With the way food prices have crept up these days, I’m always on high alert for a bargain deal, which is exactly what I found at Santa Barbara Pizza House. Not only do they have a nice selection of $15 lunch specials — all served with a side of their excellent Caesar salad — they also have a good-sized free parking lot in the back of the building (they’re located on the 500 block of State Street, and the lot is on the one-block-long Fig Avenue, between Haley and Cota streets).
I met with owner Erin Khodabandehlou recently to chat about being a restauranteur in Santa Barbara and try out some of her lunch specials. A graduate of the SBCC Culinary Program, the former manager of the previous restaurant in the location (Patxi's Pizza), and mother of two increasingly independent kids, Khodabandehlou decided the time was ripe for her to become an entrepreneur when the space became available and do the business the way she always wanted to.
“As my kids were like teenagers, they were all grown up. I'm like, what is my passion? I love doing it. And then this opportunity came, the location was available,” and she was all in, said Khodabandehlou.