Hidden behind an unmarked yellow door on a side alley off Upper De la Vina Street, Gipsy Hill Bakery is on the highway to success in the Santa Barbara pastry scene.
Recent featured offerings like Peach Hand Pies, Shishito Pepper and Corn Brioche, and the always-in-demand Cardamom Buns help the bakery at 2615 De la Vina St. appeal to a wide range of tastes.
“It may seem simple,” Sandra Adu Zelli says of her work, “but the pastries take three days to create, and everything is made from scratch.
“I make it look like it’s just a bun, but it’s not just a bun,” she said, laughing.
As The Wall Street Journal reported recently, savory is the new sweet when it comes to baking, and Adu Zelli has been well ahead of that trend.
“I’ve done this shishito/corn tart for a few years now,” she said. “People love it.
“I let the ingredients speak for themselves. I actually do very little to them.”
Sandra Adu Zelli says the ingredients “speak for themselves” in her Shishito Pepper and Corn Brioche. Credit: Gipsy Hill Bakery photo 
Sandra Adu Zelli is an artist with her pastries at Gipsy Hill Bakery. “I make it look like it’s just a bun, but it’s not just a bun,” she says. Credit: Rob Raede / Noozhawk photo 
The Peach Brioche is a tasty treat. Credit: Rob Raede / Noozhawk photo 
Sandra Adu Zelli has aspired to be a chef from a young age, and has found her niche in Santa Barbara with her Gipsy Hill Bakery. Now she’s setting her sights on “pastry domination.” Credit: Rob Raede / Noozhawk photo 
Gipsy Hill Bakery is known far and wide for its Cardamom Buns. Credit: Gipsy Hill Bakery photo 
The Let’s Go Eat pastry testing team at Schneider Autohaus is all smiles after sampling a Gipsy Hill Bakery variety box. Credit: Rob Raede / Noozhawk photo 
Peach Hand Pies? Yes, please. Credit: Gipsy Hill Bakery photo 
Tomato Galette. Credit: Gipsy Hill Bakery photo
She makes it sound easy, but to summarize a quote from the menu of one of our favorite restaurants in Rome: “The simpler the food, the harder it is to do well.”
For a thorough testing of Adu Zelli’s menu, we ordered a variety box (order window open on her website Monday-Thursday, pick up Friday morning), and brought it over to the Team Let’s Go Eat Automotive Division at Schneider Autohaus.
The folks at Schneider know a well-turned wrench and a well-turned out pastry, with palates that befit the upper-end nature of the cars they service.
Result? They loved all of it.
Comments included, “Wow, great depth of flavor,” “You can taste the layering and attention to detail,” and “Is that rose water I’m tasting?” We confess we had to go look up rose water.
Mostly they wanted to know: “Where is this place again?”
Adu Zelli grew up in Ghana and the United Kingdom, and left high school at 16 to attend chef school.
“My mom bought me a set of knives, a chef jacket and a tall hat,” Adu Zelli recalled, and she was on her way.
After finishing at the Colchester Institute in northeastern Great Britain, she worked for a variety of Michelin Star and Michelin Star-aspiring restaurants.
“It was like being in the TV show The Bear,” she said of the long hours and grueling work.
Then Yotam Ottolenghi called her to be the pastry chef at his famed restaurant in London.
“Yotam was great to me,” she recalled. “He taught me simplicity, how to scale things back, and that cooking didn’t have to be blood, sweat and tears.”
After stints at Ottolenghi and other well known spots, she and her husband moved to Santa Barbara 16 years ago for his work with the Four Seasons Biltmore Resort in Montecito.
“I was pregnant with my son, and I didn’t want to work full time,” Adu Zelli related, so she did some private chef-ing, and helped various friends open new restaurants, including The Daisy and Handlebar Coffee Roasters uptown.
And she helped Ramón Velazquez of Corazon Cocina fame with his popular flan recipe.
“He told me I was cooking it wrong,” she recalled smiling. “But then tasted it and said, ‘that’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever eaten’.”
All the while she kept thinking about having her own place. To test that idea she signed on for a pop-up at the holiday market in the former Macy’s space in Paseo Nuevo.
“We launched the day after Thanksgiving and sold out in three hours,” Adu Zelli told us.
That pattern continued for six consecutive weeks, at the end of which she was both exhausted and exhilarated at how well it had gone.
In 2017 she formally opened her own “shop,” selling just Peach Brioche out of her kitchen at home, then in 2023 moved to the current location across the street from the Santa Barbara Chicken Ranch with her full menu of pastries.
Where does she find inspiration?
“I’m inspired by the bakeries in England, and what I see here at the farmers market,” Adu-Zelli said. “Knowing exactly where food comes from is really important to me.
“We’re so spoiled here with our avocados,” she added. “In Europe they’re bland and insipid, avocado toast in London is terrible. When my family from the UK comes to visit, they’re blown away by our farmers markets.”
Future plans?
“Pastry domination,” Adu Zelli said laughing.
Our kind of attitude.
Locals Only
Those in the know focus on the savory items, and make sure to try the cardamom buns, which sell out quickly each week. They also do some catering.
When You Go
Gipsy Hill Bakery is at 2615 De la Vina St., but the door actually is in the alley west of De la Vina, just off Alamar Street.
The order window is open on the website miday-ish Monday and closes Thursday. Pick up your order Friday morning.
