Santa Barbara Restaurant

Bright and airy with a distinctive Latin vibe, those looking for a more flexitarian option for brunch and dinner should look no further than restaurant Santa Barbara on Saint-Vallier. Opened in 2012 by three experienced restaurateurs, the menu was built on the desire to have something sustainable and vegetarian friendly that wouldn’t drive away the meat-eaters.

Melissa Campbell was a vegetarian for a long time and met business partner Steven Horwood when she worked in his vegetarian restaurant, The Sugar Refinery, in Vancouver. Having lived in Montreal for ten years they both really wanted to open a restaurant and jumped at the opportunity. The sustainable menu is in line with their ideals, while the menu itself is mostly head chef Markus Dresler’s purview. Markus has training in Italian and French cooking, and worked in an African restaurant for years.

“We do have a Latin theme we like to play with, an influence from Central America and Mexico in particular,” says Steven. “Melissa has travelled a lot and Markus has lived in Latin America. This definitely influenced our cocktail and dinner menu.”

Melissa is  in charge of the cocktail selection, some of which she invented and some of which she discovered. “Cocktails are such a popular thing right now,” she says, “so more and more unusual ingredients are available – the bitters, the syrups – it’s a huge difference from what it was like before.”