April 25, 2017 – If your travels this spring are taking you to Santa Barbara wine country or points south of there and you’re looking for an exciting, unique and stellar new restaurant along the way, you won’t want to miss the Bear & Star in Los Olivos.
Starting next Monday May 1st, the latest restaurant launched by former Post Ranch Inn executive chef John Cox—who is also a partner at Cultura – comida y bebida in Carmel—will open its doors for breakfast, lunch and dinner prepared in a style Cox calls “refined ranch cuisine.”
As Edible Monterey Bay first reported when Cox disclosed his plans to serve as partner-chef with Eli and Ashley Parker in the new venture last December (click here to read) the star in the restaurant’s name refers to the Texas flag and the restaurant’s connection to 1950s-era actor Fess Parker, perhaps best known for his portrayal of Disney’s Daniel Boone and Davy Crocket. Parker was also a proud Texan and savvy real estate investor who purchased the 714-acre ranch that is home to Fess Parker Winery & Vineyard and which will be supplying inspiration, wagyu beef and an array of other sustainably raised meats and organic vegetables to the new restaurant.
The bear in the restaurant name comes from the California flag, and refers to the restaurant and ranch’s location on California’s Central Coast, as well as Cox and his culinary team’s reinterpretation of Texan cuisine with ingredients raised on the ranch or sourced from nearby.
“For the most part, we’re thinking back to meals that really resonated with us growing up, re-envisioned for a modern California restaurant,” Cox says, referring to his and his sous chef Trent Shank’s childhood in Texas, and chef Jeremy Tummel’s experience growing up on Santa Maria barbecue in Santa Barbara.
In fact, at family and friend tastings over the last few weeks, Cox says adaptations of Shank’s own grandmother’s pecan pie and a chess pie recipe from Cox’s family have been some of their biggest hits.
But as with anything that Cox takes on, the interpretation of tradition gets wildly creative and flavorful at The Bear and Star, an example being the deviled eggs prepared with Santa Barbara sea urchin and sea cucumber roe served at a recent preview, and a remarkably umami-filled blackened tofu dish served with an update of traditional Texas caviar. (Although not vegetarian, this was one of our favorite dishes, even if Tummel admits that chefs haven’t quite figured out how to get that vaunted pink smoke ring to form on the tofu—yet.)
Other standouts included a melt-in-your-mouth, savory smoked wagyu carpaccio with cured egg yok, koji, charred scallions, radishes and mushrooms; a deeply flavorful wagyu tri tip and Morro Bay oysters dressed with a bright pink peppercorn and Meyer lemon mignonette. (See menu: http://www.thebearandstar.com/pdfs/LunchDinnerMenu.pdf)
Most remarkably, with the official opening still a couple weeks away, there was nothing on the menu that did not seem already perfectly executed—after all, part of the purpose of such family-and-friend tastings are to expose anything that needs tweaking, and more often than not, they uncover just that.
“It’s been overwhelmingly positive,” agreed Tummel, who was most recently chef de cuisine at Stillwater Bar & Grill in Pebble Beach, referring to the response at the small tastings the chefs have staged, noting that “The key is going to be to keep that consistency when we’re doing 200.”
But amazingly, the food is likely to only get better, as ranch director Carly Connelly, who worked with Cox as assistant gardener at Post Ranch, and cattlewoman Katie Parker, granddaughter of Fess Parker, and a multitude of other ranch staff, gradually ramp up the ranch’s production and replace the ingredients the chefs are purchasing with meat, vegetables, fruit and eggs produced right on the ranch. The plan is to feed the livestock grape pomace from the wine operation and spent grain from a Parker family member’s nearby craft brewery, Kris Parker’s Third Window, in something of a closed loop of sustainability akin to chefs who have inspired Cox, such as Dan Barber of Blue Hill at Stone Barns in Upstate New York.
Katie Parker leads horseback rides at the stunning hilltop ranch, where the family’s 300 acres of vineyards as well as 75 head of wagyu cattle and its chickens, quail and organic gardens and fruit trees may be viewed; soon grazing pigs, sheep and beehives will be part of the scenery, too.
But one doesn’t have to venture farther than the restaurant itself, located in downtown Los Olivos in the Fess Parker Wine Country Inn, to see the ingredients of a future meal being raised: step onto the patio, and you’ll find grape bins called into service for a picturesque aquaponics system, breeding catfish as well as edible flowers and greens; venture into the “chef’s room,” a private dining room lined with Cox’s personal knife and cookbook collection, and you’ll find mushrooms growing in a glass tower, and through a widow to the kitchen, micro greens thriving.
Aside from the chef’s room, diners can also be seated in the bar (where inventive cocktails like the mezcal-laced Ranch Hand Reviver are served), a secret wine room hidden behind a wall of wines, or the main dining room, all of which are bright and elegant yet relaxed.
The restaurant’s prices are also relaxed—remarkably so, when considering the pedigree of the chefs and the quality of their ingredients: Appetizers, for example, run from $3 to $17 and the lunch and dinner entrees, from $14 to $28. Breakfast, which continues the farm-to-table-meets-Texas-barbecue theme with dishes like smoked wagyu and root vegetable hash, is $9 to $18.
Before you leave, just be sure to ask for a tour of the custom-made 30 foot mobile smoker. It’s just one of the fancy culinary toys Cox’s team is employing to work their magic, but it’s where the chefs honed their barbeque skills and walked away with awards in Texas this past winter, and it’s pretty awesome.
“I couldn’t be happier, says Cox of his latest restaurant adventure. “It’s really exciting.”
The Bear and Star • 2860 Grand Ave., Los Olivos • 805.686.1359 • www.thebearandstar.com
About the author
SARAH WOOD—founding editor and publisher of Edible Monterey Bay—has had a life-long passion for food, cooking, people and our planet.
She planted her first organic garden and cared for her first chicken when she was in elementary school in a farming region of Upstate New York.
Wood spent the early part of her career based in Ottawa, Canada, working in international development and international education. After considering culinary school, she opted to pursue her loves for writing, learning about the world and helping make it a better place by obtaining a fellowship and an MA in Journalism from New York University.
While working for a daily newspaper in New Jersey, she wrote stories that helped farmers fend off development and won a state-wide public service award from the New Jersey Press Association for an investigative series of articles about a slumlord who had hoodwinked ratings agencies and investment banks into propping him up with some early commercial mortgage securitizations. The series led Wood to spend several years in financial journalism, most recently, as editor-in-chief of the leading magazine covering the U.S. hedge-fund industry.
Wood now lives with her family in Washington, DC, where she is a freelance writer and manages communications for Samaritan Ministry, an antipoverty and antiracist nonprofit that provides struggling Greater Washington residents with highly personalized and compassionate life counseling and coaching.
