Dónde encontrar los mejores restaurantes de Ojai, según los editores de Eater

Artists, free spirits, and innovators have always gravitated to Ojai. As early as 1882, the Ojai Valley, tucked within the Topatopa Mountains just about an hour northeast of Los Angeles, became an attractive getaway for its hot springs, temperate weather, and picturesque valley sunsets. More than a century later, people still flock to the region. In the last few decades, city dwellers seeking a quiet, slow-paced life have turned this sleepy farm town into a premier dining destination. These transplants’ zeal for excellent food is a welcome transformation, one that brings even more fine dining and innovative cuisine to a bucolic slice of Ventura County. Below is the best of the bunch, listed from west to east.

The latest update adds Boccali’s Pizza and Pasta and Santa Barbara’s sister restaurant, Little Sama.

Farmer and the Cook

This vegan Mexican restaurant with a weekend flatbread popup celebrates locally grown cuisine. Take a hike at the nearby Ventura River before indulging in the Betterfinger smoothie tastes like the popular candy bar but with carrot juice and goji berry, or the huarache with grilled vegetables topped with an aji cilantro sauce. The quaint market shelves and sunlit patio only enhance the experience.

Ojai Deer Lodge

Pool tables, antler chandeliers, and a dark wood interior define this rustic off-the-beaten-path saloon. A local favorite for soul-filling barbecue, where tri-tip and pulled pork are slathered in the lodge’s backwoods sauce, the place is always a good time. Check the calendar to see when you can pop in during a musical performance.

Ojai Noodle House

Picked by locals as the Best of Ojai in 2024, Ojai Noodle House serves modern Vietnamese dishes using fresh and local ingredients. For lunch or dinner, the restaurant’s evolving menu always offers complex and bold flavors: Try the lemongrass chicken bánh mì or the spicy caramel fish sauce crispy wings. Regulars know to always save room for the mango, strawberry, or pandan shaved ice.

Izakaya Full Moon

The seven-seat sushi bar from Yuya and Asaka Ueno is a tribute to their roots. Corn kakiage tempura was one of the first dishes Yuya learned to make at home, while Asaka uses his knife skills with the sesame-marinated goma kampachi. Don’t dismiss their takeout if you can’t get a spot inside, especially with the daily ramen and yakitori specials. Walk-ins only.

Chief’s Peak

The Social Shelter Club hospitality group’s Chief’s Peak serves as the bar for the preserved and highly Instagrammable Ojai Rancho Inn. Cozy up by the fireplace or grab a view of the pool and enjoy signature sake cocktails, natural wines, and beer while listening to vinyl. Consider joining the Mug Club, where an annual fee gets visitors a Kat and Roger ceramic mug stored on the bar’s wall.

Highly Likely Ojai

Chef Kat Turner’s Highly Likely took over Ojai’s former Beacon Coffee Company and converted it into a beautifully mid-century-feeling all-day restaurant in May 2025. It’s a perfect add to Ojai Avenue with breakfast sandwiches, chilaquiles, salads, tuna melts, and seasonal soups from 7 a.m. until 3 p.m. At night, it flips into a low-lit space for dinner and cocktails from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. except Tuesdays. The restaurant also serves Midwestern comforts from Turner’s childhood, including fettuccine Alfredo, fried chicken schnitzel, and steak au poivre.

Condor Bar

Ojai’s revitalized Hotel El Roblar has a siren song appeal to eager travelers, weekenders from Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, and beyond, looking for rest and respite somewhere close to the mountains but not too far from superlative dining destinations. Enter the Roblar’s newly opened Condor Bar, a restaurant from the Little Dom’s team, who partnered with the hotel back in 2019 as plans for its remodel formed. Here, chef Brandon Boudet takes influences from Mexican foodways, California history, and the local farmers market bounty, apparent in plates like king oyster mushrooms atop a verdant, herb-packed molé and tomato and melon salad with a speckled appearance from its inventive use of a prehispanic ingredient: Chicatana ants. The tomatoes, from Beylik Farms, and melon hunks, from Weiser Family Farms, speak to the richness of Ventura County’s agricultural community, while the ants offer an almost prosciutto-like saltiness to a salad otherwise dressed simply in lemon and olive oil. It’s a dish not to miss, among many others.

Rory’s Place

In Ojai, the day can start and end at Rory’s Place and its sister restaurant Rory’s Other Place: Go to the latter for deftly made espresso drinks, breakfast pastries and burritos, lunch sandwiches like tuna conserva on a slim baguette, and its cult-favorite (in this town) soft serve. The fuller restaurant next door has an enticing raw bar selection; smartly curated wines and cocktails (try the salt-and-pepper martini); and dishes to share, like roasted chicken. With a long, buzzing dining room and equally vibey back patio, there’s no reason not to end the night here, even if just for a drink and a snack. Better to make a reservation ahead for the full restaurant experience, it’s very popular.

Ojai Tortilla House

Expect a line out the door at this authentic Mexican restaurant that serves freshly made corn and flour tortillas daily from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. The line moves fast, so grab the al pastor burrito, a favorite of Ojai Quarterly editor Bret Bradigan, who says his Ojai Tortilla House go-to desk lunch always “feels like a proper break.”

Radio Roma

A vibey hi-fi lounge serving reasonably priced Oaxacan tacos, Radio Roma has grown to be a beloved local hang akin to stopping for a drink in a high school friend’s living room. Come for the late-night menu of lamb carnitas taco, shrimp cocktail, and chile-spiked tuna tostada by chef and co-owner Ryan Farrar; stay for the tunes on the vintage Klipsch sound system. The restaurant also operates a daytime taquería, Taco Roma, before its evening doors open.

Bonnie Lu’s

Owner Jennie Newell ensures that everyone feels like family when entering the 30-year-old diner named after her mother. This retro-style spot embraces nostalgia with all-day breakfast items, like chicken-fried steak, pancakes, and biscuits and gravy. Come on a weekday after 11 a.m. for a Monte Cristo sandwich or beer-battered fish and chips in a cheery, well-lit space.

Little Sama Ojai

After becoming a smash-hit within Santa Barbara’s growing dining scene, the team behind South Asian restaurant Sama Sama opened its sister restaurant in 2020. The menu slightly differs from the original with an abbreviated slate centered around Asian diasporic dishes such as a donburi rice bowl; a scallion pancake tostada with Indonesian-spiced chicken; and a pork katsu sando with crisp Tater Tots, a sweet-and-tangy okonomiyaki sauce, scallions, and Kewpie mayonnaise. Wash it down with a lychee-flavored Ramune soda.

Ojai Roots

This artisan market and wine bar, coupled with an already robust Community Supported Agricultural program (or CSA), put this homegrown spot on the map in 2024. Sip a glass of convivial summer rosé in Ojai Roots’ 21-and-over wine garden, while sharing the caramelized Parmesan sardine dip or a boquerones and marinated anchovies romesco toast, and the visit feels like you’re somewhere abroad rather than 30 miles east of the 101 Freeway.

Pinyon

Carbohydrates remain the star at this family-and-friends-operated pizzeria, where bagels, pastries, hoagies, wood-fired pizzas, and desserts shine. Pizzaiolo and co-owner Jeremy Alben apprenticed at Magnus Nilsson’s famed Swedish restaurant Fäviken, and it shows. The eponymous pizza debuted in 2021 with pop-ups and Instagram drops featuring kefir, confit onions, broccolini, Parmesan, and pine nuts.

The Dutchess

The Dutchess, arguably one of the more prominent restaurants in recent years to contribute to Ojai’s dining scene boom, opened in 2022 to an immediate embrace. During the day, find coffee and homemade breads, pastries, and breakfast plates, including congee; by night, find bright Burmese dishes with a Californian sensibility from chef Saw Naing. Dishes like goat masala curry can be sopped up with freshly baked naan, while a classic tea-leaf salad and pressed chickpea fritters with tamarind chutney make for compelling sides. Pastry chef Kelsey Brito rounds the menu with seasonal desserts like a mango sticky rice sundae and strawberry semolina cake in the summer, the gluten-free sticky rice doughnuts stay no matter the season. The space feels quite large on the inside, with two back dining rooms that have banquettes or side tables with pew-like seating.

Ojai Rotie

There’s no better patio to picnic on than the expansive one that foregrounds Ojai Rotie, a richly realized rotisserie chicken restaurant with strong Lebanese and French influences. Here, get chicken meals to share (a whole chicken runs for $37, a half for $27, a quarter for $20) with sides like purslane tabouli, caramelized cauliflower, and pommes rotisserie; lift; cloudlike toum; and za’atar-rubbed manouche. With a strong list of locally sourced wines, sky-high sandwiches, and snacky dips like muhammara, Ojai Rotie has solidified itself as an anchor in the main vein of town, and an ideal start or end to any day in Ojai.

Boccali’s Pizza and Pasta

One of Ojai’s longest-running restaurants got its start 40 years ago in 1986. The Boccali family still operates Boccali’s Pizza and Pasta and brings in fresh produce from their Ojai farm, which always feels even more perfect during peak tomato season. Build your own pizza with choice of three sauces paired with a classic green salad. Pick scampi or the eggplant lasagna with a side of garlic bread layered with molten mozzarella cheese. The restaurant even has gluten-free pasta to substitute, so don’t feel afraid to bring your allergen-sensitive friends and family.