THE L AST WORD
With a speakeasy and a song Scarlett Begonia keeps finding the upbeat Miller
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or musicians, it helps to be able to improvise. The same could be said of restaurants in these challenging
times. Scarlett Begonia opened in Victoria Court in 2011 with what might be called an eccentric menu of “organic, thoughtful food,” including the famous 63-degree egg. The place built a loyal following but when the lease came up for renewal in 2019, an agreement couldn’t be reached, so Scarlett improvised, finding a new location a few hundred feet away at 21 West Victoria Street. It’s the former home of The Nugget and, before that, SOhO Restaurant and Music Club. Remember that last part for later. When hard times hit again, courtesy of COVID, Scarlett never really closed, but went exclusively takeaway. When the restrictions eased, the restaurant in its new, bigger quarters, blossomed like a begonia. Then another speed bump: a departing chef. So, in December, owner Crista Fleming improvised yet again, creating Scarlett After Dark, the same interesting food but with a speakeasy style. A savory speakeasy side dish is live music every Thursday night, as befits the former home of SOhO. “Music is in its bones,” owner Fleming said of the building. And music is part of the family. Even in the restaurant’s name, borrowed from a Grateful Dead song with an extra t (for tasty?). (The Dead angle is true, but Fleming’s daughter is also named Scarlett.) Fleming’s husband, Emile Millar, a well-known singer-songwriter around town, put together the music part of the puzzle by enlisting Raul Cano-Rogers as the booker. “That was all Emile,” Fleming said. Cano-Rogers is a kind of curator of Santa Barbara’s music scene through his much-loved livenotessb.com website, which lays out all the shows in town every week, complete with interviews of musicians. (Millar, by the way, is one of the many giving the cuisine high marks, notably that killer fried chicken creation. “My 66
FOOD + HOME
husband tried it and said, ‘Oh, my god, that’s the best sandwich ever.’” Fleming related.) Not long ago, thanks to omicron, “Nobody was coming in,” Fleming said “It was just terrible. Now, with music, it’s been great. We went from really slow to packed.” The speakeasy atmosphere “fits the neighborhood,” she said. “We want to provide a fun place to hang out. A place to get a casual bite before the theater.” A few weeks into it she said, “It feels like we’re on a good road. There’s a good vibe. The musicians are happy. It feels like we’re getting back to normal. The new normal.” Raul Cano-Rogers and his livenotessb. com website is a success story of its own. An El Salvador native who found his way to Santa Barbara in 2014, he’s a singer/ songwriter himself with a keen interest in seeing the local music scene grow. Around 2018 friends began turning to him for information on who was playing where around town. The website “came out of that,” he said. “There was no other local source of information on where to find all the live music that’s aggregated in one place and updated daily.” It started slow but now there are thousands of followers, including lots of grateful musicians. Musicians are also grateful for Scarlett After Dark. Some venues aren’t exactly lavish with pay for talent, but “Emile and Crista are very generous,” Cano-Rogers said. “Emile’s a musician, so he understands what they’re going through.” Local performers on the Scarlett stage, like Lindsey Marie, Will Bremen, Brandon Kinalele, Neil Erickson, and Jackson Gillies, “all want a career in music” and deserve local support, he said. Fleming said Scarlett Begonia has been lucky to have its own support from the community throughout its improvisations. “Restaurants are like planting seeds,” she said. “They have to be nurtured and eventually they bloom. You have to take care of them, and then you have a glorious garden.”
Corey Highberg playing at Scarlett After Dark.
Lindsey Marie W W W. F O O D – H O M E . C O M
Photo by Raul Cano-Rogers
by Jeff
