Hip and History Intersect at Intermezzo

In late 2019, after a series of disappointments and near-deals for other establishments, John O’Neill suddenly found himself buying the Wine Cask, one of Santa Barbara’s largest and most iconic restaurants. 

For insider insight, O’Neill — who was raised in Boston but has lived here for nearly three decades — turned to the two men who’d run the Anacapa Street institution the longest: Doug Margerum, who bought the place in 1981 with his family and turned it into both a fine-dining mecca and a launching pad for the region’s winemakers; and bouchon owner Mitchell Sjerven, who, alongside Margerum, managed the restaurant from 2009 to 2017 following a brief, ill-fated ownership by a different proprietor. 

“Not that I needed their blessing, but for me, it was all about paying respect to the past — that’s very important to me,” said O’Neill, a former punk-rock musician whose professional background is in both banking and hospitality, having cofounded Elements Restaurant in 2004 after running La Marina at the Biltmore, Left at Albuquerque, and the Endless Summer. “It was about keeping some of the Wine Cask’s history,” said O’Neill, “but dragging its knuckles into the next millennium.”