Sushi by Scratch Restaurants: Montecito

Seventeen courses from the counter

The nigiri is shaped in front of the guest, one bite at a time. Philip Frankland Lee , Executive Chef at Sushi by Scratch Restaurants: Montecito in Santa Barbara, holds the sequence as tightly as the rice. His station is the omakase bar, where the meal moves by chef’s choice rather than by order slip, and where the pacing, the explanation, and the handwork sit in the same line of sight. Lee is also co-owner of Scratch Restaurants Group, which makes this counter part of a larger house style without letting the room become anonymous. The work here depends on authorship at close range: a bite formed, sauced, seared, and handed across while the next course is already being readied. His published biography gives the role plainly, Executive Chef at this Montecito restaurant, with the broader work of co-ownership around it. What it does state is the form: modern omakase sushi, arranged as a chef-led sequence in which order and restraint matter as much as the individual cut.

Toyosu fish and Santa Barbara uni

The counter works in 17 courses, with rare fish flown from Tokyo’s Toyosu Market and local Santa Barbara catches used where the night allows. The structure gives Lee and the team a narrow path: each piece must land as its own gesture, then make room for the next. Bluefin Tessin carries ponzu, matcha salt, wasabi, lemon rice, salmon roe, and avocado. Hamachi can arrive with corn pudding and sourdough crumbs from Margarita Kallas-Lee’s bread. Bone Marrow Nigiri and Wagyu Nigiri move the meal into a richer register, often with heat applied in front of the room. The chefs hand-shape the rice, apply freshly ground wasabi, beet mustard, house soy, and other condiments course by course, then explain the choice before the bite leaves the bench-side. A bartender and sake sommelier sits within the small working team, keeping sake, cocktails, whiskey, beer, and wine in conversation with the fish rather than apart from it.

A wooden bar built for watching

The room is narrow in spirit even before the first course lands: a dimly lit wooden sushi bar, 10 seats, the counter pulled close enough that the preparation becomes the atmosphere. Guests watch rice warmed in the hand, fish brushed or seared, nori wrapped, garnish placed with the small certainty that a single bite requires. Before each course, the chef’s explanation gives a little of the method without turning the meal into instruction. This is not a dining room that hides its labor behind a pass. The pass is the room.

The measure is the handoff

Sushi by Scratch Restaurants: Montecito. Awards can mark consistency, and the counter shows repeated handoffs across the same small span of wood, each one exposed to the guest before it is eaten. If the meal ends on sweetness, it still belongs to the same discipline that shaped the fish, the rice, and the Bone Marrow Nigiri.