Darting between two places of work on a golf cart has become a daily occurrence for one pair of local restaurateurs. Luckily for business partners Anthony Carron and Steven Fretz, their new Mexican restaurant, Campo del Sol, is located just a few blocks away from their steakhouse, Coast Range, in downtown Solvang.
“We bought a golf cart and made it street legal,” which helps the duo split their time between the sibling eateries, Fretz said.
“We just zoom back and forth.”
About a year after opening Coast Range, Fretz and Carron unveiled Campo del Sol in early September—only two weeks after getting the keys to the building, the former site of Solvang’s Succulent Cafe.
“We knew this place was kind of for sale. So I called up the owners. They were ready to retire,” Carron said. “So we made them an offer, and we bought the place, and flipped it in two weeks. Literally, we got it Aug. 15 and we opened Sept. 1.”
No major renovations were needed to transform the cafe into the concept Carron and Fretz envisioned for Campo del Sol. Carron described the site as turnkey, but added that redesigning the location’s decor inspired him to take an impromptu trip down south.
“We painted. We bought new furniture. We put up new signs. I did a midnight run to Tijuana and bought all the decorations,” Carron said with a laugh. “Then we ordered some new china, and that was it. We didn’t do any massive construction or anything.”
Fretz said that most of the menu at Campo del Sol is reflective of Carron’s vision for the restaurant, which offers both contemporary and traditional Mexican food with an emphasis on locally sourced, fresh, and artisanal ingredients.
“I attribute a lot of what this restaurant is to Anthony. He has a lot of family heritage from Mexico,” said Fretz, who first met Carron while both of them were working as chefs for the same company about 20 years ago. “He has his thumb on a lot of Mexican flavor profiles.”
One of Carron’s personal favorite entrees he was stoked about bringing to Campo del Sol is carne en su jugo, a recipe he learned from a close family member. It’s a soupy dish of braised beef and bacon, with beans, radishes, cilantro, and onions, Carron described.
“I learned it from my sister, who’s lived in Mexico for 20 years,” Carron said. “It’s a Mexican home cooking dish; it’s not something you really see in restaurants, so we’re excited to bring that here.
“We’re trying to bring things that are popular there [in Mexico] that you don’t see a lot here,” Carron added. “We have chips and salsa, and margaritas, and sizzling fajitas, but we also have some deeper cuts from more traditional Mexican dishes that you wouldn’t necessarily find at your run-of-the-mill Tex-Mex place.”
Aguachile de callitos—a ceviche dish with fresh, thinly sliced New Jersey scallops, along with cuts of avocado, cucumber, cilantro, serrano, and pickled red onion—is another of Carron’s personal favorites among the restaurant’s diverse selection of entrees and appetizers, which includes enchiladas, quesadillas, flautas, and much more.
One of Fretz’s favorite contributions to the menu is a tribute to something he believes most chefs are afraid to admit they love.
“Chefs are all, in my opinion—well, I’m not going to hold every chef to this because they’ll lie to your face—but chefs in general, we grew up outlandishly poor being line cooks,” Fretz said. “So we became accustomed to eating fast food, because it was cheap; it would fill you up.”
Fretz’s remark was a preamble to his explanation of the only item listed on Campo del Sol’s menu within quotation marks, the “Mexican pizza,” an ode to the popular Taco Bell item that recently resurfaced at the chain, after a two-year discontinuation.
“I am probably the biggest Mexican pizza fan you’ll ever meet,” said Fretz, who befriended Rene Pisciotti, Taco Bell’s corporate chef, at an earlier point in his career. “They just got it [the Mexican pizza] back on the menu, and I’ve had two every day for the last four days.”
Arts Editor Caleb Wiseblood worked at a Taco Bell for four years and never got sick of the food. Send cinnamon twists to cwiseblood@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Sep 29 – Oct 6, 2022.