If you consider a visit to a haberdasher prior to bar-hopping, you’d want a top hat before sashaying into The Lion’s Tale, and a pith helmet before slinking into Jaguar Moon. That’s relevant sartorial information as both establishments just celebrated their first-year anniversaries. The former, gracing Coast Village Road in Montecito since October 2024, offers a swellegant hotel bar experience akin to the finest one at The Connaught in London. The latter, livening up downtown Ventura since November of the same year, takes you to the tropical Yucatán. The two join the other seven establishments that comprise the ever-growing Good Lion Hospitality (GLH) group headed by couple in business and marriage Misty Orman and Brandon Ristaino.
Given Ristaino insists it “takes a year to take a first breath” when opening a spot, it seemed a good time to check in on all things lion to see if everything was good.
Not to give the game away one-sixth of the way through the article, but the answer is complex. Crowds have been great and locals supportive, so much so that Orman and Ristaino couldn’t even get IN to their own Lion’s Tale over the holidays. “It was so crowded,” Orman explains, “that we didn’t want to come in and stress the staff having to figure out where to put us.”
But then there’s the world to deal with; fill in whatever the daily outrage is by the time this story runs (perhaps we’ll be at war with Freedonia because someone in D.C. has confused Groucho Marx with Karl). Not only are international tourism numbers down locally, but also “the bifurcation in the market is real,” Ristaino admits, alluding to the richest scooping up more and willing to pay for luxury while everyone else worries. Still, he adds, “People are getting pinched, but we know it’s not forever. So, we’re freezing pricing — we don’t try to squeeze our guests.”…