Local Restaurants > Find a Local Restaurant

Find a Local Restaurant

Find local restaurants in and around the beautiful coastal city of Santa Barbara. There are tons of great restaurants on State Street, as well as in the surrounding cities like Goleta, Solvang and in Isla Vista (by UCSB). Click above to see them all.
Find local restaurants all around Ventura County, CA, home of year-round perfect weather and great food. Search our restaurant listings in Ventura, Oxnard, Malibu (technically LA County, Simi Valley, Ojai, Thousand Oaks and more.

More Local Restaurant Listings to Come...

Local Saute will be listing more and more local restaurants all over the nation as time goes on. We'll stay true to our commitment of helping independent, non-chain restaurants as we grow our local restaurant guides. We know our family of foodies and restaurant owners need a place like localsaute.org where they can find independent, local restaurants with all the best food available in their area. Please keep checking in with us, and please feel free to submit your ideas for the next, great foodie community that we should feature at Local Saute.
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What Makes Local Restaurants so great?

Independent, local restaurants are built around the very idea of cooking great food - actually cooking it - not re-heating it after it's been trucked in from the corporate warehouse a thousand miles away. Foodies want dishes that have actually been cooked by a chef or a local restaurateur who wants to show us exactly what cooking with passion means. Whether it's the best pizza you've ever had, the best French gourmet cuisine you've ever tasted, or the best, most-eclectic, most-awesome combination of ingredients you've ever tasted together on one plate, Local Saute is here to turn you on to the best, local restaurants you can find. 

The Best Restaurants Use the Best Local Ingredients

Real foodies know that to find the best food in town, you need to look for the best, locally-owned and operated restaurants, not chains or franchises. When you're looking for a great restaurant, it's important to seek out the restaurants that use the freshest, local ingredients that the region has to offer. The regions in and around Santa Barbara and Ventura County, for example, encompass some of the best areas in the world to find fresh produce, fresh seafood, local wines and high-quality, local meats. We're even able to capitalize on the greatest wine regions in the world, ranging from Napa Valley and Sonoma in the North, Lodi's appellations in the Central Valley, Paso Robles along the Golden Coast, and all the way south, beyond Los Angeles, to Temecula's wine region.
You won't find any chain, franchise or fast food restaurants here at Local Saute. Just listings of the best, local, independent restaurants.
With all of the local agriculture to take advantage of, it's almost hard not to have a great restaurant experience in Santa Barbara or Ventura County. That's another reason why our local restaurants are so much better than the chain restaurants: our ingredients are found locally, right in our back yards - almost literally! While the chain restaurants get their ingredients (and even completely pre-assembled dishes) shipped in from a central hub somewhere, only to have things re-heated at the restaurant level, our local restaurants are able to make things from fresh ingredients that are grown locally.
As foodies, we love the difference that fresh ingredients make in any dish. And when you can get it fresh at our great, independent local restaurants, there's no reason to spend time in a chain restaurant.