Arnoldi’s Back in Business Under New Owner

Sara Skrinski doesn’t sound like much of an Italian name, but last week, Skrinski reopened the signature red front doors to Arnoldi’s Café — perhaps Santa Barbara’s most quintessentially old-school Italian restaurant — after it shut down in July following the death of owner David Peri.

Presumably, Skrinski might have known better. After all, she first started working at Arnoldi’s at age 18, bussing tables a few years before her father, mother, and three partners bought the Olive Street restaurant in late 2002. Later, she would also help out, handling large parties and special events held there. But when her father died of a sudden heart attack earlier this summer, it was uncertain who, if anyone, would step up to keep the landmark gathering spot going.

“Oh my God,” she explained. “I had just lost my dad. I couldn’t lose the restaurant too.”

None of her siblings were interested; they’d all successfully established themselves in careers elsewhere. She didn’t trust any other operators — and there were many vying to take over — to do it right.

“It wouldn’t have been close to what we created,” she said. Her grandparents, she noted, got engaged in the middle inside booth back in 1944.

When Peri died, it was sudden and unexpected. He had not prepared, and many loose ends remained to be tied up. The restaurant’s lease, for example, had expired three years prior. Skrinski would find herself consulting with no fewer than five of Santa Barbara’s best legal brains before launching a totally brand-new limited liability corporation to run the business.

“It was hard,” she said. “Hard. Nobody wanted me to do this. Nobody thought I could do this.” As a tip of the hat to her own tenacity, Skrinski said, Arnoldi’s is now stocking a new red wine: Bull by the Horns.

The land and the building, however, still belong to Jeanette Arnoldi, granddaughter of the original owners, who first opened their doors in 1936. Arnoldi said she got calls from 8 to 10 operators, one of whom was especially insistent. She could have got more in rent, she said, but opted to go with Skrinski instead. “She asked me first,” Arnoldi said. “And I just had to give her a chance. I could see she had the heart for it.”

Nor did it hurt that the Peri and the Arnoldi families both hail from the Lake Como region of Italy and that both families have been living and working in Santa Barbara more than 100 years. And maybe it didn’t hurt that Skrinski — a competitive snowboarder, artist, and mother of four — might be as stubborn and tenacious as her father. She’s begun planting flowers in the backyard patio, something Peri always told her not to do.

The restaurant will be open seven evenings a week with a new focus on football Sundays. The warm family vibe will very much remain, she said, and all but a handful of the original staff remain. The bocci leagues—dispossessed in the wake of Peri’s death—will now have their home court back. Speaking of her quest to reopen Arnoldi’s, Skrinski stated, “I didn’t want to lose it more than I wanted it. Does that make sense?”