The Ellwood Adapts to Affordability

After a year-and-a-half of trying to make a fine dining restaurant work at Goleta Beach, The Ellwood is shifting gears in hopes of appealing to more diners more frequently.

“We heard that you loved The Ellwood, but sometimes felt like it was a place you saved for a birthday, an anniversary, or a special occasion,” the restaurant announced via social media on September 22. “We want to change that. In fact, we’re changing a lot.”

Aimed at both pricing and atmosphere, the changes include a revamped menu with more affordable fare, while retaining a few bigger-ticket entrees for those special occasions. Gone are the original menu’s most creative dishes such as that flavor-bomb salmon poke with strawberry, tomato, and miso; succulent char siu mini-tomahawk pork chop; and comfortingly homey calamari parmesan. Replacing them are seaside standards such as fish and chips, fish tacos, and a fried shrimp basket, with ample sandwich and salad options. The brunch menu remains deep, including extensive raw bar selections that are also available at dinner.

A core strategy of the new menu involves two “Pierside Specials”: a burger, fries, and beer for $23 or full-sized clam chowder and salad for $24, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. daily. Happy hour has been reschristened as “Golden Hour,” now every day of the week from 3 to 5 p.m., or until 6 p.m. in the bar, which sports six new TVs. (There was just one before.) That menu includes 10 dishes — more than doubling the former happy hour’s offerings — and reduced drink pricing. It’s your cheapest chance to try the new Goletarita, a frozen margarita invention with flavor choices that’s just $12 during Golden Hour. (It’s quite tasty, satisfying even margarita snobs like me.)

Leading the charge for these changes is Colin Jordan, the director of business operations and a partner in the restaurant. It only took him about two weeks of working the floor at The Ellwood while talking to every customer to realize what needed to be done. 

“Every person was saying the same thing: ‘We love The Ellwood. It’s just really pricey,’” said Jordan. “You’ve got to give the people what they want. This place was built for Montecito, but Montecito people aren’t coming here. You’ve got to stop fighting it.”

Nasty with Nostalgia

Maybe people will finally stop fighting The Ellwood. Even before the restaurant won the bid from the County of Santa Barbara to take over the space in 2021, nostalgia-drunk haters were sharpening their online knives, comparing every move to rose-tinted memories of The Beachside Bar-Café. 

Never mind that The Beachside’s food was pretty standard and not particularly cheap. Never mind that food prices have gone up since the 1990s, and even escalated dramatically between 2021 (when the Beachside closed) and 2025 (when The Ellwood opened). Never mind that the restaurant’s new owners had to dump buckets of money into remodeling the space, endured years of delays due to county-related infrastructure issues, and then got hammered by storms.

“Death to The Ellwood!” typed the online hordes, early and often. “Bring back The Beachside!” (I’m summarizing.)

The Ellwood’s initial attempt for an upscale experience certainly fanned the flames, as did the naming of the restaurant after a beach a few miles to the west — a symptom, some observed, of the newer-to-town ownership team. Chef Craig Riker remained a steady presence until leaving recently, but fluctuating management felt inconsistent. And yes, the prices did make a trip to The Ellwood more appropriate for a big Saturday night out rather than just a place to get a bite on a Wednesday. 

That mix of wistfulness and real-world woe opened the floodgates to more angry attacks on The Ellwood than any well-meaning business should endure. The changes aren’t mollifying this mob yet, for the online diatribes continue. Many remain out-of-touch with modern restaurant reality or simply stuck in the past, but there are enough complaints citing long waits and spotty service to seem authentic.

The bigger question is whether these Negative Nancies even matter. Overall, The Ellwood’s positive online impressions exploded since the changes were announced: Nearly 3,200 people liked that September 22 announcement and there have been more than half a million interactions over the past month, according to Jordan.

As for those complaints about spotty service? They’re directly related to the massive boom in business that the restaurant is experiencing since the changes were announced. “We weren’t expecting that,” said Jordan, who is staffing up as you read this. The Goletarita, meanwhile, is already a hit, even outselling their popular clam chowder in its debut week.

Goleta’s Living Room

Jordan was brought onto this job by Jordan Zeeb, whose family has been the majority, albeit mostly silent, owner of The Ellwood since its inception. Raised in Salem, Oregon, where his family owns a multifaceted and very successful development company called Jet Industries, Zeeb fell in love with Santa Barbara while playing basketball for SBCC in the mid-2000s and living on Abrego Road in Isla Vista. 

“I did the whole Freebirds burrito and walking to DP every weekend thing,” said Zeeb, who remembers riding his bike to The Beachside in those days, which was his first time living away from home. “It was a ton of fun. It was a really special time in my life, personally.”

He eventually settled in Scottsdale, which is where he met both Jordan (a tech marketing veteran originally from Redwood City) and Joe Diggs, who, along with Omar Khashen, was the UCSB alum front man for the original project to replace The Beachside. “He got me involved little by little,” said Zeeb of how Diggs drew his family’s financing into the project. “I was interested immediately.”

Originally, Zeeb stayed out of the way of operations. But as the business started to plateau, he asked Jordan to get involved. “I feel like a lot of people were priced out. That’s never something we want to do, and Colin helped me see a lot of that,” said Zeeb, who treats this as a “passion project” rather than an income driver. “It’s always hard to turn the ship, but that’s one of Colin’s super powers. He can pivot very fast.” 

Zeeb visits frequently, such as when he flew in for 24 hours to see the Nash Nites performance on The Ellwood’s lawn a couple Saturdays ago. They plan to host many more concerts and private events at that outdoor venue, although the plans for developing a standalone burger shack out of a shipping container appear to be on hold for now. 

“I’d much rather have a fun vibe and everybody smiling and laughing and watching the sunset than have it be kinda empty and make the same amount of money,” said Zeeb of the new vision. “It’s not really about us anymore. It’s a simple matter of giving the people of Goleta what they want. That’s the biggest focus. We want to become their living room again.”

The Ellwood, 5905 Sandspit Rd., Goleta; (805) 767-5047; theellwood.com