Paradise Found

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Paradise Found Montecito, California, has long been a quiet residential hideout for moguls and movie stars. Not anymore. With splashy hotels, swanky private clubs, and sceney restaurants, these ten square miles are turning small-town living into the hot new thing.

by Jason Sheeler Photographs by Dustin Aksland

Above and opposite: The cactus gardens at Ganna Walska Lotusland, a 37-acre estate filled with botanical wonders in Montecito.

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“Montecito,” it was explained to me on a recent cloudless Thursday afternoon, “is to Beverly Hills as Beverly Hills is to Los Angeles.” Which is to say the unincorporated Santa Barbara community, five miles east of the iconic Spanishtiled courthouse and 90 miles west of L.A., is a glittery enclave and hedged refuge. It’s an escape hatch, somewhere to get away—just not too far away—and easily accessible by private plane, yacht, or helicopter. It’s an upgrade. The powerful and famous of L.A. have been trading up for the star-jasmine-scented lifestyle for over 100 years.

Breathtaking, jaw-dropping, gobsmackingly gorgeous— there’s not an adequate way to describe the landscape, particularly on the drive over from L.A., the path many Montecitans take every Friday afternoon. (Put it this way:

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Oprah moved to town in 2015 and named her estate the Promised Land.) As Highway 101 leaves Ventura, the Santa Ynez Mountains slam into the Pacific. You pass through Seaside, Carpinteria, and Summerland. Then it’s Hawaiian lushness. There’s a flat-topped fir sitting right in the middle of the highway at the spot where you take the San Ysidro Road exit to Olive Mill Road to the new Rosewood Miramar Beach, which opened to much fanfare last year—a gleamingwhite, 161-room property that sits right on the beach.

A few miles up, not far from where Los Padres National Forest starts, stands Ganna Walska Lotusland. The private garden estate, the former residence of one Ganna Walska, is kind of like the community’s spirit animal. It’s as fabulously fantastical as it sounds. The 37 acres are filled with more than 3,000 exotic plant species tangled among cactus groves, honey-scented Victorian box trees, and a trio of extremely rare cycads known as the Bachelors, which were paid for in jewels. Tours are by appointment only, and visitors are capped at 20,000 a year.

Lotusland had its beginnings in 1882. Originally named Tanglewood, it was a simple mansion with a few lemon trees and a palm grove. Then it changed hands and was renamed Cuesta Linda, and additions—including the softpink walls—were made to the residence by the father of Spanish Colonial Revival architecture, George Washington Smith. His stuccoed-façade and Andalusian-farmhouse aesthetic defines the area. In 1941 came Ganna Walska, an opera singer turned socialite turned garden designer.

Lotusland as we now know it was born.

“Her adaptation story is the same as the town,” I was told by Michael DeRousse, a docent, as we crunched along the gravel pathways and a maze of hedges. As we looked at the former swimming pool surrounded by mosaic tiles and filled with the garden’s eponymous flowers, he explained Walska’s improbable rise, from Poland, where she was born Hanna Puacz, to becoming an opera singer whose failing career inspired the theme of Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane. Then, over the course of six husbands, and countless trunks of jewels, and one last lover who turned out to be a grifter, Walska conjured the spirit of Montecito

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The swimming pool at the Coral Casino Beach & Cabana Club was built in 1937.

Opposite: A bartender at the Rosewood Miramar Beach.

with her gardens. “It could only happen here. And it shouldn’t have been able to. The magic is the geography.”

We stopped at the Parterre fountain, with red, pink, and yellow floribunda roses. “Madame Walska was, as she liked to say, ‘the enemy of the average.’ ” And yet, it’s to Montecito that those who love it come for a sense of everyday Americana—a small-town feel.

Here you have expansive acreage, which is sometimes referred to as “the country.” You get to be folksy and do folksy things. Like shopping for house-made duck-liver dog treats at George, Château Lafite at Pierre Lafond, and anything from Moroccan rugs and watercolors of palm trees to Paul Smith socks at Upstairs at Pierre Lafond. You can hike to Inspiration Point, or fill up your SUVs with groceries from Von’s or Bodil Kjær patio furniture, and stand in line for a breakfast table at Jeannine’s and gossip next to a white picket fence.

On weekends, the line for one of those tables stretches down Coast Village Road, the glitzy main drag. The wide lanes are bookended by the Montecito Country Mart and

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the Montecito Inn, where you’ll find the most exclusive dining in town: the ten-seat Sushi Bar and the $550-a-seat Silver Bough. But at Jeannine’s, everyone waits in line and seems happy to do it—until the protocol is broken. (Note for the visitor: You do not grab a table and then place your order. A seating assignment is given only once your order has been placed.)

On Saturday morning, I was about 25 people deep and talking about real estate. Rob Lowe’s white columned manse in the foothills was on the market for $43 million.

Ellen had recently flipped one of her and wife Portia de Rossi’s two homes. Katy Perry was said to be looking around. The market had fully rebounded, was the talk, from the January 2018 mudslides that had damaged more than 400 homes and killed more than 20 people.

I looked down at a cockapoo attached to an owner wearing running tights and holding a monogrammed Goyard tote. After discussing the made-for-dogs burger at the Rosewood, I was told the pooch would be going to see a dog medium at the Country Mart later that day. “She

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can tell us about past lives. It helps with behavior stuff.”

I looked at the animal and he actually winked at me. I wondered how much better that dog’s life could get.

In the late 1700s, while Spanish soldiers were building the Presidio in Santa Barbara, their spiritual leader was a few miles east looking for a place for his mission. He settled on what would become Hot Springs Road, not far from where Lotusland is today. The area’s Native Americans had long believed in the healing properties of the springs deep beneath the clay and silt soil. The area’s first hotels were built in the late 1800s. By then, the land grab was on, and the nation’s boldface names had arrived.

Du Pont, Rockefeller, and Carnegie came to Montecito, erecting the first mansions along the mountainside with such ferocity they were dubbed the Hill Barons.

I read this story while sitting by a fire at San Ysidro Ranch, in one of the leather-bound books on the mantel of the Ty Warner cottage. The hotel is named for Saint Isidore, the patron saint of farmers, and it was originally a working ranch. One of the oldest structures in Santa Barbara County is still on the property, an adobe building from 1825 erected by the original owner, Thomas Olivera, a lemon and orange grower. In 1893, the first guests were staying in a small cottage, and by the 1930s the property was a bastion of discretion for the likes of Audrey Hepburn, Bing Crosby, From far left: Inside Garde, a home furnishings shop in nearby Summerland; a stretch of sand at the Rosewood Miramar Beach; the exterior of Josephine’s Antiques.

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The property has been owned since 2000 by Ty Warner, dubbed the Beanie Babies Billionaire. (He’s a modern-day Hill Baron, also the owner of the Four Seasons Resort The Biltmore—where the 4,000-square-foot, butlerattended Ty Warner Bungalow just opened—and the Montecito Club, which was recently renovated.) The cottages at San Ysidro have been painstakingly updated twice by the local architect Marc Appleton (the second time was after the mudslides), and each time locals and regulars held their breath. “You have to be careful when you’re working on something so beloved,” he told me.

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and Fred Astaire. (“Privacy is still of the utmost importance around here,” I was told when I checked in.)

As much as the Rosewood Miramar—with a Goop gift shop and on-property falconry program, an E! News roster of celeb regulars and the area’s first rooms directly on the beach—is New Montecito, San Ysidro Ranch is Old Montecito. The collection of stone bungalows on a remote stretch of lavender and olive and lemon groves has hosted weddings for Gwyneth (her first) and J.Lo (her third), as well as the nuptials of Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh and JFK and Jackie’s honeymoon back in the day.

I understood what he meant when I dined at the Stonehouse, upstairs from one of the largest wine cellars in Montecito. On the night I was there, the patio tables were filled with a pair of honeymooners, one couple celebrating their anniversary, Miley Cyrus, and three tables of locals. (“People who live around the hotel treat it as their little town,” a concierge told me.) There was a soft shriek after the sun set. A couple who live up the hill had a panic attack when they thought the raspberry soufflé had been taken off the menu. Crisis was averted when an iPhone flashlight was ignited. Shortly, their pink dessert arrived.

A cloud of perfumed nostalgia hangs over Montecito.

It rises from the landmark Coral Casino Beach & Cabana Club across the street from the Four Seasons on Butterfly Beach. The private club (which has no casino in today’s sense of the word but does boast an Olympic-sized pool) opened in 1937 and underwent a restoration a few years ago, overseen by Peter Marino. A Saturday pool scene looks like a Slim Aarons photograph, with the addition of AirPods and small ankle tattoos. It floats above the whitetableclothed Lucky’s, owned by the jean maker of the same name, where Montecitans like Carol Burnett and Rob Lowe go for steaks (she on Monday, he on Friday) and leave behind sweet notes on the walls. (His on a Buckler nonalcoholic beer label, hers on Dom Pérignon.)

A similar vibe wafts through the white cottages of both the Rosewood and its neighbor the Miramar Club.

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A Montecito Long Weekend

and bronze dragon andirons and Tiffany lamps, most from those Montecito founding families who made their money in paper, meat, and oil. Josephine Di Loreto has kept guard of her Montecitan time capsule since 1979.

Shoppers are said to include all of Old Montecito, most of New Montecito, and some New-New Montecito. “All the famous people,” she said with a laugh and eye roll. Before I arrived, a young woman aided by two assistants had spent more than $20,000 on “little things.”

Part antiques dealer and part astrologer, Di Loreto, a former actress and singer with rapid-fire timing, asks for a birth date from shoppers. “Leo?” I heard her ask. “Some days you get up and you know you’re a Leo and you rule the world. And the next day you’re an insecure wreck and find nothing but fault with your own self.” She waited a beat.

“Do you want to hear about a scandal?”

“Montecito,” Di Loreto told me, “was founded by tycoons, but they left behind some dilettantes.” As I shopped her store, which is filled with estate-sale finds she rips from the hands of folks from Sotheby’s and Christie’s (“I drive them crazy!”), I told her about the dog medium. “Oh, come on, don’t tell me people around here are falling for that now?”

“But Montecito hasn’t really changed all that much,” she said. “And it won’t. It’s still just a little town, with all that implies.” Then, as any good neighbor would do, she recommended where to have dinner: Lucky’s. And as any Montecitan would do, exactly where to sit. “You have to sit facing the door. It’s the best show in town.”

FRIDAY Work off dessert with a hike up to Inspiration Point, then pop in to the lifestyle shop Garde (gardeshop​ .com), in Summerland. Owners Scotti Sitz and John Davidson are worth meeting—so are their silkie chickens out back. Lunch should be at Montecito Country Mart, at the new pizzeria Bettina (bettina​ pizzeria.com). It quickly became a hit, and rightly so, considering owner Brendan Smith used to run the bread program at beloved Brooklyn pizza joint Roberta’s. If you’re a dog lover, visit George (george​sf.com) next door after lunch for a four-leg-​ friendly souvenir. Afterward check out the art, fashion, and objects at Upstairs at Pierre Lafond (shopupstairs.com). Then it’s time for that long stroll at Ganna Walska Lotusland (lotusland.org).

For dinner, snag a table on the patio at Oliver’s (olivers​of​montecito.com), a chic vegan restaurant.

Try the farro Bolognese.

SATURDAY Grab a pressed juice at Juice Ranch (juiceranch​.com) and get in line at Jeannine’s (jeannines.com) for the huevos rancheros or challah French toast. Then it’s pool time at the Coral Casino Beach & Cabana Club (coral​casino​club.com). Enjoy its beach and the delicious minty slushies that can be turned into cocktails. After an afternoon nap, check out Josephine’s Antiques (1470 E. Valley Rd.; 805-9696467), which is brimming with treasures. For dinner, make a reservation at the Silver Bough (silver​bough​ montecito.com), where the seasonal menu might include pigeon breast, venison, and lobster. Or if you’d rather do omakase, go next door to Sushi Bar (sushibarmontecito.com), a sequel to chef Phillip Frankland Lee’s intimate and celeb-filled L.A. boîte.

The main room of the Montecito Club, which reopened this year after a $75 million renovation.

Opposite: Dover sole at Lucky’s restaurant.

The owner, Rick Caruso, who grew up visiting the area and praised “the legacy of Montecito” when we chatted, is paying homage to the original club that stood there in the 1920s. He’s doing this by first inviting descendants of Montecito’s founding families to join. Kasey Calcagno, the club’s manager, told me they have room for 200 members and so far have about 60. The buy-in for access to the beach, hotel, two floors of the club, and “really whatever you want to do or want us to do for you” is said to be about $200,000.

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(The ask at the Montecito Club, which has a golf course and pool, is even steeper.) “People come to Montecito for a different kind of fun,” Calcagno told me. He recently set up an entire screening room on the beach, complete with a 1920s popcorn cart. “The experience around here is definitely a throwback.”

On Sunday afternoon, I wandered into Josephine’s Antiques. Set in a back corner of a shopping center, the one-room store is brimming with silver and glassware

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SUNDAY Before checking out, check out the supple scene at La Playa Pilates (laplayapilates.com). Then enjoy the Four Seasons’ alfresco brunch. If you’re an early riser, get over to Bree’osh (breeosh.com) on Coast Village Road. They open at 7 a.m. and the line starts soon after that. But it’s worth enduring for the always-sold-out morning bun: a ribbon-like cinnamon-and-sugar brioche baked in a muffin tin.

Buy two; you’ll want another on the way home.

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THURSDAY There’s no shortage of great resorts in the area.

You could reserve at the Four Seasons Resort The Biltmore Santa Barbara ( rooms from $595; fourseasons.com) and make sure you immediately book a massage at the spa. It fills up far in advance. The biggest and newest bungalow on the 1920s property is named for owner Ty Warner and comes with a lap pool, private driveway, and butler. There’s also the Rosewood Miramar Beach ( rooms from $595; rosewoodhotels.com), which has a handful of rooms with direct access to the water. After having been badly damaged in the 2018 mudslides, the 41 cottages at the classic San Ysidro Ranch (rooms from $895; sanysidro​ ranch​.com) have been perfectly restored. For your first dinner in town, get a table at Lucky’s (luckys-steak​house​.com). Make sure to order the molten chocolate cake.