Top Southeast Asian Restaurant in Santa Barbara
Sama Sama Kitchen
1208 State St, Santa Barbara, CA 93101, United States
Southeast Asian style (Indonesian focused) eatery with some of the best food and drinks I’ve had in a long time. The ultra friendly service, the rich ambiance, and the amazing food really makes this place stand out, especially considering it receives acclaim in many public websites about the best food in Santa Barbara.The food here is inspired by southeast Asian themes with a focus on Indonesian culture. There are plates such as pork noodles (amazing), ribs (also amazing), and many other meat based rib and rice bowls. Everything was delicious and looked beautiful!They have a wide variety of cocktails and nonalcoholic drinks. It ranges from seltzer’s, to fresh tea, to highly sophisticated margaritas with unique ingredients I never thought of. I’d highly recommend their gin-based cocktails, as well as the Mezcal margarita, some of the best cocktail experiences I’ve ever had.Be prepared to wait to be seated or come right when they open. This place is highly popular and for a good reason. This restaurant is listed on multiple websites as one of the best places to eat in Santa Barbara, and I can confirm that it is. As such, you will need to prepare to come here, but it is going to be worth your weight. After you eat, you can walk all the way back down in State Street in Itzá really good experience to let your food settle and enjoy the beautiful city in Santa Barbara is.Absolutely recommended.
Your Choice Restaurant
3404 State St, Santa Barbara, CA 93105, United States
I have been coming to this restaurant for at least 10 years. The quality of the food and atmosphere has only gotten better with the years. This is rare with restaurants in Santa Barbara but if there is one secret to keeping your doors open and lasting longer than a few years as a restaurant owner in this town it would be not cutting corners with the food. Santa Barbara locals are a tough crowd. We know when you do this and we will stop coming as soon as the food gets cheap and the quality takes a dive.On the other hand, if you keep making things *better* word gets out and people will come. This is the case with Your Choice Thai. When I used to go here years ago with friends it was decent Thai food. Nothing to complain about. Now? The ingredients are so fresh, the dishes are all so well made.When I compare it to other newer Thai restaurants in Santa Barbara and Goleta I already know which ones will be closed in the next few years if they cant figure out how to make a decent Curry sauce!They have a great (efficient) take out service in the front of the house with plenty of room for people to wait for their orders without disturbing the folks staying for dinner. And trust me, you will see a crowd of people waiting for their take out on certain nights of the week! They have three walls worth of booths with the back wall booths flexible for large parties. The center of the dining room has tables that can be arranged to fit various sized parties and the entire front of the house also has tables looking out across Upper State Street and Loretto Plaza.Thats another thing to make a note of, this *not* the location (Your Place) on Milpas Street, this is on Upper State Street. (Your Choice) There is plenty of parking but it does get full during dinner time. Not to worry though, there is parking on the side streets in the San Roque neighborhood.I almost dont want everyone to know about my favorite Thai restaurant because this will make them even busier. But as long as they keep the quality of their food and dining experience top notch it should be ok! They really have earned it.One last thing, the service. They are basically a well oiled machine at this point. They have added a lot of new staff from what I have seen. Some of the newer servers are very green but all of them are very friendly and polite. The more seasoned servers will serve you your first cup of tea and ladle your first cup of soup for you. Newer servers are more likely to just put it down on the table and leave you to it. However no matter who is serving you they are all interested in helping you with whatever it is you need. If you are waiting for your take out order they will check on it for you and find out how much longer it will be, whatever specific need you have will always be attended to by whomever catches your eye first. I have never experienced any rudeness or inefficiency with anyone there. Just levels of experience. Which is completely forgivable.This is basically the restaurant I will go to when I want to br guaranteed to have a positive experience. So far I have never been disappointed.Pictured: Phad Thai with Tofu, Thom Kha soup with Veggies, Green Tea, Pa Nang Curry with Tofu and rice. My Mom and I had a wonderful vegetarian spread. We dont always go vegetarian but felt like it the other night. It was perfect. The leftovers were amazing too.
Saigon Restaurant
721 Chapala St, Santa Barbara, CA 93101, United States
Unfortunately, both of my recent take-out experiences with this restaurant were unacceptable. I will do my best to describe.Visit 1: Called ahead, was told food would be ready in 15 minutes. Showed up 20 minutes later and food was not ready. Sat and waited over half an hour before our food was ready. Not great.Visit 2: Called ahead, and placed an order for a couple of entrees and some dumplings. We arrive at the restaurant and the woman confirms the order with us twice. We pay and leave.Once we got home we realized that the dumplings were not included in our order, but we were still charged for them. We call the restaurant and they insisted we drive back to pick them up, which we didnt want to do. Instead, I requested a refund for the amount of the dumplings and the woman refused to honor my request. She would not issue a refund for such a small amount and insisted the we come back again.The employee of the restaurant assured us that if we let her know that she made a mistake previously that she would make it up to us by giving us extra food on our next visit. Unfortunately, she didnt ask for our name, or take down any of our information. Not the slightest bit reassuring...This is beyond poor customer service. This restaurant made a mistake, and all it would have taken to smooth it over was a small refund. Instead, they made their point.
Top other services in Santa Barbara:
Chois Oriental Market
185 S Patterson Ave D, Santa Barbara, CA 93111, United States
Honestly, the Central Coast is an Asian food desert so Goleta is a gold mine! I grew up in LA and cheap, authentic Asian food is everywhere. Since I moved to the Central Coast, places like Chois Oriental Market is a gold mine. The prices arent the best, the variety isnt either...but I cant really complain because its a blessing that this place exists!+ Great little market with all the essentials. They got Asian snacks, drinks, noodles, food items, and other Asian cooking essentials+ Easy parking+ Small, cozy dining area but we didnt have a hard time finding seating. We also didnt have a wait either.+ For first timers: Order/pay at the cash register, bring your receipt to the kitchen, find seating, wait for food. Pretty easy but it can be confusing if its your first time here.+ Atmosphere isnt really great, but it has a really authentic Asian vibe lol.+ Decent selection of Korean staples+ Banchan selection is okay+ Jajangmyeon is legit here! Super slurpy and chewy noodles, saucy, and good portion.+ Small restroom in the back where the kitchen is.+ Service is efficient and fast. Not the warmest, but not rude either. Just...busy?
Empty Bowl Gourmet Noodle Bar
38 W Victoria St #109, Santa Barbara, CA 93101, United States
Went to grab lunch with a coworker and experienced the worst customer service that I have ever had here. There was no line, the counter seats were full, we went right up to the register and were not asked if we wanted our food for there or to go, we ordered our meals and drinks and waited. We were then told we couldnt sit down in an extremely rude manner when two seats opened up at the counter and were interrogated about our order. When I explained that we were not asked if we wanted our food for there or to go and expected to eat it there, we were greeted with a sarcastic well you shouldve asked even though my job is not to do someone elses job for them. I mentioned that the seats were also first come first serve and she just started repeating herself. She refused to back down, and began arguing back and forth with me. Not really sure why people work a customer service role if they just are going to be condescending and rude. We waited for quite a bit for our food, noticing that other people who ordered the same dish after us were getting theirs. We finally got our food and i asked for no chili oil in my khao soi, yet it was very obvious they had put a good amount of chili oil in mine, the crunchy noodles were completely crushed up, almost to a dust as if someone had intentionally crushed the noodles in their hand. Chicken was dry and the piece of chicken was extremely small.Not sure what is going on with this place. The last few months the quality has gone down, they have forgotten to put the crunchy noodles in my order twice, and the workers are so rude and look like the last place they want to be is there, they always have an attitude. Disappointing, especially when youre spending almost $20 on a noodle dish. Meal was barely edible due to the absurd amount of chili oil they put in, 4/10 stars. Customer service was 0/10 stars
Three Monkeys
38 W Victoria St #115, Santa Barbara, CA 93101, United States
If you are thinking of ordering from Empty Bowl, get your appetizers and proteins from here. Or take a chance and order noodles from here. Youre gonna wait for 30min for your order from Empty Bowl. So if you are there with your buds or on a date, endure the wait with a beer. If you are with hungry people/kids/monkeys, get your food from Three Monkeys.I ordered the Hat Yai fried Chicken, TWICE, because my two kids devoured it so fast before noodles from Empty Bowl arrived. The beef skewers were also very tasty, tender and not dry!I would strongly recommend this place.
Your Place Restaurant
22 N Milpas St A, Santa Barbara, CA 93103, United States
After sifting through the Yelp Santa Barbara Thai reviews we went here today, Sunday 6/9/13. This restaurant is in a nice building in plain sight from the street and not in a strip mall. It was almost 100% full capacity when we arrived around 5 pm. Its mostly Thai but it also appeals to the generic Chinese take-out crowd with its chow mein, Mongolian Beef, WonTon Soup, Cashew Chicken, etc.Ordered the Laab/pork as an appetizer @ $9.95, it was very tasty, spicy, lots of mint, but not seeing or tasting any toasted rice powder, not really a dish worth $9.95 as for the size of the portion........daughter got the honey roast duck with a delicious plum sauce (more like a clear plum juice) on the side @ $14.95. This dish is half a duck, deep-fried and it came cut up, maybe to give the illusion of a large meal. But this portion was again not worth the price for its amount. Not much meat at all to justify $14.95 and no detectable honey in this dish. The wing was pure fried skin to a crisp with nothing edible on itSon got the sliced garlic pepper beef @ $10.95. Very crispy and tasty, and its basically like wok fried Chinese orange beef-but once again not a fair portion size, with just not many pieces of sliced beef and hardly enough for one person. I got the spicy mint noodles with chicken, also very good. This was probably the only meal we saw which was worth its price @$10.95.Additional critiques: All dishes were TOO SALTY. Even my two teens thought they were too salty. We love Thai food and I make it very often at home. But these meals were not Nam Pla salty, they were like table salt, salty, and it ruined the food. Most Thai food is sweet, salty, sour and spicy. But Your Places chef lacks that balance, as far as the several dishes we tried.The Laab needed the authentic rice powder, and the beef, the Laab, and the noodle dish needed less salt and more palm sugar.We had jasmine rice and we asked for rice wine vinegar, but they do not have that, which is strange for all the Asian food bases they cover here. Instead, the waitress offered us a very welcome surprise with the delicious condiment tray which is 3 separate sauces-1-Thai sweet and hot dressing, 2-pickled jalapenos, and 3- a crushed dried Thai pepper seeds. The crushed is volcanic, which was very satisfying. I use Thai birds and serranos and habeneros at home this was the hottest condiment I have ever been served. My mouth was on fire and I needed several ice water refills! lolThe service was very attentive, decor and seating cozy, with assorted Asian and Thai artifacts and art work. Its a cultural thing at some Asian establishments where they arent being rude or annoyed toward you, I think they are just caught up in their service they forget to smile! It didnt bother me.I might go back but I would them request them to dial down the heavy salt, and ask for Nam Pla on the side, and also ask for more sweetening in the dishes.
Flavor of India
3026 State St, Santa Barbara, CA 93105, United States
Flavor of India has been in Santa Barbara for as long as I can remember - and I was born and raised here. Now that I am in my mid-thirties I have seen it go through a few changes. Mostly cosmetic and some functional but the food seems to be getting better with time.Which is why FOI has lasted so long in a town where new restaurants come and go as quickly as the staff in the Trump Administration! But seriously, as a local, a good tip for how good a place in town might be is to find out how long they have been here. While not definitive it is a solid clue. Its too expensive and there are too many amazing restaurants for anyone with bad food and bad service to last very long here.Back to India... I mentioned their look. They were always delicious but I think the recent opening of other Indian restaurants as well as Asian and Southeast Asian cuisine in town has caused them them to step up their game. I was pleasantly surprised a few nights ago when I walked in to see the entire place had a makeover from their dingy white walls and faded menus. (I still went for the food not the atmosphere.)Logistically they got rid of their all you can eat buffet. I think this was probably a shrewd business move on their end and I am very happy for them if it is helping their business. It also elevated the entire experience in my opinion and gives the main dining area a more open feel.Everything about the new look of Flavor of India is why I decided to spend some time today writing this review. It looks great! I also wanted to reiterate the fact that the food has not changed in all these years that I have been going there. If anything it has gotten better.There is only one small issue I think the owners and management should address for the sake of their customers. It seems like it should be an easy fix too.The lighting. Its too dark!Im only 37 years old and I actually have decent night vision but I struggled to read the menu without my cellphone glow or awkwardly angling the menu in the any direction that had some light in it. There is simply not enough light at the tables to adequately read your menu.Might I suggest a fake candle or adding a brighter bulb to the overhead lights at the tables?? Perhaps instead of 40 watts just 60 instead??Thats it! The food and atmosphere are great and you are a solid institution of Indian cuisine in Santa Barbara that has been around the longest.Let that light shine bright so I can give you five stars!
Galanga Thai Restaurant
507 State St, Santa Barbara, CA 93101, United States
I normally wouldnt write a review but my experience here was really bad. I got their vegetable fried rice with tofu no egg no fish sauce for the first time and I loved it at first. When I came home my cheeks were flushed red and puffy. Immediately I knew I had an allergic reaction or was experiencing some kind of food poisoning. I took over the counter medication and that seemed to make it worse. I couldnt sleep all night because my mouth my throat were dry. It felt like my throat was clogged up. I couldnt breathe from my nose at all so I had to breathe from my mouth. My mouth was very dry and dehydrated. I was fine before I ordered and ate the food. Now Im having post nasal drip, sinus infection, and abdominal pain. If you are sensitive to food please think twice before ordering here. It could have been a mistake but cross contamination is real. I never felt the way I did before.