How Ojai Became America’s New Culinary Hotspot

“What can I say? The produce is just better here,” cookbook author and food stylist Diana Yen declares as we strap into her little black Jeep the morning after my first dinner. “Even in L.A., all the produce comes from here.” During the pandemic, Yen left her apartment in Brooklyn Heights to camp out at the Ojai getaway of her best friend, the Los Angeles-based stylist Cathy Hahn. That was five years ago. “We have incredible sun and we’re close to the coast, which I guess is the winning combination,” Yen says, slowing down at Earthtrine Farm, her go-to produce dealer.

Just five minutes outside of downtown, rows upon rows of chard and lettuce glisten in the stark California sunshine. The land beyond the vegetable beds brims with citrus and avocado trees. Yen heads over to the farmstead and picks out an arugula bunch and a carton of jumbo figs. I load up on oranges and clementines. They’re sweet and sticky as candy.

Over the next few days, I try, and utterly fail, to locate a meal or snack that doesn’t set my heart racing. Serge Becker, the nightlife and design icon behind countless hotels and restaurants in New York, got the Ojai memo and has just opened Radio Roma, a tiny Tokyo-style “listening room” cum mezcal bar that serves perfectly seasoned tacos until the wee hours. When I come down from a challenging hike, I head to Three Birds cafe and order a draught of local kombucha. It’s far more delicate and refreshing than the bottled version I glug back home.

It was only last spring when Spanish chef Perfecte Rocher was living in Los Angeles and looking for a restaurant space in the Hudson Valley when he heard about a different kind of opportunity. A 15,000 square foot restaurant that Marlon Brando and John Lennon once visited was sitting empty in a lush garden in Ojai. Perfecte’s family packed their bags and relocated, and Rochers at the Ranch House, the high-end restaurant he opened with his wife Alia, was up and running in merely four months.