A former Buellton hot spot for fans of split pea soup, bread bowls, and quirky memorabilia began attracting a different kind of crowd once the 100-year-old venue shut off its stoves for good in 2024.
Trespassers of the shuttered Pea Soup Andersen’s—with some walls and patio spaces now enveloped in thick, green overgrowth—range from long-term squatters to TikTok vloggers curious about exploring the abandoned property.
Videos of the latter make the rounds on social media, while broken glass and other remnants of drinking and drug use help illustrate potential hazards to public safety, Buellton City Manager Scott Wolfe explained.
“We could very easily have a serious injury or death in the building,” Wolfe told the City Council at its July 9 meeting. “We want to avoid a catastrophe. … God forbid should someone be in there and a fire starts.”
Over the past two years since the restaurant’s abrupt closure, Pea Soup Andersen’s grew into “a very attractive location for folks who really didn’t belong there,” Wolfe said.
As examples, he listed people who break into the former eatery’s unkept interiors to “shoot videos” and “quite a few unhoused individuals who decided to find shelter in there.”
The hearing ended with the City Council making a crucial decision tied to the property’s future, aiming to preserve parts of its legacy while letting go of others.
“The longer the building remains there, the fewer aspects of historical significance will remain,” said Wolfe, while urging the council to “accelerate” the process of demolishing most structures on the property.
“That would leave a smaller footprint for the property owner to have to secure,” Wolfe said, referring to repeat break-ins increasing in recent months at the site “so persistent that securing it from such intrusion has proven ineffective.”
Before any kind of demolition could proceed, Buellton needed to rescind the restaurant’s 2020 designation as a historic city landmark—which the council carried out with a 5-0 vote.
“I appreciate the expedience,” Councilmember John Sanchez said before the vote. “I actually went in there today. I trespassed. The door was kicked down.”
“Is there any public comment before Councilmember Sanchez incriminates himself further?” Mayor David Silva joked, drawing some laughs from the dais.
As a caveat, the City Council resolution mandated that one identified portion of the restaurant either remain standing or become subject to a separate City Council review prior to any proposed demolition in the future.
What differentiates this part of Pea Soup Andersen’s from the rest is it meets certain thresholds of historic significance, while other parts of the restaurant originated as renovations to the property.
“With Pea Soup Andersen’s, we have tons and tons and tons of changes, and we have a little piece that has stayed the same,” local architectural historian Amber Long told the Sun. “This is the last piece that’s in its original orientation.”
Long—the consultant behind a recent historical resource evaluation of Pea Soup Andersen’s—was referring to a section of the property that originated in 1928 as the Bueltmore Hotel.
This development neighbored the restaurant’s earliest iteration, known at the time of its founding in 1924 as Andersen’s Electrical Café. Both the café—renamed Pea Soup Andersen’s in 1947—and the hotel shared the same ownership.
Formerly used as a hotel, the “Bueltmore” portion eventually encompassed about one third of the Pea Soup Andersen’s main building—a two-story structure as it currently stands that housed both the restaurant and a gift shop.
In her recommendation to the Buellton City Council, Long described this section of the property as “likely the last remaining original part of the Andersen’s development” and deemed it as individually eligible for a historic listing on the California Register.
“Future development of the property should retain the front section of the hotel building and remove and demolish the rear of the hotel building and other buildings,” Long wrote in her evaluation, commissioned by the site’s current owner. “The complex as a whole has been highly altered and changed over time which has been confirmed through review of both old photographs and historic aerial photographs.”
Long also used newspaper clippings dating back to 1926 while compiling her report, which noted that Andersen’s Electrical Café quickly became a popular pit stop upon its 1924 debut thanks to positive write-ups in Hearst newspapers from reporters who frequented the eatery while traveling.
Within a few months of operating, the restaurant added split pea soup to its menu. Four years later, the diner reported an average of serving more than 400 bowls of pea soup per day, according to a Morning Press article from 1930.
Originally from Los Angeles County, Long attributes her earliest personal memories of Pea Soup Andersen’s to the famous billboards along Highway 101.
“I came up here to go to Cal Poly. So driving back and forth to my family, I passed the signs all the time,” said Long, who’s called the Central Coast her home since 2000.
Her recent deep dive into the history of Buellton’s famed soup purveyor opened her eyes to the restaurant’s cultural significance outside of fandom or nostalgia for the food it once served.
“There’s a hidden historic importance to the property beyond the sort of familiarity of the restaurant,” she said. “The things that surprised me the most about the property are the things related to the Andersens’ son, the gentleman they called Pea Soup Junior.”
Robert Andersen, aka Robert “Pea Soup Junior” Andersen, was the son of restaurant co-founders Anton and Juliette Andersen. According to a Santa Ynez Valley News article from 1946, Robert claimed to have developed the first soup to ever be commercially shipped out as a frozen soup product.
Using a commercial kitchen in San Luis Obispo, Pea Soup Andersen’s produced 50 tons of split pea soup a month under Robert’s watch, according to the article. The soup was then frozen and packaged at a refrigeration plant for mass distribution.
“One of the struggles with what I do is being careful about rabbit holes, … especially when you’re going through the newspapers,” Long said with a laugh.
Reach Senior Staff Writer Caleb Wiseblood at cwiseblood@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in July 16 – July 23, 2026.
