More than a mecca for all-natural pizza, Full of Life Flatbread (225 Bell St., Los Alamos, [805] 344-4400, fulloflifefoods.com) is the dining nerve center for Santa Barbara wine country. You can’t throw one of their famous homemade s’mores without hitting a talented winemaker most evenings. But this weekends-only restaurant has been shaking things up of late.

What happened to Chef Dylan Fultineer?

Fultineer, who joined Full of Life owner Clark Staub not quite a year ago after helping to open the Hungry Cat on Chapala Street and then having a wonderful run at Hollister Brewing Company, is moving back east with his wife and daughter to be closer to family and start a new restaurant with a Virginia oyster company. Fultineer’s talents will be missed.

Doesn’t Chef Brian Collins sound familiar?

Full of Life Flatbread
Paul Wellman

It should, as Collins was the chef at Full of Life prior to Fultineer. He briefly moved up to the Lido Restaurant in Shell Beach, where he won kudos, but the lure of the unusual setup in Los Alamos — a basic flatbread menu augmented by a slate of weekly, fresh-from-the-farm seasonal specials — brought him back down the coast. That’s better for us Santa Barbarans.

Now open Thursdays?

As of May 17, the restaurant is open Thursday through Sunday, not just Friday through Sunday. (The rest of the week is for cranking out the brilliant frozen pies available at gourmet grocers.) One more evening makes it even easier to enjoy those weekly specials; a recent menu offered delights like local king salmon with mandarins and turnips in a tamari-citrus vinaigrette and also charred peach and grilled porcini salad. They’ve also been running several beer and winemaker dinners, so check their website for those feasts.

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