The Ojai Insider’s Guide

Growing up on his family’s ranch in Napa Valley, Nathan Turner was party to an upbringing full of rustic California art and agriculture. He parlayed those pastoral beginnings into a thriving career of design and cooking, the intersection of the two recently captured in his book, Nathan Turner’s I Love California: Design and Entertaining the West Coast Way. Lately, Turner has been splitting his time between LA, where he runs an eponymous showroom featuring luxurious textiles and interior accents, and Ojai, a small hamlet a few hours north of the city known for its hot springs and supposed electromagnetic forces. Mysticism aside, Ojai is a mix of natural beauty, surrounded by mountains and sea, that’s perfect for domesticity and tourism alike, much like those idyllic towns of Turner’s youth. “What drew me to Ojai originally is that it’s an old-fashioned California town,” Turner says. “I grew up in an agricultural family, and Ojai feels like the small towns [in Napa] that I remember. It’s that old-school California charm that really drew me here.” Here, in his own words, Turner takes us on a tour of his favorite Ojai spots.

Summer Camp is a really great shop that has cute little accessories and home things. They also do framing there, too, and I have all my stuff framed there. It’s in an old gas station right when you come into town. They have quirky, very Ojai, hippie, boho stuff. They have a second shop they just opened called Plant Base; it’s all plants and things. One of my favorite items I own is a photograph by the photographer Harry Benson. His daughter is one of my best friends and she gave it to me. It’s of Dolly Parton from 1971. You can actually look it up. It’s black-and-white, and she’s leaning into this Victorian mirror, putting lipstick on. It’s beyond. I brought it to Summer Camp and I reframed it in more of a rustic vibe for our house here.

For lunch, we always go to Farmer and the Cook. It has a little market, so I actually get produce there, too. If you look the owner up, he’s really interesting. I think he grew up in Texas and went to Harvard. And long story short, he has a farm now and so he sells his own produce, he sells other people’s organic produce, and then he has a small restaurant. And again, it reminds me very much of my Northern California upbringing. It’s very hippie, boho, organic, healthy, and down-home.

If you dropped a pin in Ojai, there’s a 25-mile radius where there’s incredible produce and small farms. I don’t eat meat, but there are small cattle farms, with organic grass-fed beef, and there’s seafood 20 minutes away, straight from the ocean. We just finished with citrus season, which you literally could drive down any road in Ojai and there’s a homespun farmstead fruit stand with tangerines and Ojai Pixies and grapefruits and oranges. And there’s upper Ojai, which is the valley between the little town called Santa Paula, and that has a lot of great small farms such as Topa Vista Farm. During the summer, I go get my apricots there at Topa Vista Farm.