A new cocktail bar built around spinning vinyl records and shared drinks with its next-door sibling opened Thursday in Santa Barbara's Funk Zone, drawing on a soft opening the night before that pulled in more than 100 people for complimentary cocktails and a DJ set. The Mullet, located at 116 Santa Barbara Street, is the latest project from Pete Burnham, the longtime owner of neighboring Lama Dog Tap Room, and it shares both physical space and a liquor license with that bar.
According to the Santa Barbara News-Press, guests at Wednesday night's soft opening could move freely between The Mullet and Lama Dog with drinks in hand, sampling a debut menu of six cocktails while vinyl spun overhead. The room itself was previously occupied by the Heart and Soul art gallery, which has since relocated to State Street, and interior designer Jessica Risko Smith gave the new space a bright, funky, and playful look filled with colorful wall paintings. Architect Kevin Moore and Evans Construction also worked on the conversion, transforming the former gallery into a venue that fits roughly three dozen patrons inside at cocktail tables and the bar, plus additional outdoor seating, according to Siteline Santa Barbara.
A Sound System Built for the Room
Max Ville, a DJ from Santa Monica who built all of the speakers for The Mullet, served as the night's DJ. He told the News-Press that the owners felt the person who built the speakers should be the one to christen them on the turntables. Jennifer Zacharias, who handled public relations for the event, said Burnham brought together people with passion and expertise to curate the record collection and construct the sound system that now anchors the bar.
Burnham has lived in Santa Barbara for around 25 years and has attended more than 80 Grateful Dead shows with his brother, a history that helped shape his vision for a bar centered on music. He told the paper that The Mullet, to him, means friendship and happiness, and that opening the space made him feel intertwined with the community. The bar is closed on Tuesdays and otherwise keeps the same hours as Lama Dog next door.
Van Damme, Bowie, and a Menu Full of Famous Hairstyles
The signature drink list leans into the bar's mullet theme with cocktails named after famous haircuts throughout pop culture. Per Siteline Santa Barbara, the menu includes a drink called the Van Damme alongside cocktails honoring late-1970s Bill Murray, the Achy Breaky pairing of Billy Ray and Miley Cyrus, and David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust era. Food service leans on next-door partner The Nook, a container restaurant that patrons can order from directly, with owner Georges Bitar also planning a dedicated small-plates menu and a custom Mullet burger built specifically for the cocktail bar. The Nook was acquired by local hospitality firm The Bitar Group in February, per the Santa Barbara News-Press, and now serves as the in-house kitchen partner for both Lama Dog and The Mullet.
To keep the vibe casual, Burnham structured The Mullet to run without servers and enforced a strict 21-and-over policy with no children allowed, while also making the room available for private event rentals, Siteline Santa Barbara reports. Looking ahead, the bar intends to host local DJs throughout the week along with bring-your-own-vinyl nights that let record collectors bring in their own selections to play.
Part of a Decade of Growth at the Waterline
The Mullet's arrival extends a run of growth for Burnham that began a decade ago. He originally opened Lama Dog Tap Room & Bottle Shop in May 2016 inside the Waterline, a 10,000-square-foot former century-old industrial warehouse in the Funk Zone that architect Kevin Moore also helped repurpose, according to Noozhawk. Before getting into bars, Burnham worked as a cellar rat and assistant winemaker at Carr Winery in the Santa Ynez Valley, where long harvest days spent drinking cold lager nudged him toward craft beer taprooms instead, per the Waterline's own account of his background.
Lama Dog expanded again in October 2024 with a 5,000-square-foot second location called Lama Dog Uptown, or Lama Sama, on State Street in San Roque in partnership with Sama Sama Kitchen, as previously reported by The Restaurant Guy. That location took over the former La Rumba nightclub building and added 30 beer taps and a bottle shop to Burnham's growing footprint before The Mullet became his newest project back in the Funk Zone.
Loud, Bright, and Deliberately Not a Jazz Kissa
The Mullet draws inspiration from traditional hi-fi listening bars, but it consciously breaks from the hushed conventions of Japan's jazz kissas, the quiet listening bars that trace back to Tokyo in the late 1920s and where speaking above a whisper is typically discouraged. Instead, Siteline Santa Barbara notes, Burnham and Risko Smith built a bright, high-energy room where patrons can talk freely and request songs off the shelves, better matching Santa Barbara's beach-town social culture than the reverent hush of the originals.
The timing lines up with a broader boom in vinyl culture nationally. U.S. vinyl record revenues topped $1.04 billion in 2025, marking 19 straight years of growth and 46.8 million LPs sold, according to Forbes figures reported by Hoodline. Similar listening-bar concepts have popped up elsewhere this year, including a tiny vinyl bar in Fishtown and a kissa-inspired lounge in Cleveland's Ohio City neighborhood, suggesting The Mullet is part of a wider wave of bars pairing turntables with craft cocktails rather than a one-off local experiment.
