There are times when nothing will do but a great sandwich. We are fortunate on Santa Barbara County’s South Coast to have several fine practitioners of the art, but clearly standing in the upper crust of local sandwich makers — with two locations here — is Pickles&Swiss.

“I’m obsessed with sandwiches,” said Karyn Montgomery, chief sandwich architect and co-owner with her husband, Mark Keen, of the shops at Paseo Nuevo in downtown Santa Barbara and Hollister Village Plaza in Goleta.

“I genuinely, seriously love sandwiches. Living in L.A., I would go to dinner at these great restaurants, ask for the lunch menu and order a sandwich.”

Call it a panino, a burrito, falafel or bocadillo, the portable handheld meal wrapped in some kind of bread is seemingly universal.

“It’s not a trend, it never gets old, and I never get too full eating them,” Montgomery added.

Montgomery and Keen take the art form very seriously. All Pickles&Swiss food is made from scratch, including the sauces, using recipes from Montgomery’s mother plus her own ideas, adapted to sandwich form.

“It’s a lot more work this way, but the whole point is to make sandwiches you can’t make at home,” she said.

Since the Let’s Go Eat Team’s home repertoire is limited to PB&J, we’re admittedly impressionable, but there’s no denying the great flavors in Pickles&Swiss’ Mama’s Meatball Marinara, Prosciutto and Brie, and the signature Pickles & Swiss sandwich, plus their tomato bisque.

“The spices in the marinara are all from my mom’s Italian recipes,” Montgomery told us. “And our Spicy Crunch Baguette is from my mom’s schnitzel recipe.”

The international influence on these sandwich creations is understandable, given Montgomery’s family history: Her grandparents are from, respectively, Austria, Scotland, Italy and France.

Her dad was raised in Australia, and her mother is from Casablanca, while Montgomery herself was born in Texas but grew up in Hawai‘i.

Reminds us of a certain Chuck Berry song (“I met a German girl in England who was going to school in France …”).

Our two Hero-Sandwich heroes first met in Los Angeles while both working for fashion retailer Ted Baker.

After various career moves, Montgomery ended up back in L.A. 10 years later. Keen heard she had returned and texted her.

“He asked me if I ever thought about him,” she said, laughing. “I said no, not really, but I’ll go to dinner with you.

“Since then we’ve been inseparable.”

So how did they go from designer apparel to pastrami melts?

“Mark had left Ted Baker and we had this idea to open a sandwich shop,” Montgomery said. “Everyone said we were crazy except my mother.

“Since she lived in Santa Barbara, and was willing to help out, we chose Santa Barbara for our first location.”

They opened that first store in 2012 in Paseo Nuevo.

“Neither of us had any experience in the food industry,” she explained. “The first day was kind of a train wreck, but we did $500 in business and were over the moon.”

Lunar analogies out of the way, success came quickly and they opened their second location in Goleta in 2016, followed by a third store in Woodland Hills’ Westfield Topanga mall in 2019.

Plans are in the works to further expand in Los Angeles County soon.

What’s the secret to their success?

“We’ve been using healthy ingredients from the very start,” Montgomery told us. “We have no freezers, so we get deliveries of fresh ingredients several times a week, and bread is brought in daily from Ethnic Breads for the Santa Barbara and Goleta stores.”

To keep things running smoothly, Keen handles the business-y stuff while Montgomery creates new and interesting sandwiches, salads and soups.

“My biggest problem is I can’t stop thinking of new menu items and how to make the current items better,” she said.

One of the things that attracted us in the first place to Pickles&Swiss was the cool name.

“I thought it up,” Montgomery said. “I’ve been putting pickles on my sandwiches since I was a kid, and Swiss cheese is just so cute!”

Locals Only

Regulars make liberal use of the “Build Your Own” option.  Choose your bread, protein, veggies, sauces.

“This is where you can get a little crazy,” Montgomery said with a big smile.

Be advised: Customers have become addicted to their own creations, at considerable risk to their waistlines and sandwich budgets.

When You Go

Pickles&Swiss has three locations:

Paseo Nuevo, 811 State St., Unit E, in Santa Barbara

Hollister Village Plaza, 7060 Hollister Ave., Suite 102, in Goleta

Westfield Topanga Mall, 6344 Topanga Canyon Blvd., Suite 1030, in Woodland Hills

Hours vary slightly by location, but generally are 11 a.m. to 6 or 7 p.m.