Breakwater Restaurant

Great place to stop for lunch and get a view of the boat harbor. Finally, a place with inexpensive parking and lots of it in Santa Barbara! The menu is a diner menu, and the chefs are good at cooking to that standard. Order accordingly. The location also has an old anchor out the side: an immediate attraction for climbing children, so be sure they have long pants/​sleeves to climb with. Had a nice eggs benedict for lunch (generally have good breakfast things).

Great location but the food is not great at all. There are only about 5 tables with a view of the harbor but if you get one, you’ll forget about the quality of the food. It’s really a diner… If you go there with that in mind you’ll probably have a better experience.

Cannot beat the service and the locale. Sitting on an outdoor patio in February in California and eating BLT’s and burgers cannot be beat. The service was fantastic. The food was good too. This is our go-​to restaurant in Santa Barbara.

Jeff is awesome! We were craving ice cream and stumbled upon this place. It did not disappoint! It felt so warm and welcoming. The whole staff greeted us. Jeff made my sister and I the most amazing milkshake we’ve ever had. He was even sweet enough to split it into two cups for us. He went above and beyond. I would absolutely recommend this place to anyone! Thanks Jeff!

Great Location! Nice Diner style place for Breakfast!
The sausage is delicious here. If there is something i can never get enough of, it’s good sausage! I ordered the Italian sausage and eggs for my breakfast. It had great flavor and you could taste the spices which I really enjoyed.
The service here is great with the waitstaff being attentive, especially filling up my groups cups of coffee. The older gentleman at the front desk was helping someone in our party buy a newspaper outside and when he realized that there were no more newspapers to be bought, he offered his. What a great guy!
The location is great, right on the water. Plenty of outdoor seating when the weather is warm (which is most of the year). I would definitely have breakfast here again! And the parking wasn’t plentiful, but there were plenty of stalls when we arrived!

By far the worst lunch ever. We ordered the crab Louis and the crab meat was all chopped up then served with thousand island dressing, purple onions, beets, black olives, mushroom. Tomatoes and a hard boiled egg, way too much too, take away from the delicate crab. The crab was even flavorless. John had fried scallops, heavy breading, tough scallops. Just a very I pleasing meal. Ice tea good and ice cream good. Very over priced food

What a nice club sandwich. And the salad with it was very loaded with goodies. Not your average salad for sure. Mix that with a beautiful view of the harbor, and a flow of people watching… then add an oh so very friendly waitress. And my water glass topped off to keep my drinking after a too warm say and add great company. Well you have all the ingredients for a perfect evening. And so it was

We were on our way out and got stopped by the well-​placed ice cream sign! Yummy mint chip in a waffle cone and a mocha chip shake were all we needed to complete our lovely afternoon. We’ll be back!

I love the Breakwater for a great Santa Barbara breakfast. You cant beat the views or the prices and the food is always consistently good. The wait staff are the best in SB and your coffee cup is refilled until you leave. Need to substitute fruit for your home fries? No problem. No charge. All in all, a Santa Barbara gem.

My friends and I were on our way back from our trip, when we decided to make a stop in Santa Barbara. We were craving clam chowder and we’re looking for places on our phone who had sea food and non sea food food. We checked out places around here and ended up here. The waitress who attended us was friendly and took care of us. We ordered our food once be began eating it tasted amazing!!! The kids loved what they ordered and we were satisfied with what we had order. Definitely going back there when we go back!

This place was great and had variety on the menu which was awesome because I’m allergic to all sea food and my friends love sea food. The bread bowl were amazing my friends had clam chowder bread bowl and I had beef and vegetables bread bowl. Our Kids also enjoyed the kids menu.

Nice view on the patio and the food was good, but the service was not good. Server (Lucy) brought food quickly, but was not friendly at all and she brought the iced tea with a half rotten lemon slice, messed up my order and brought burnt toast.

The fisherman’s platter was good and so was the clam chowder. We came here for lunch and it wasn’t busy but the most important thing was the view of the ocean and it was beautiful.

I love this place for breakfast and the reasons are two things;
— I think that the view of the picturesque Santa Barbara harbor from the outdoor dining patio is hard to beat and also;
— I really love their Eggs Florentine (which I order everytime).
So since I am in a terrible rut with this place and have ever ordered only one thing, my review needs to be taken in that light. However, friends and family who have joined me on numerous occasions for breakfast always seem satisfied with their meals. I’m sure that their food doesn’t deserve a five star rating, but the atmosphere plus pretty good food and great service has me eating here everytime I visit SB.

Been coming here with the family for over 15 years and sad to say we won’t be back. Long story short when ordering a steak well done. they first brought one that was completely burned with a black crust the first one (yet flipped over so that we wouldn’t see), after apologizing and asking if we want it cooked medium… um no I said well done. I cook it well done on my own and don’t burn it so I’m pretty sure your cooks should at least know how to do that.
Second time they brought it, it was RAW INSIDE … THE MANAGER came over joking how he likes it that way. I didn’t find anything funny. We all got to eat and one person in our party just sat there and left hungry.
Super disappointed in the LACK OF FOOD SAFETY AND RESPECT OF ITS CUSTOMERS. Laughing when you messed up twice and not even comping a part of our meal… just bad bad business.
We’re taking our money to Eureka next time, a place that actually recognized when they mess up and treat you with respect.
Disgusted.

Delicious! Food was delicious, atmosphere was great.
It’s in a strange location so you have to be ready to sort of look around! But its a nice quaint place to eat. When we got to SB we were so hungry but it was a great idea to come here.
The omelette choices are good, the coffee was good, the mimosa was just the right kick to my morning. The staff seemed a little over powered by the amount of groups that were coming in but they were very willing and understanding.
Really a great place if you want to be by the port/​all the boats. You don’t have to worry about Seagulls/​Sea smell which is super nice.

The greeters were not friendly at the door. In fact I had to go up to them to ask about seating.
Our server was nice but the food that came out was terrible.
The buffalo wings were the lowest quality I’ve ever had at a restaurant. I’d compare them to frozen bought WalMart brand quality. We even received 2 pieces that were not complete.
The Fisherman’s Platter was horrible. The scallops look like processed seafood. The fish sticks were soft, crunchy or gooey depending on where you took a bite. The breaded calamari wasn’t really even calamari, remove the word ‘calamari’ from the menu cause all we got was just the ‘breaded’ part.
The Kids cheeseburger was literally cardboard. Again comparable to WalMart quality patties.
It was obvious this place was a terrible choice. Every other restaurant in the area was overly crowded, only this place had seats immediately available for plenty of people.
I figured we try it and we did. It definitely was our last time there.

Besides the patio seating and their fountain coke, this place is crap reincarnated. Such crappy quality food. The sauce they used for the clams was overly tangy-​sour and the clams, overcooked rubber. Service was good enough… Doesn’t make up for the food tho.
That’s all I have to say about that.

Pleasant, casual little spot with a glassed in patio and umbrellas which were welcome on a sunny warm day in Oct. I had a tasty large quesadilla while enjoying the harbor and mountain views. I did not feel rushed by the server who was friendly, checked in with me, and gave me lots of extra hot sauce. She brought the check when I was ready. The iced tea was huge, and the menu has plenty of other choices.

The patio at the Breakwater is exactly where I’d like to be on a sunny Sunday morning in SB. The food is your typical brunch fare and everything is pretty solid – not mind blowingly delicious, but overall satisfying and conventional. Their pancakes are awesome – decadent yet fluffy with a heaping side of butter. Their breakfast choices are extensive: omelettes of all kinds, chicken fried steak, breakfast burritos and french toast. It is all tasty, but I will say that the one person in my group who ordered french toast had to pick out bits of egg shell. We laughed because we had just read a Unilocal review that complained of this very thing and we thought that person was exaggerating. I guess not.
Service was really great… once we got seated. It took quite some time before anyone acknowledged our existence when we arrived. I believe it was the manager who approached us after 10 minutes of waiting and trying to get someone’s attention to ask if we’d been helped yet. He seemed annoyed, like this sort of thing happens all the time.
Nonetheless, the Breakwater has lots to offer: Patio seating that can accommodate larger groups with a gorgeous view of the marina and good, albeit predictable, food.
Tip: Breakfast is served until 1 PM.