subway, one of a growing number of national chains in I.V., has been at 888 Embarcadero del Norte since the 1980s.
David Pintard opens Pintard Commercial Real Estate
After over three decades in the Santa Barbara-area real estate business, David Pintard is opening his own firm. Pintard Commercial Real Estate will focus on commercial real estate leasing and investment properties.
“It’s been a successful run working with others and for others for 35 years, but I’m just really welcoming the opportunity to have my own firm and help my clients in a more intimate fashion than I’ve been doing for the past 20 years,” he told Noozhawk.
Pintard got into the industry soon after graduating from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. After working at Merrill Lynch Realty and Prudential California, Pintard went on to work at Hayes Commercial Group. Pintard was most recently director of leasing at the Santa Barbara-based Investec.
The new firm “allows me to do more intimate boutique real estate brokerage and asset development for clients,” he said. “That’s what I look forward to.”
Pintard is already involved with a partnership that plans to open a restaurant on the Mesa in Santa Barbara, and one of his most recent jobs saw him secure a new lease for Vons where Haggen used to be in the Mesa Shopping Center.
According to a press release, Pintard has been responsible for the leasing and tenant retention of over 1.35 million square feet of real estate during a 20-year tenure at Investec.
Kathleen Kerstiens joins Montecito’s branch of American Riviera Bank
Since American Riviera Bank’s opening a decade ago, Kathleen Kerstiens told Noozhawk, it’s been trying to recruit her.
Now, with 29 years of local banking experience under her belt, including the most recent 17 with Santa Barbara Bank and Trust and Union Bank, where she was a relationship banker, they finally have her.
Kerstiens is joining American Riviera’s Montecito branch as assistant vice president, client relationship manager.
“I love working in the Montecito area,” she said. Though she he’s moved to an entirely new bank, she’s only had to physically move across the street.
At American Riviera Bank, she still gets to see many of her old clients with whom she had formed relationships, she said. Local banks making their own local decisions is one of the most attractive points of the industry, she said.
— Noozhawk staff writer Sam Goldman can be reached at sgoldman@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.