Quick Take
Cavalletta in Aptos opened for one night on Saturday, giving guests a glimpse at the new upscale neighborhood Italian restaurant in advance of its opening slated for mid-February. The menu offers fresh, modern takes on Italian and Italian American appetizers, pastas and wood-fired pizzas.
Aptos restaurant Cavalletta has been waiting to open its doors for months, and while it still isn’t technically open, on Saturday night it welcomed a limited number of guests for a one-night-only seating. The menu of approachable yet refined Italian pastas and pizzas, appetizers and salads boasted unexpected details at every turn that made even the most beloved classics feel fresh and updated. The message was clear: The wait was worth it.
The official opening day for the restaurant at 9067 Soquel Drive, just a few doors down from the Hideout, is coming within the next two to three weeks, said manager Sydney Ruelas, but the staff couldn’t resist opening for a night to show off what they’ve been working on for almost a year. Some staff members still need to be hired and trained, but everything else – the remodeled dining room, the wood-fired oven and menu of seasonal trattoria fare – is ready to go.
Cavalletta is a collaboration between business partners and chefs Shawn Ryberg and Nick Sherman, both of whom were in the kitchen that night. “Cavalletto” means “trestle” in Italian, a nod to Sherman’s Capitola restaurant, Trestles, an American bistro that immediately became one of the best restaurants in the area when it opened in 2021. Trestles has hosted weekly Cavalletta pop-ups on Monday nights for the past six months featuring the Aptos restaurant’s menu while the team waited to pass final inspections. Anyone who has attended one of those pop-ups will recognize some of the dishes on the opening menu, although they really come alive in their own space.
The restaurant has been renovated since Restaurant Malik Williams left a little over a year ago. Notably, the right side of the restaurant is now an open kitchen, featuring a large wood-fired pizza oven, with counter seating along a bar. Comfortable leather seats surround simple wood tables between white-washed walls – no more baby grand piano or fake vines. The vibe is warm, clean and unfussy.
The menu is made up of Italian and Italian American classics that will be recognizable to almost anyone who walks through the door, like beef bolognese ($25), margherita pizza ($21) and a Caesar salad ($17). But Cavalletta is a far cry from your average red-sauce joint – the technique, skillful details and playful textures surprised at every turn, without sacrificing the comfort that many desire from neighborhood restaurants. It’s all been filtered through a fine-dining lens, without any of the stuffiness.
Whatever you do, begin with focaccia ($12). The tall slices were emulsified with enough olive oil to fry the lid and base, while the interior stayed moist and airy, a vehicle for burrata flecked with sea salt and lemon zest. In another appetizer, roasted mushrooms ($17) sprinkled with breadcrumbs floated on a rich sauce, made richer with the addition of a whole raw egg yolk.
The beef carpaccio ($17) lingered in my mind from a pop-up I attended at Trestles in July, and it was even better than I remembered. I twirled the nearly translucent raw beef around my fork in a tangle of peppery arugula, garlic chips, truffle aioli and a flurry of Parmesan.
A vinegary Italian chop salad ($16) was a palate-cleansing intermission before we moved on to pizza and pasta, an addictive mix of arugula, briny olives, garbanzo beans, Italian dry salami and pepperoncinis wrapped in a bright vinaigrette.
Cavalletta’s version of Roman pasta all’amatriciana ($22) doesn’t shy away from the dish’s traditional heat – it’s pleasantly fiery – but is made with American bacon instead of Italian guanciale, adding a layer of smokiness to the rich tomato sauce captured by tightly coiled trottole noodles.
There is no shortage of Neapolitan-style pizza in Santa Cruz County, but Cavalletta manages to make one that – again – offers something new. The crust is not pillowy or flabby; the edge is crunchy, almost crackling with olive oil, deeply browned, with a few stray bubbles that have been roasted to cinders. The margherita ($21) was dotted with a large handful of torn basil leaves and generous dollops of creamy burrata, a decadent take on a humble dish. There are three other pizzas on the menu – a charcuterie ($24) with cured meat and smoked mozzarella; a mushroom pizza ($23) with arugula and Parmesan; and sausage and potato ($24) with bechamel and kale.
At the end of the meal, guests were given a complimentary chocolate mousse dessert, topped with Chantilly cream and a crumble of sesame seeds and rosemary sea salt that I pray ends up on the final menu.
Although this one night was just a glimpse of what’s to come for Cavalletta, it stood up to the standard created by Sherman at Trestles, while offering a welcoming, neighborhood atmosphere that will make it easy for guests to return again and again.
FOR THE RECORD: This story was updated with Cavalletta’s address.
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