36 EAST ORTEGA STREET
SANTA BARBARA, CA 93101
805.965.1113
THEBLACKSHEEPSB.COM
The world needs more places like The Black Sheep, the colorful, friendly, innovative restaurant that opened in spring 2015. Convivial owner, Ruben Perez, loves to share and talk about good food and wine, and in the kitchen, his father, Chef Robert, brings passion and decades of haute cuisine experience to a menu of shareable plates featuring Latin and Asian accents. The thinly sliced scallop crudo comes with a candied carrot purée, frisée, scallions, ginger-chili mirin and “white” soy vinaigrette, while the beef bone- marrow bruschetta features the rich marrow balanced with a parsley-shallot salad, whole-grain mustard and a red wine sauce. Tender meat slides effortlessly from wild-boar ribs to combine with Asian cabbage and a unique blend of Asian fish sauce with ginger and sriracha. The buratta salad is a benchmark of its kind that also includes fresh in-season fruit, and the daily-changing risotto makes a great shared dish. The shoyu ramen with slow-roasted pork belly and roasted shiitake mushrooms provides a tantalizing surprise for noodle lovers. Larger dishes include sea bass with chorizo and a braised New Zealand lamb shank with Indian spices. Nearly forty microbrew beers are available by the bottle, as is a well-considered list of primarily California wines.
