Quick Take
A new downtown Santa Cruz cocktail lounge, Alley Oop, has transformed the former Poet & Patriot pub into a polished, speakeasy-style bar with a focus on vintage drinks and small plates. Owner Max Turigliatto, who previously revamped Mission West, has created a high-demand destination that blends classic cocktails, a curated menu and a sense of surprise for guests.
An alley-oop on a basketball court, football field or skate park, is an astonishing score. The scoreboard lights up. The fans go wild.
In a former pub in downtown Santa Cruz, set back from Pacific Avenue, owner Max Turigliatto has achieved a similar slam dunk with his new cocktail lounge. Over the past three years, he transformed the rough-edged The Poet & The Patriot Irish pub, which closed in 2020, into a glittering jewel box, and finally opened on Feb. 13. The name Alley Oop, a nod to the slim “Jazz Alley” that runs alongside it, is fitting considering the space’s transformation and the painstaking effort it took to complete.
Separate any memories of beer and darts at the Poet from your mind. The Alley Oop shares the same address, but the similarities end there. Turigliatto gutted the building down to the studs and built a glamorous speakeasy lined with moody dark wood paneling and leather booths, shimmering with bronze accents. It’s elegant and extremely hip, the kind of place to wear that special something hanging in the back of your closet.
Turigliatto added a kitchen, and offers a menu of small plates and appetizers. At Alley Oop, the food is intended to support the beverages: cocktails, wine, Champagne and spirits. It’s not a restaurant; it’s a bar, and the shoestring fries with vermouth aioli ($9) with a pearl spoonful of Siberian caviar ($10) are a great choice to kick off a few hours of sipping and noshing.
But first, you have to get in. Guests check in with the host inside a small hallway located off the alley. Since Alley Oop opened in mid-February, I’ve heard anecdotes of wait times that stretched to two hours (a host will text guests when their table is ready if the wait is long). Both times that I went – once on a Saturday around 7 p.m. and a second time on a Thursday at 8 p.m. – I waited less than 10 minutes. The Alley Oop doesn’t offer reservations, so showing up means a roll of the dice.
Guests can’t see inside while they wait, and that’s intentional, Turigliatto told me. He wants to preserve that moment of surprise the first time someone enters and sees the transformation, going so far as to request Lookout not take wide shots of the interior for this story.
Honestly, I get it. On my first visit, I practically dragged my jaw across the floor as Turigliatto escorted me and my guest to two seats at the bar. It made for a fun jolt of butterflies to kick off the evening.
It’s the second time Turigliatto has revived one of Santa Cruz’s drinking institutions. In 2019, he and business partner Grant Staudt purchased The Watering Hole on Mission Street, a down-at-the-heels dive. They renamed it Mission West, updated the interior and menu to attract a broader audience, and began hosting community events, food trucks and live music. It was a hit, and in late 2025, Staudt and Turigliatto sold Mission West to longtime locals Peter and Krista Cook.
From left to right: the blackened ahi salad; an Alley Oop Champagne cocktail; a Rim Shot with cognac; and a Green Room with cucumber-infused eau de vie. Credit: Natasha Leverett / Lookout Santa Cruz 
The Green Room cocktail, made with cucumber-infused eau de vie, with french fries and a caviar supplement at Alley Oop. Credit: Natasha Leverett / Lookout Santa Cruz 
The Licks & Chops lamb chops with mango chutney.
At Alley Oop, there are a few wines by the glass, mostly French, with a few splashy bottles, like the 2022 Monte Bello cabernet sauvignon by Ridge Vineyards in the Santa Cruz Mountains ($420). But the emphasis is on mixed drinks using grape-derived liquors. Lesser-known libations such as vermouth, brandy, and cognac get their due in drinks like The Alley Oop ($12), a riff on a Champagne cocktail, and the smoky-sweet Rim Shot ($18), a blend of cognac and mezcal, Cointreau and vermouth, served up and decorated with candied ginger.
A list of classic cocktails, such as a Sazerac ($16) and Clover Club ($16), plays into the vintage atmosphere. The tiki-inspired Hotel Nacional Special ($16) boasts a frothy float, with spiced bitters peeking through the lime juice and pineapple. There is also a list of zero-proof choices, ranging from the nostalgic – a Roy Rogers ($10) – to a more refined Lydian fizz ($12), a pleasantly bitter fruity blend of cranberry, grapefruit, lime and lavender.
It’s difficult to stop at one, so it’s a good idea to order some food. Some of the share plates are snacky, like the fried Jazz Alley chicken wings ($16) glazed in hot honey, and the prawns remoulade ($16), a classic shrimp cocktail garnished with slices of avocado. Other plates are more substantial. Among them, the blackened ahi salad ($22) with peppery seared tuna, pistachios and avocado and the Licks & Chops ($24) – lamb chops over dirty rice with mango chutney and lots of mint – were standouts for flavor and preparation. There’s also a respectable burger and fries ($22), should the craving strike.
I was disappointed in the beignets ($14), which were rather small and flat. With the jazzy, New Orleans vibe, I was hoping for large, airy doughnuts dusted in an obscene amount of powdered sugar a la the iconic Café du Monde.
The bill arrived with a piece of mint chocolate taffy from Marini’s Candies, and I capped off the evening with a Poet & Patriot ($14), an Irish coffee spiked with Tullamore D.E.W. and topped with a thick float of whipped cream mixed with the bitter head of a Guinness. It’s a nostalgic nod to what came before, as the Alley Oop ushers this long-loved corner into a modern era.
320 Cedar St., Santa Cruz; jazzalleylounge.com.
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