Ostini’s father died in 1977, and four years later his mother sold the place to him and his brother Bill. “In 1986,” he says, “we decided to open a second restaurant. At first, Bill and I traded back and forth between the two places, but he was a traditionalist and I was more of an innovator, so in 1993 we split the businesses.”
Expanding the basic steak-and-beans-and-salsa menu, Ostini started grilling artichokes, for which central California is justly famous, and began serving them with a mayonnaise turned savory with puréed smoked tomatoes and grilled onions and garlic. (These are so popular, says Ostini, that “one night a party got up and left because we were out of them.”) He added tender, juicy grilled quail to the menu, as well as ostrich steaks and meaty pork ribs with a light smoke flavor and a salt-and-pepper crust. (“You understand,” my waitress stressed when I ordered the ribs one night, “that there’s no barbecue sauce in the building.”) He was one of the first people in California to serve the now ubiquitous flatiron steak , a tender but flavorful squared-off shoulder cut that seems to soak up the flavor of the grill. “We honor the fire,” Ostini says.
Even though he never set foot in the university’s celebrated department of viticulture and enology when he was at U.C., Davis, Ostini also makes his own wines—more than 10,000 cases of Pinot Noir and other varietals—at a high-tech facility in Buellton, in partnership with onetime Alaskan salmon fisherman and Nipomo resident Gray Hartley.
What has made the Hitching Post II really famous, though, is “the movie,” as folks in this area like to say. That means Sideways, of course, Alexander Payne’s romantic comedy and paean to the Santa Barbara County wine country and its vintages—particularly Pinot Noir, and most definitely not Merlot. “We don’t advertise the Sideways connection,” says Ostini, “but there were five or six shots of the sign in the movie, and people say the name a lot in it, and Virginia Madsen’s character was a waitress here.” To say that “the movie” was good for business would be an understatement. But, Ostini stresses, “When the rush came, I said to everybody, ‘Listen, we have to fall back on the old ways—hard work, hospitality, good value, good quality food and wine—and remember that at the end of the day we still have to take the garbage out when we go home.’ ”
The Hitching Post II isn’t the only restaurant serving Santa Maria–style barbecue. The best-known one, actually in the town of Santa Maria, is Shaw’s (714 S. Broadway; 805-925-9226), a friendly place with casual ranch-style décor on one of the main drags. It is one of the few sit-down barbecue emporiums that serve tri-tip, which has become the definitive outdoor-barbecue meat in these parts—and it’s probably the best steak here.
The Far Western Tavern (899 Guadalupe St.; 805-343-2211), in Guadalupe, has a western-style bar and a dining room that would suggest a small hotel banquet facility were it not for the mounted trophies on the walls, including—somewhat disconcertingly for more sensitive beef eaters—a cow and a bull. The steak to have here is the “Bull’s Eye,” actually a rib eye, very juicy and pleasantly firm without being tough. The pinquito beans are superlative, the grilled bread is better than average, and the salad is big and fresh. There are also lots of local wines by both the glass and the bottle.
It always feels as if there’s a party going on at Jocko’s (125 N. Thompson St.; 805-929-3686), in Nipomo, a few miles over the San Luis Obispo County line. Gleaming lowriders, vintage Harleys, dusty pickup trucks, and white stretch limos carrying high rollers on wine-country tours share the parking lot, and there’s a lively bar scene pretty much all day long. The meat is very good—especially the firm, delicious spencer steak (yet another name for rib eye) and the filet mignon (which is an immense slab of rough-hewn meat, not what I’d call mignon at all), unusually flavorful for this cut. The salad is middling, but the pinquito beans are cooked perfectly and seasoned nicely, and there are some good regional wines (including Barnwood Cabernet Sauvignon and Edna Valley Pinot Noir) at $6 a glass.
The original Hitching Post, or Hitching Post I (3325 Point Sal Rd.; 805-937-6151), looks like an attractively disreputable roadhouse from the outside but is clean and friendly inside, with old farm implements on the walls and a clientele that includes old farmers who probably used them when they were new. The menu has expanded considerably over the years from the canonical original (among other things, this Ostini has borrowed the grilled artichoke from his brother in Buellton), and the steaks are tasty and cooked just right. There are also gorgeous charred giant beef ribs on Monday nights.
Back in Buellton, Frank Ostini has a Monday-night special, too: big burgers with a tasty grill flavor on homemade cheese-topped buns, with crisp fries on the side. “I don’t really want to open any more restaurants,” he says, “but I’m considering putting a burger place next door. I think you should have ten burger places for every steak house, because steak houses use only the prime cuts, and all that other meat is too good to waste.”
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