Ten Days of Toasting Julia Child

The Indy’s Wine Week Spills Right Into the
Santa Barbara Culinary Experience

By Matt Kettmann | May 8, 2025

Julia Child enjoying a fine culinary experience of her own | Credit: Paul Child. © Schlesinger Library, Harvard Radcliffe Institute

Julia Child was a force far ahead of her time on a global scale, demystifying fine food for the masses while establishing a place for women in modern media.

But she was also a visionary on the regional scale, specifically right here in Santa Barbara, where she decided to spend her final years at Casa Dorinda in Montecito. Looking into her butter-greased magic bowl, Julia realized long ago that our region was an ideal engine for conscientious farmers, charismatic chefs, and wise winemakers, and that’s only shifted into epicurean overdrive during the two decades since she left us.

Today, Santa Barbara’s food and drink landscape rivals much bigger cities and attracts visitors from the world’s top culinary destinations. Even restauranteurs and vintners from much more celebrated locales are increasingly trying to get in on the action. Julia would not be surprised.

That bounty is exactly what we’re celebrating over the next 11 days, starting with the Independent’s Santa Barbara Wine Week and culminating with the Santa Barbara Culinary Experience (SBCE), which is the West Coast sibling of the Julia Child Foundation for Gastronomy and the Culinary Arts. This year, with the two weeklong events overlapping, the wine, food, and farm fun runs from May 8 until May 18, offering more than 100 ways to taste, learn, and live the Central Coast way.