The Hitching Post Casmalia
From the Los Olivos Wine & Spirits Emporium Newsletter 1.3
August 23, 1996
There are different ways to analyze a restaurant. Mostly it depends on your attitude going in. Are you looking for the nouvellest food on the continent? Do you equate fine dining with fine linen and tuxedoed waiters? Or, will your experience be a disappointment if the meal doesn't include sun-dried tomatoes, a half-pint of cream or designer pizza? If this is what turns you on, read no further. On the other hand, if you hunger for one of those world-class hidden gems that only the locals know about, read on!
While many restaurants try to make their cuisine look like art, at the Hitching Post, their food has been raised to the level of art, perfected by years of experience. For the past 45 years or so (it depends on who you talk to and when they start counting), they've been putting on an old-fashioned western feast, Santa Maria style.
Because we're so fascinated by how they do it, we'll describe their food by describing their system. What you'll first find when you are seated in the rustic cowboy atmosphere of the well-worn dining room (filled with momentoes and pictures of the Ostini family who have owned and run the place for most of a half century) is (if you're old enough) a childhood memory: an oblong glass boat filled with green onions, olives, radishes, pickles and carrot sticks chilled on ice. They're accompanied by the similarly old-fashioned wicker basket full of plastic wrapped crackers like melba toast or onion and garlic flavored bread sticks; and little pats of butter (also wrapped, of course).
Your order for one of the full dinners goes to the "kitchen" where it is stuck up on a wall with clothes pins, just behind the chef. Kitchen is in quotations because most of what passes for the kitchen is the single hearth where the entrees are cooked over wood. Presaging the current trendy fashion, the Hitching Post long ago put its BBQ pit on view right behind a glass wall towards the back of the restaurant. Probably your entree will go onto the grill at this point (though there's something about the way they use those clothes pins that helps the chef to decide the right instant to start your selection), and you'll be brought a small chilled-metal cup of shrimp cocktail. (Do you feel like you've stepped into a time warp here?). Just as youve finished the shrimp, your salad of crisp chilled iceberg lettuce comes along (with oil and vinegar, thousand island, blue cheese, or Italian dressing). We always get the feeling that they worked backwards to figure out just what they could serve to keep you eating and happy for just exactly the right amount of time, since just as you have finished your salad, the main course arrives, just like clockwork, right on time.
This is a good point to stop and explain "Santa Maria" style barbecue. Grown from the cowboy heritage of ranches in the Santa Ynez valley, the traditional meal is meat seasoned with salt, pepper and garlic powder cooked over wood on a grate that can be moved up and down to regulate the cooking. Traditional "sides" include macaroni and cheese, green salad, salsa and small pink beans called "pinquitos" that are only grown in the area. You don't get any sticky red sauces, or for that matter, any sauces at all. The taste is all in the quality of the meat and the way it is cooked over the smoky wood.
At the Hitching Post you won't find the macaroni and cheese (enough IS enough, already) and they've replaced the pinquitos with French fries. But dont complain about the break with custom, for these are absolutely some of the BEST fries you will ever taste (or there's baked potato and sour cream if you so desire). You will get the salsa, along with garlic bread (toasted on the fire) to sop up any juices left on your plate.
Since getting there is so much of the fun, we haven't yet told you about the main course, which for most people is steak. Steak in small cuts, steak in large cuts, steak in super-sized cuts, inches thick and hand-width wide. All of it cooked "Santa Maria style" with the Hitching Post's own seasoning blend. Except for Saturday (when there isn't enough room on the grill to compete with all that steak), you can get full or half racks of pork ribs and on Sundays only there's a half chicken. If you really aren't up for a red meat fix, you can usually order lobster, fish of the day, chicken breast or quail. Some of the items are available as appetizers, along with grilled mushrooms or grilled artichokes (which, it turns out, is an exceptionally good preparation method). This isn't haute cuisine, just down-home, family style good cooking that hits the spot in more ways than one. It isn't just a good meal, but a friendly place where people are obviously enjoying themselves.
To top it all off, the dinner even comes with coffee and a dish of sherbet or ice cream (and you can even ask for chocolate syrup on top). Full dinners start at about $14 (our favorite, the half-rack of ribs), steaks will be more, depending on the size. All of it is a really good value.
Wine lovers will find a decent and varied, reasonably priced list ministered over by Los Olivos Wine and Spirits Emporium tasting room master, Bob Senn. The list even includes some very good Hitching Post label wine, co-made by one of the Ostinis.
Visitors to the area will also find the Hitching Post #2 restaurant in Buellton which is very good and much the same, but just different enough so that we have to say this review is for folks visiting the Casmalia location.
The Casmalia Hitching Post is just off the road that runs from Lompoc to Vandenberg Air Force Base to Santa Maria, except that you have to take the detour around the washed out part if you're coming from the Base side. Its about 8 miles from Santa Maria, or 17 miles or so from Lompoc. Reservations at (805) 937-6151 are a very good idea.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Right now the Casmalia Hitching Post is celebrating it's fiftieth anniversay. The Ostini Family has owned it since 1952.
Since the writing of this review, the Casmalia Hitching Post has gotten their own web site . . . .