Gather Around
- 2 days ago
- 3 min read
Chef Budi Kazali is helping redefine Santa Ynez wine country at The Gathering Table, with cuisine rooted in local farms and community.
By Lily Dougherty
Photography Silas Fallstich
The windmills are still there. So are the aebleskiver and pastries in the bakery windows, the half-timbered facades and gabled rooftops that cheerfully announce that you have arrived in the Danish-themed hamlet of Solvang. Yet, a short walk from the tourist drag, Chef Budi Kazali is serving up something different.
The Gathering Table doesn't announce itself loudly. It doesn't need to. Walk in and you feel a warmth that has less to do with lighting than with the particular ease of a room where people actually want to be. The staff move with it. They laugh with each other. They seem, against all odds in an industry known for high rates of burn out, to enjoy being at work.
Budi has thought carefully about this. “I would rather have you want to be there than have to be there,” he says of his team. The ones who feel that way, are the ones worth keeping. “Those are the people that will work with you instead of just for somebody.” It's a small distinction, but one that informs Budi’s approach to hospitality, and the restaurant itself. His own son, although he is only fourteen, is eager to run the business someday and it is purely because he wants to, not because he has to. And I can’t think of better proof that Budi’s philosophy works.
Chef Budi grew up in Santa Barbara, went to cooking school, and then began working his way through kitchens in San Francisco and Boston. The Santa Ynez Valley pulled him back in 2004, when a place called The Ballard Inn came up for sale and he took the leap. Like kismet, Sideways arrived the same year and the Santa Ynez wine country blossomed into something new. “It blew up the whole entire valley,” Budi says, with the quiet satisfaction of someone who seems to have bet on a place before the rest of the world caught on.
Most people think of wine when they think of Santa Ynez. Budi thinks about what's growing between the vines. “People will say, ‘Oh, the grapes grow really well in this area.’ And yeah they do, but the produce is incredible.” The farmers here have been at it for generations, quietly building reputations amongst the Southern California restaurant scene. Budi jokes that he’s run into his local purveyors as far south as Los Angeles farmer’s markets. “These are all farmers from the valley,” he says. “Right here. We're so blessed to be able to use them.”
The ecosystem of farm to table, and winery to restaurant is what sustains a place like Solvang. When the farms do well, the restaurants have something worth cooking. “That's why we came here—the love of wine and food pairing together. That's what I really love,” Budi says. When the wineries pull people in, the whole ecosystem breathes easier. It goes the other direction too. “Everyone's feeling it,” he says of the region’s growth. “The wineries, the farmers—not just me, but everywhere and everyone.” One thread pulls, and the whole fabric shifts. The only answer is to keep going, keep supporting what's local, keep the money moving through the community that created it. “Spend it locally,” he says. “Help everybody up. That's how you move the economy.”
This is the part that doesn't make it onto the menu, but shapes everything that does. His black cod comes from local waters, and the hamachi has become something close to a signature dish, but Budi resists the idea of a fixed menu built around monuments. The seasons shape what's on the plate. The menu is less a document than a conversation between the kitchen and the farmers, between what's ready and what the moment calls for. Budi explains that he'd like to do more with Solvang's Danish roots and work to weave the town’s history into the food. “That's something I really want to do more research on,” he says.
What Budi is doing, captures a new wave of energy that is taking shape across the valley, expanding the frame without abandoning the picture. Wine gave the valley permission to be more than quaint, farmers gave it something real to build on, and chefs like Budi are turning it into more than a destination. The valley raised him. He's still here. That, as much as any dish, is what the Gathering Table is serving.
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