Now that it’s raining again — and we must keep alive hopes for a longer springtime vestige of the Godzilla El Niño promised — meet me at Dutch Garden to celebrate. That’s right: Any damned tourist can tell you where to sip suds and eat tacos al fresco when the sun shines, but it takes a real Santa Barbaran with poetry in his or her soul to lead you to a rendezvous beneath the Dutch’s tin roof when Mother Nature decides to let loose.
It’s not like they need the business. “We’re doing so great right now,” confessed Ken Luetjen, who has kept the rustic chic of DG alive with his wife, Laurie Luetjen, for 32 years. “It’s not like there is a pattern to the business or that it just jumped in the last year. Let’s just say I have three days off a week, and lately most of the time I’m in here anyways.”
So what’s different about the four-day-a-week business? “We haven’t changed a thing,” he laughed, although there are dinner specials like the chuck goulash, sweetbreads, and quite-rare chili night. If there is a secret weapon, it’s the soup, often made from unexpected veg like Jerusalem artichoke. “It’s just what’s available and what I feel like cooking,” said Luetjen, who’s made whimsical soups delicious since the first Bush years.