Jeff Olsson

Where It Started Industrial Eats is the primary marker in Olsson’s career: a Buellton address tied to live-fire, straight-from-the-source cooking and to the kind of food that keeps craft close to origin. The work carries culinary creativity with rustic, homegrown charms, a combination that gives his cooking its family resemblance across projects. Before and alongside that Buellton identity, Olsson also cofounded New West Catering. That fact matters in the shape of his career because catering demands food that travels beyond the usual boundaries of a kitchen while still arriving with intention; in Olsson’s case, the through-line remains direct cooking, full flavor, and a sense of place. His specialties make that style legible: unique and flavorful pizzas, a garlic-laden Caesar salad, and vegetarian or meat entrees that hold the same generous register. Those dishes are not isolated signatures so much as a working vocabulary, the kind a chef repeats because guests recognize themselves in it.

Who Shaped Them The named influences in Olsson’s story are not a roster of formal teachers; they are the ventures he helped create and the communities that answered back. Industrial Eats gave the Buellton side of that story a durable form, while New West Catering widened the frame. In Lompoc, the response around Eye on I has become part of the lineage. Olsson put it plainly: "Customers in Lompoc are adventurous." That sentence says a great deal about the exchange between cook and room: the chef brings fire, flavor, and nerve; the guests bring permission to keep going. There is also gratitude in the exchange. Speaking of Eye on I, he said, "I am amazed at how well we’ve been received; people have come up to me and expressed their gratitude for Eye being here." In a career built around cofounding and co-ownership, reception is not background noise; it is one of the forces that shapes what the work can become.

The Work Today

In 2021, Olsson became chef and co-owner of Eye on I in Lompoc. Written beside Industrial Eats and New West Catering, that role extends a career built through ownership, collaboration, and kitchens with a direct relationship to their guests. Across these projects, he has been a driving force in raising Santa Barbara County wine country’s cuisine. The phrase fits because the work is specific rather than abstract: live fire, straight-from-the-source cooking, pizzas with character, Caesar sharpened by garlic, and entrees that do not divide hospitality into vegetarian and meat as separate ambitions. The family story, then, is not about a single inherited technique or a named master-apprentice chain. It is about a chef whose formation can be read through the places he helped found, the county whose cuisine he helped lift, and the diners who met his rustic creativity with appetite.

Signature

Jeff's signature dishes include smoked-boar-and-roasted-pumpkin soup, white shrimp with pancetta, and garlicky Caesar salad.

In Their Words “I am amazed at how well we’ve been received; people have come up to me and expressed their gratitude for Eye being here.”