It’s dinnertime. It’s Tuesday night. You’re out on the town in Los Alamos, with no plans, a few close friends, and a $50 bill in your wallet.
You’ve got on your Clarks and some super funky striped socks. And you’ve put that tin of moustache wax to good use, so you’re lookin’ hip and clean and unique (apart from your few close friends, who look exactly like you). You’re craving a kale salad, a 1986 cabernet sauvignon, and an earful of indie folk. Your to-do list for the evening includes “buy cute throw pillows,” “try canned wine,” and “learn more about beekeeping.”
We’ve all totally been there, am I right? The night usually peters out quickly, seeing as there’s never been a venue to meet all our moustachioed-beekeeper-wine-enthusiast needs in one fell swoop.
Well. Now there is.
Pico at the Los Alamos General Store opened for business in the last week of February, and believe it or not, it’s got all that stuff—and more.
By day, it’s a general store/wine bar. By night, it’s also a restaurant. The place is clean, cute, and nauseatingly hip. Its wine selection is wide and stellar, sourcing products from all over the world. Its menu is diverse and one of a kind, using produce from all over—well, Los Alamos.
Pico scooped up its chef Drew Terp from Mattei’s Tavern, where Terp worked as executive chef until the place closed. Terp’s style for Pico: locally sourced, upscale comfort food. (It’s definitely a thing.)
“He comes from a really interesting background of classical Asian technique, but he grew up in upstate New York and spent the better part of a couple years in Alabama, taking care of his grandparents,” Manager Tyler Kavanagh explained. “So he’s definitely got this down-home Southern streak that runs through a lot of his food. It lends itself well to that homey comfort style.”
Terp’s food is driven by the shared-dining experience (“for use of another crappy restaurant catch-phrase,” Kavanagh said with a laugh).
“The guy makes food that’s intended to be put in the middle of the table and shared communally,” Kavanagh said. “That’s the way we try to encourage people to eat here.”
(But, like, they won’t force you to eat it that way.)
The menu’s split into small, medium, and large entrees, with all ingredients house-made and—as previously mentioned—locally sourced.
“We have dudes, just farmer guys, who roll up to the back door with a bag of rabbits and say, ‘You want these?” Kavanagh said. “We’re lucky to be in Santa Barbara, where we’re smack dab in the middle of produce central. It’s a bit of a bounty year-round.”
And that bounty’s not just food, as we all know—Santa Barbara County’s got wine coming out its ears. But only 15 to 20 percent of Pico’s wine program comprises local wines, Kavanagh said.
“We’re pouring very interesting wines from not just Santa Barbara County, but throughout,” he said. “We’re supporting some really great producers here, but there’s a great big world of wine out there.”
(I think it was around this point in my interview with Kavanagh that I noticed an Abraham Lincoln’s face staring at me from a knot in the restaurant’s wall. It scared the crap out of me, so if you go there, beware of drawings of Abe’s face. OK. Moving on.)
So if you’re having that Tuesday night we’ve all had, Pico’s the place you need when it comes to that kale salad and expensive cab you’ve been dying for. But what about all the other stuff?!
“With the two different elements of the business, it allows us to take multiple approaches,” Kavanagh explains. And that’s where the general store comes in: canned wine, throw pillows, beekeeping paraphernalia—it’s all there. As Kavanagh described it, the place is really “two entities under one roof.”
But wait. All you’ve got in your wallet is $50 … good thing it’s Tuesday!
Pico throws its locals a little somethin’ somethin’ with 50 percent off all entrees on Tuesday nights, or “locals’ night” (which Kavanagh clarified is available to anyone who happens to be in town on a Tuesday evening).
“We’ve been really well-supported by the locals,” Kavanagh said. “It’s our way to show a little love to locals early in the week, and they’ve been throwing it back to us three-fold.”
Next week, Pico will add another special night to the mix: winemaker night. The venue will pick a local wine producer, and Terp will prepare three special meals to pair with three of the winemaker’s wines. Kavanagh said the event will take place every third Thursday. Pico at the Los Alamos General Store is open Tuesday through Saturday every week.
So there you go. Boom. Tuesday night in Los Alamos. You’re welcome.
Brenna Swanston secretly loves all that hipster crap. Send photos of your hip moustaches to bswanston@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Apr 7-14, 2016.