The city of Buellton no longer considers Pea Soup Andersen’s an official city landmark.
After hemming and hawing this spring over what exactly it was going to allow the current landowner to do to the building, the Buellton City Council came up with a solution to the problem it had inadvertently created: Pull the historic landmark status it granted the property in 2020.
And bing, bang, boom, just like that, Pea Soup is no longer protected.
Let the demolition commence!
Before you get all bummed out about Buellton’s biggest eyesore—once, the hippest place in town—going bye-bye, hear the city out.
“We could easily have a serious injury or death in the building,” City Manager Scott Wolfe told the council on July 9. “We want to avoid catastrophe. … God forbid should someone be in there and a fire starts.”
In the last two years, the building has fallen into a sort of no man’s land, with windows boarded up and bushes growing through cracks in the pavement. Apparently, it has grown into “a very attractive location for folks who really didn’t belong there,” Wolfe said—for TikTok vloggers and squatters alike.
I’m sure the copycat Pea Soup Andersen’s hotel next door really appreciates the riff-raff! What’s with all the soup!?
No one is paying attention to the “no trespassing” signs hung up on random fences around the original Pea Soup property. Even City Councilmember John Sanchez thought he should take a peek at what’s happening in there.
“I actually went in there today, I trespassed,” he told the council on July 9. “The door was kicked down.”
Not good!
Mayor David Silva took his cue: “Is there any pubic comment before Councilmember Sanchez incriminates himself further?” he joked.
Good one!
So, something needed to be done. The council’s rather intense conversation from the spring, over preserving portions of the property (The city actually talked about potentially propping them up on the Avenue of Flags median. I mean, whose bright idea was that?) so future Buellton residents could stare at them in wild wonder thinking about the area’s past attraction as a pea soup hot spot, was placed on the back burner.
Don’t worry though, Pea Soup enthusiasts, preserving a limited part of the building is still on the table.
A local architectural historian believes the portion of the property that originated in 1928 as the “Bueltmore” Hotel (Get it, Biltmore?) is “likely the last remaining original part of the Andersen development.” It could potentially be eligible for historic listing on the California Register, which I imagine would be a lot harder to remove than Buellton’s city landmark status.
The historian, Amber Long, said she fell down a few rabbit holes in her research. For instance, by 1930, the restaurant was serving more than 400 bowls of pea soup per day. That’s cray cray!
Like I said, pea soup hot spot.
All the buzz was thanks to positive write-ups in Hearst newspapers. But back then it was called Andersen’s Electrical Café.
I just can’t believe people ate that much soup—so much soup that they eventually renamed the restaurant for it in 1947.
The Canary isn’t into pea-green soup. Send angry letters to canary@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in July 16 – July 23, 2026.
