Larry Nobles has Found his Family. We Should all be so Lucky.
Happiest Man Alive is a tough claim to quantify – but when they decide to hand out an honorary statuette for the title, Larry Nobles will be a red-carpet nominee. “The way the stars aligned to make all this happen is just unbelievable,” he exults. Nobles and I are sitting at the gorgeous off-hours bar of Coast Village Road’s cozy, communal living room – an adored love nest of conversation, warm laughter, and delicious human congress called Lucky’s. It’s said they serve food there, too. “We have to elevate everything for the guest, making sure that they know when they come in here they’re going to have a friend in all of us, and that we know exactly what they need, exactly where they like to sit, exactly what makes them feel at home. We’re orchestrating an experience.” Nobles is Lucky’s recently anointed General Manager – a role approximately as inscrutable as that of the guy in The Fantastic Four who can flame and fly. How does one “General Manage” a swirling legend like Lucky’s? The enthusiastic soliloquy that pours out of the guy is delivered without the intermittent respiratory featurette the rest of us
call “breathing.”
Herb, Jimmy, and Gene
“I couldn’t have done it without the support structure that I have around me,” Nobles says. “Herb, Jimmy, and Gene are the best guys you can imagine working for. We’re so on the same page that it really helps me understand their expectations.” Nobles is talking about Gene Montesano, Jimmy Argyropoulos, and Herb Simon: the exuberant, Montecito-defining triumvirate whose unerring instincts and actionable sense of Family we can thank for the Lucky’s magic. “And for me to come in here and have the support of my management team meant absolutely everything. I mean, number one, René González, my Executive Chef, who’s been here since the year 2000 – as well as my two sous-chefs! We have Abraham and Hugo Alvarado, the brothers back there. To keep that dynamic going and then to have my managers – Brett Sanderson and Adrian Dominguez and Sergio Alvarez – to have all of us glued together, it made us really close. And my two main hostesses Karen Schneider, and Jennifer Brooks who I’ve now promoted to Lucky’s first ever events manager, and it’s well deserved.” Nobles grins and sighs distractedly. “Lucky’s is all about the guests. We are so fortunate to have them as guests,
as friends.”
Periodically, Nobles will leap off his stool to walk around the empty bar, gesturing as he explains to me the organic alchemy of loving-kindness. He’s a demonstrative guy. “Our guests come in here for a reason. A gentleman tells me that his daughter is going to USC, she’s in cheer, and she has a big game this weekend. When I see the gentleman next week, I’ll ask him: ‘How’d your daughter do at the game last week?’” The thing is, Nobles actually wants to know how the gentleman’s daughter did. This is not a guy from corporate expertly pretending to be a social animal. If Nobles was any more social you’d have to throw a net over him. Nobles’ actual affection for people is his strength. If all this sounds like a dusting of saccharine, it ain’t. Our friend was raised in the aptly named heartland. Nobles’ wide-eyed conversational gee-whizness is 100 Proof.
Montecito’s Lamplit Embrace
As the new General Manager of Lucky’s – Montecito’s lamplit embrace disguised as a restaurant – Nobles is clearly grateful; and emotionally indebted to another cohort in his life. I’m talking here about You. “The response that I’ve gotten from the community has been very, very … it really gets down there and plucks the heartstrings,” Nobles says, his eyes clouding. “Because they’ve been coming here longer than I have. They know the place more than I do. They know the food better than I do. And to have them say, ‘Congratulations, we’re rooting for you, Larry! If you need anything –’ Nobles is visibly moved. “I mean, what an honor.” The Lucky’s family – what some businesses tepidly refer to as their “customers” – is rallying around the new General Manager. This says everything that need be said about Lucky’s. The place is a “restaurant” like a baptism is a hair rinse. Nobles is not an arriviste; he’s been at Lucky’s for some seven years. Becoming GM is a corner-turning, though: and a deepening of the guy’s village bear hug.
How’d he get here? Hang onto your hat. If you wear a hat.
Hawaiowa to Montecito: A Breakneck Summation
Larry Nobles’ journey to Coast Village Road’s warm galactic center begins somewhere in the understated, politeness-suffused farm belt of this crazy-quilt country, which should surprise no one. Having moved as a youth from Texas’ sprawling Dallas-Ft. Worth to the tiny town of Armstrong, Iowa, Nobles adapted. Like a fish painfully adapts to water. “I quickly learned that in the Midwest – and this is something that I’ve carried with me my whole career – in the middle of winter when somebody comes and knocks on your door? You open the door, you invite them in, you offer them something to eat and drink. And then you ask them their name and what else they need.”
As an older teen working the restaurants, Nobles began casting about for adventure and opportunity. He and some restaurant-centric friends did a little research and decided to move to Colorado. “A few friends and I moved to Copper Mountain, Colorado at the age of 20. We’d heard you could work dinner service and maybe work at a bar at night, and then you could snowboard all day. I’d never even snowboarded before. Sounded great to me though!” The severely seasonal nature of the Copper Mountain resort (“…springtime came around and now it’s mud season…”) drove Nobles and his hospitality cohort to make a fanciful jump to Lahaina, Maui, in Hawaii – recent scene of the devastating wildfires – where at the time he toddled down restaurant row looking for work. One establishment hit him with an industry question “They asked me if I know the difference between Pinot Noir and Pinot Grigio. I have no clue. I guessed at the answer and got it right! They’re like, ‘Hey, can you start right now?’” That restaurant was Pacific’O. Nobles grows somber. “God bless ‘em. The restaurant burned to the ground in the 2023 wildfires. That’s where I met my wife. The whole town – it’s absolutely terrible. But boy I learned so much there…”
Aloha
There was one more stop in lush Hawaii before Larry and his future wife headed back to the mainland. “We decided to move to Oahu because we thought the grass would be greener on the other side. I was working at Aaron’s on top of the Alana Hotel on the 36th floor, and then working at another restaurant called Longhi’s. And we absolutely hated it. There was so much traffic.” One lovely anecdote has the ultra-efficient Nobles walking lithely across a crowded Oahu dance floor, laden – Cat in the Hat-style – with two towering Seussian armloads of bar glasses. Ask him to tell you the story sometime. Back stateside … “I ended up being the bar manager at the Coral Casino,” he says. “Within a couple of months, I proposed to my wife on Butterfly Beach with all of the Coral Casino members and employees discretely watching. And I was like, ‘Okay, we’re here.’” An immersive gig at Stella Mare followed, then several years at San Ysidro Ranch and a GM position at Convivo on Santa Barbara’s East beach. It was then thta Nobles found his family at Lucky’s. The adoption seems to be taking.
“I’m chapter three of Lucky’s. We had Sly in the very beginning, followed by the legendary Leonard Schwartz, and now it’s my time as part three.” His tone suggests wonder. “Once I came over here,” he says of his initial entry into Lucky’s those years ago, “…and was working side by side with my counterpart, Brett Sanderson … I mean, it just felt like home.”
Nobles’ unlikely story, from heartland to Hawaii to happy, hifalutin hullabaloo, could be a parable about that rare and successful admixture: incredibly hard work + a heart for the human race. What does he make of it? He chews on the question for a minute. “The three partners offering me this role,” he says, “was one of the best days of my life, and the most humbling gig ever thrown in front of me.” He looks up at me with an expression of mild astonishment. “I mean, it’s the wildest Netflix series you could ever comprehend.” Producers, take note.
