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While the Santa Rosa Chapel is the ideal place for weddings, it is also a remarkable spot for christenings, memorial services, concerts and other special occasions.

Each year at Christmastime, the chapel presents a candlelight concert of holiday music, poetry and stories. Glimmering candles, scents of pine and bay and traditional holiday tunes put even the Grinches among us in a festive mood.

Caring for a 134-year-old building is definitely a labor of love...

At least that's the case for a group of folks in Cambria who are committed to maintaining and restoring the Old Santa Rosa Chapel, a National Historic Registry landmark. The committee of volunteers that oversees this lovely piece of history works hard to keep the chapel and its grounds in pristine condition. To pay for the costs of maintaining this heritage treasure, the committee has sponsored a polenta dinner every year for the past 23 years.

The classic Swiss-Italian celebration takes place each year on Palm Sunday, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Santa Rosa Catholic Church, 1174 Main St., Cambria. Cost for the dinner is $10 for adults and $5 for children under 12.

Here's what the dinner will help pay for. During the next year, the exterior of the chapel will need paint. Estimated cost: $8,000. Also in need of urgent attention is the chapel's long, steep driveway. It must be reengineered, graded and repaved, at a cost estimated at $30,000. In the next few years, the chapel will need a new roof, at a cost of about $40,000.

The annual dinner is just a part of an on-going tradition, according to its chair and local historian, Dawn Dunlap. “The original construction of the chapel was paid for back in 1870 by dances, dinners and other fundraisers in San Luis Obispo.”

Maintenance and repair needs are what you might expect for a building this age, Dunlap said. The surprising thing is there was no damage from the San Simeon Earthquake. “The earthquake didn’'t move a single candlestick or statue.”

For those unfamiliar with the Swiss comfort-food known as polenta, it is made from coarse ground cornmeal, cooked and stirred into a creamy dish the consistency of mashed potatoes. Polenta was the staple in the diet of early Swiss-Italian settlers. Children would put slices of dried polenta in their pockets to take to school for lunch.

The Santa Rosa Chapel dinner menu includes polenta topped with beef or chicken stew, a salad of baby greens and rolls and butter. For dessert, there's ice cream with raspberries or torta, a Swiss bread pudding. Wine and beer are available at an additional cost.

This is a real Swiss-Italian meal served to about 500 people each year. That’'s more than 600 pounds of cooked polenta.

For many of the area's old-timers, it's a chance to get together with friends to catch up on local news and gossip. They come from as far away as Salinas, King City, Visalia, Hanford, Santa Maria, Lompoc and Santa Barbara.

The Old Santa Rosa Chapel
2353 Main Street - Cambria, California
805.927.1175 or 805.441.1707
EMAIL For more information

 

 

 

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