RESTAURANTS : LOOKING UP : Santa Barbara Restaurants Offer the Good, the Bad and the Potentially Terrific

For years now people have been telling us that Santa Barbara, home of Julia Child, is poised to become the next great restaurant town in America. This summer I spent a lot of time trying to find out if this is true.

In the course of my research, the best dish I ate was an extraordinary ravioli filled with white beans--a huge pillow of pasta topped with a single fresh, local prawn. It was a brilliant dish, and it was served at the Stonehouse Restaurant. The best meal I ate during that time was at Santa Barbara’s newest restaurant, Citronelle. Sitting in a room overlooking the beach, we ate food almost exactly like that served at Michel Richard’s Citrus in Los Angeles.

In between there were impeccable beans served on warm, just-made tortillas, local crab with slices of organic melon, and the crisp simplicity of a wedge of iceberg lettuce topped with American blue cheese. There were onions roasted in balsamic vinegar and stuffed with Gorgonzola, there was pasta, there were muffins, there were cakes. You have to work to find a truly bad meal in Santa Barbara.

Despite this, Santa Barbara has yet to distinguish itself as a truly great restaurant town. In a city surrounded by wonderful wineries, too few restaurants feature local wines. Some restaurants do offer professional service, but you’re more likely to find yourself paying a lot of money to be served by someone who hasn’t the faintest notion of how to open a bottle of Champagne. And in one of the lushest corners of the country, too few restaurants feature local fish and produce. A few weeks of Santa Barbara dining left me thinking that this is a good place to eat--but that it has yet to fulfill its gastronomic potential.

The most disappointing meal I had was at the highly acclaimed Pane e Vino--and not because the very nice man who was so chatty when he took my reservation failed to write it down. After standing outside to wait for a table in the tiny restaurant, we sat down to the single worst pasta dish I’ve ever been served. Linguine alle cozze affumicate contained smoked mussels that had all the charm of cigarette butts.

Some of what we ate was nice--a decent vitello tonnato , a fine rib-eye steak with white beans and little potatoes, good sausage with polenta--but for the most part, this was spectacularly uninspired Italian food served in a remarkably crowded space.

The nicest thing about the entire evening was that we were sitting outside. Actually, we were plunked down in the middle of a shopping center, but if we looked up it was possible to block out the sight of the cars in the surrounding parking lot and gaze up at a clear, starry night.

The least disappointing meals I had were at La Super-Rica, a humble taco stand where you wait in line to order Mexican food of astonishing quality. It’s the sort of place where you always order more food than you think you can eat and then embarrass yourself by eating it all. It’s the sort of place where you often see someone you know. What do I recommend? The beans are superb--simple food at its best--and the seafood tamales are terrific--rich and light at the same time. There are hand-patted tortillas, which make the tacos especially good; wonderful grilled chicken with peppers; quesadillas ; carnitas ; rice mixed with corn. . . .

La Super-Rica is reliable; the Stonehouse Restaurant is something else again. It’s the restaurant I am most eager to return to--and the one in which I ate the most uneven meal. The menu is amazingly enticing; reading about “zebra pasta” and “air-dried Oriental crispy duck with bittersweet fig sauce,” I found myself wanting to order everything. And some of the dishes--that white-bean ravioli, for instance--were truly memorable. Some, however, were disasters.

Dishes I loved included grilled merguez sausage with mixed greens tossed in harissa, a spicy North African sauce, and homemade potato chips. I liked the bouillabaisse, although I wouldn’t really call it that: The broth was as thick and as rich as a bisque.

The duck, which certainly sounded wonderful, was disappointingly dry. But the worst part of the meal was a grilled Black Angus rib eye, which turned out to be a big clunker of a piece of meat run through with thick streaks of fat.

Uneven it may be, but this is clearly a restaurant to watch. Right now there’s a great deal of talent in the kitchen; it just needs to be focused.

The opposite is true of Downey’s, a sort of temple to local cuisine. Chef John Downey knows exactly what he wants to do, and he does it simply and appealingly. Still, you can’t help wishing he did it with a little more passion.

This is a very cool restaurant. The waitress who comes to your table describes, with reverence, exactly where each ingredient has come from. And for the most part, the ingredients are superb. The halibut we were served glistened with freshness. Mussels tasted as if they had just been hauled out of the water. Duck was surrounded by fragrant plums of such intensity that the bird acquired a new, fresh flavor.

The menu changes daily; we began with an inspired combination of cold mussels, served in the shell, with sweet corn and chile. I loved the delicacy of shredded crab served with local melons, fresh ginger, lime and just a touch of pine nuts. And I was impressed with a forceful dish of intensely smoked duck served with baby lentils.

What was missing from our meal was carbohydrates--we had no pasta, no potatoes, no rice. That may be what contributes to the cool quality of the restaurant. Whatever it may be, despite impeccable service, comfortable seats and a room that is quiet enough for adult conversation, Downey’s is easy to admire but hard to love.

El Encanto, on the other hand, despite a rather stuffy room and a silly, expensive wine list, seems a friendly place. You find yourself eager to like it. How can one fault a restaurant that lists baby abalone with a spicy Oriental salad right below a wedge of crisp iceberg lettuce with blue-cheese dressing? I loved both dishes--and I loved the fact that they were on the same menu.

In fact, I liked most of what I ate at El Encanto. Rare ahi tuna was deliciously peppery. Grilled prawns came with a cucumber salad in a light Asian dressing. There was a respectable, and respectably large, Caesar salad.

The entrees were straightforward and, for the most part, good. El Encanto’s bouillabaisse often takes first prize in the Santa Barbara Bouillabaisse Festival, and it is impressive. The ragout of lobster, a sophisticated and beautifully presented dish, is even better. There’s a good steak with great mashed potatoes. And for dessert, a classic shortcake.

El Encanto Hotel is perched high on a mountain, and the dining room has a wonderful view. The service can be slightly inept, but the food is so unpretentious and good that it’s easy to forgive the service. Tutti’s is another friendly Santa Barbara institution. The restaurant’s big European delicatessen at the front is filled with a tantalizing display of cheese, marinated vegetables and pastries that makes you instantly ravenous. The restaurant itself is extremely casual and pleasant, but I like it best as a place to stock up for a picnic in one of Santa Barbara’s wonderful parks. There are occasionally very good onions roasted in balsamic vinegar, there is always spit-roasted chicken, and the selection of pastries--apple crumb cake, ricotta-raisin pie and biscotti-- is just what you’d want on a picnic.

And yet, there’s no question in my mind that the best restaurant in Santa Barbara is Citronelle. Michel Richard, certainly one of America’s finest chefs, is spending a lot of time there these days, which may explain why the restaurant has yet to acquire its own personality. At the moment, Citronelle is truly a mini-Citrus: The airy room has the same food but a smaller menu and lower prices.

Our Citronelle meal began with the tuna burger--a dish I have always loved at Citrus. The little cake of chopped tuna sandwiched between two rich slices of brioche is every bit as delicious here as it is farther south. Then we had a single prawn wrapped up in kataifi (that Greek pastry that looks like shredded wheat) until it resembled an infant porcupine. It was balanced on a buttery puddle of mashed potatoes sitting in a red sauce of startling intensity. The dish was followed by striped bass served on a bed of asparagus in a clear, bright-green sauce. Then came chicken in a blanket of porcini mushrooms--and then the world’s best creme brulee .

I’m glad Citronelle has come to Santa Barbara. It brings the city one step closer to fulfilling its promise. Any day now, Santa Barbara really will be the next great restaurant town in America.

Pane e Vino, 1482 E. Valley Road, Montecito; (805) 969-9274. Open Monday through Saturday for lunch , nightly for dinner. Dinner entrees, $7.75-$16. 7 5.

Citronelle, 901 E. Cabrillo Blvd., Santa Barbara; (805) 963-0111. Open daily for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Dinner entrees, $17-$20.

El Encanto, 1900 Lasuen Road, Santa Barbara; (805) 687-5000. Open daily for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Dinner entrees, $18-$28.

Tutti’s, 1209 Coast Village Road, Montecito; (805) 969-5800. Open daily for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Dinner entrees, $7.95-$14.95.

Downey’s, 1305 State St., Santa Barbara; (805) 966-5006. Open Tuesday through Friday for lunch, Tuesday through Sunday for dinner. Dinner entrees, $17.95--$23.95.

La Super-Rica, 622 N. Milpas St., Santa Barbara; (805) 963-4940. Open daily 11 a.m.-9:30 p.m. Entrees, $2.10-$5.15.

Stonehouse Restaurant at San Ysidro Ranch, 900 San Ysidro Lane, Montecito; (805) 969-5046. Open daily for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Dinner entrees, $15-$20.