Restaurant Roy – Ted Mills

Drink of the Week: Roy’s Kamikaze

August 7, 2014September 14, 2014 tedmills Leave a comment

Are you ready to party like it’s 1989? Roy Gandy of Roy is ready. In honor of celebrating 25 years in the restaurant biz, he is devoting August to his anniversary. He’s dropping prices on everything down to $15. That’s not exactly 1989 prices, but it is cheaper than the last several years. The other major feature is that Mr. Gandy is opening the restaurant for lunch! The last time that happened was … actually, we don’t know when that was. But Restaurant Roy used to be the Expressway Cafe, located at Chapala where it used to cross the freeway, traffic lights and everything. (Lily’s Tacos is there now, and a chain-link fence where there was a road). Mr. Gandy used to offer coffee and snacks to those waiting the eight or so minutes for the light to change on the 101 freeway. That was a long time ago!

For our Drink of the Week, he went back to 1989 and grabbed a popular cocktail, the Kamikaze, and made it for us. It’s equal parts vodka, lime juice and triple sec, essentially a vodka margarita. However, it looks and tastes lovely and sweet, and made the perfect toast for Restaurant Roy, one of the few places in town open till midnight. We’ll drink to that!

KAMIKAZE
2 ounces vodka (preferably Sobieski)
2 ounces triple sec
2 ounces lime juice

Combine all ingredients over ice in shaker, shake and strain into cocktail glass. Garnish with lime wedge.

Restaurant Roy
7 W. Carrillo St.
966-5636 or www.restaurantroy.com

DRINK OF THE WEEK: Roy’s The Jolly Tiger

September 12, 2013October 8, 2015 tedmills Leave a comment

A small number of people, according to owner Roy Gandy, believe his restaurant and bar on Carrillo is called The Jolly Tiger, and not Roy. That could have something to do with the large, neon sign that says exactly that, hanging over the bar.

A Buffalo Bills football nestles in the lower loop of the “g,” a mark of the man who rescued this piece of Santa Barbara history from the back of an antique store. The actual Jolly Tiger was on the corner of Canon Perdido and Chapala, now Cajun Kitchen, a local chain of three eateries that closed in the ’80s.

DRINK OF THE WEEK: Restaurant Roy’s Danny Boy’s Chocolate Martini MMM

February 14, 2013December 9, 2015 tedmills Leave a comment

DANNY BOY'S CHOCOLATE MARTINI MMM NIK BLASKOVICH/NEWS-PRESS — DANNY BOY’S CHOCOLATE MARTINI MMM
NIK BLASKOVICH/NEWS-PRESS

Some months back, as we were sipping on a delicious and copper-cupped Moscow Mule at Roy, bartender Danny Scott sidled up to us, as you do at bars. “You guys like chocolate drinks?” he asked. Well, we like chocolate. And we like drinks. So yeah, I guess we do, we admitted.

“I’ve got this chocolate drink — check it out,” he said, before disappearing to make us a chocolate-filled cocktail. Maybe you’re reading this on Valentine’s Day. Maybe you’re reading it too late. But chocolate is always a winner. It’s an aphrodisiac! It’s an antioxidant! It’s good for you and your loved one!

DRINK OF THE WEEK: Roy’s Rum switchel

January 10, 2013December 20, 2015 tedmills Leave a comment

Bartender Dan “Danny Boy” Scott is back at Roy after a break of more than 15 years, back when the bar itself was on the other side of the room, the restaurant hosted live music, and the walls were a completely different color. We refrained from toasting him with a few verses of his namesake Irish song, but the pipes, the pipes were calling from our seaside town to wrest him away from Las Vegas.

In Henderson, outside Vegas, he ran the bar at the Black Mountain Grill, a popular restaurant with one of the same owners as Cold Spring Tavern. And he’s brought some of that establishment’s drinks back with him to Roy. But first we are going to take on Roy’s most popular drink for the six months it’s been on the menu: the Moscow Mule.