Phillip Frankland Lee Confirms Four Restaurants For Santa Barbara’s Montecito Inn

It’s been known for a while that Phillip Frankland Lee and his wife Margarita Kallas-Lee would be heading up to Santa Barbara soon to take over some hotel restaurant space inside the Montecito Inn. The project will jump Lee’s restaurant count by four when it comes online starting this fall, including an ice cream spot, fine dining space, and at least one familiar name.

The first to be announced for Montecito is Frankland’s Crab & Co., a casual lunch and dinner seafood option that’s already got a starting location in Encino. Alcohol will also be served, alongside fish and chips, lobster rolls, and the like.

Jakob Layman

The second is The Monarch, which seems to be poised to be Lee’s all-day hotel restaurant. There are plans for a wood-burning oven, as well as room for a seated bar inside.

From there it’s on to Silver Bough, a new Christmas-sounding spot that Lee is being rather tight-lipped about still. Silver Bough is meant to be the upscale jewel of the Montecito Inn (a release calls it “a modern approach to the grand fine dining tradition”), but as for service model, food, and anything else, it’s all still under wraps.

And finally, Kallas-Lee will open Margarita’s Homemade Ice Cream, doing scoops and cones with flavors that focus on her pastry background. Think sourdough breadcrumbs over camembert ice cream.

The plan is to start rolling out the four restaurants by middle to late fall, and to have the Montecito Inn fully operational under Lee’s Scratch Restaurants banner by early 2018 at the latest. No word yet on when (or if) that will eventually include a surprise secret sushi bar inside a former dry storage room.

Scratch Restaurants at Montecito Inn
1295 Coast Village Road
Santa Barbara, CA

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