Industrial Eats Consuming Buellton Foodies

About nine years ago, my naïve notion that caterers were just cooks who couldn’t make it in the restaurant business was shattered to pieces when, under the glow of candlelight in the chapel of La Purísima Mission at a dinner honoring vintner Richard Sanford, I became enchanted with a bowl of smoked-boar-and-pumpkin soup. The culprits — who also served truffle tamales that evening, among other eye-opening delicacies — were Jeff and Janet Olsson, owners of New West Catering. It was the first of my frequently repeated lesson as to why they’re the best chefs for any event in Santa Barbara wine country: They are able to seamlessly blend boundary-pushing culinary creativity with the rustic, homegrown charms of the Santa Ynez Valley.

Last December, after 14 years only focused on New West — which they purchased in January 2000 with the primary motivation of relocating to the Central Coast — the Olssons opened their first restaurant, Industrial Eats, right next door to their catering headquarters on the warehouse-lined, now action-packed strip of Industrial Way in Buellton. Ever since, come lunch or dinner time any day of the week, you’ve had to jostle for an open seat.

“The germ of the idea was a retail outlet for the stuff that our friends and customers were always asking to buy,” said Jeff, referring to the many meats he cures himself and the specialty items he buys for catering. “That sort of grew into this.”