JSB Cafe Reopens at Santa Barbara City College to Launch Culinary Careers

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. (KEYT) - Students who have an appetite to be in the restaurant business are getting a bite of the real world though the JSB Cafe at Santa Barbara City College.

 It just reopened after being closed during the COVID years and also when there was a remodel for the department.

Now the place is really cooking.

Erick Rodriguez was enjoying one of the meals, at the location across from the bookstore. "Ya know this place is cozy."

It is student run and one of the real tests is with the customers who say this is not like going to the school cafeteria. "Oh my God it is a night and day difference," said Crystal Lee. Everything here is from scratch, the customers service is spectacular. Look at the diversity of the kitchen."

The upgraded kitchen style classroom gives the students an opportunity to learn a focused skill or a specialty and then bring it to the cafe.

Some might start out as a baker but see new options in other areas.

Chef Roberto Lopez is the instructor and says, "they decided that they actually want to switch careers  and get into the kitchen 100% instead of being in the bake shop or vice versa." Some like to learn it all.

You don't have to be a student or a member of the staff to come into the JSB cafe. You can come in from off campus and get a meal that's several dollars cheaper than somewhere else off campus.

One student said he is getting training in every aspect of the restaurant world.

Cipriano Moreno said,  "the grill, the flat top, everything." And it involves other skills like math.  "The register  you have to give them the right amount of ones, fives, tens   and things like that." He is hoping to consider a career in food services. Right now it is early on in the school year and there are many choices to consider.

On the day to day instruction, Lopez says, "you can see that they actually learned the actual skills  that we teach them the day before."

Rodriguez said he can see how the students will be able to use the cafe experience for future work. "This extends their opportunities especially  since this is more similar,  this is like a setting  you would encounter out in the world, like actual cafe's."

It is a pathway to a career in the restaurant business, on the front line or as an owner, which many SBCC students have done in the past, then hiring JSB students from the college.

Josh Rule is a former student getting his lunch and said, students can get work soon by showing their desire and staying in the program. "If you really make mutual friends with chefs always being  interested in the things that they do."

The JSB  Cafe has a full lunch menu of salads, soups and sandwiches at a lower cost of a real restaurant and seating inside and outside. Beverages are self serve.

Friday they fire up the pizza oven for wood fire pizza's.

Also closed since 2020 has been the gourmet restaurant. It will be ready in February to serve two nights a week. It is on the same site and has windows facing the ocean.

For information about culinary arts courses go to. SBCC Culinary arts