The Lucky Penny

We found a lot of pennies on the facade of  The Lucky Penny restaurant in the “Funk Zone” of Santa Barbara. The restaurant created the unusual tiles by attaching thousands of pennies to an adhesive surface. The resultant walls were cheaper than tile and much more interesting. It is quintessential Funk Zone art.  The Funk Zone used to be a few blocks near the beach with old warehouses and wooden shacks and quonset huts populated by make-shift artist studios, surf board makers, and antique/ junk shops. Today it is an up and coming  “cool” area of town with quirky restaurants like The Lucky Penny.

We saw the pennies on the wall and were lured to order breakfast. Dana had an order of wood-fired eggs with salsa verde, fingerling potatoes, chorizo, cotija cheese and fresh cilantro. The egg dish was baked in a cast iron pot served so hot from the oven, steam was rising from the bowl.  Dana blew on it, took one bite and declared it, “Delicious”  We think the magic in the taste was created by the wood firing of the ingredients.  It took awhile to bake but the wait was worth it.

Being the more weight obsessed of the two of us, I ordered house-made granola.  I was saved from being a martyr as it came with pepitas, Meyer lemon zest, mint yogurt, apples, grapes, pears and strawberries. Yum…

A note to our readers:

Every Wednesday before we go to work in La Huerta garden we go out to breakfast. We set up a little compare and contrast competition for all of the restaurants we sample. The Lucky Penny is the winner for great service, excellent food and interesting ambiance. And our waitress was from Eldorado, New Mexico. She even went to Eldorado Community School. It was fun to talk with her about home. So as it turns out, those pennies really were lucky… for us.