With new leadership team in place, Mentone launches into its next season of life

When Mentone opened in Aptos Village four years ago, it was the first time world-renowned chef and Santa Cruz resident David Kinch had broken ground on local soil. As a result, it was one of the most anticipated openings of the year, despite the early days of the pandemic settling like a dark cloud on the restaurant industry. 

His opening team capably weathered a tumultuous first year, leaning on outdoor seating for months before anyone actually sat inside the beautifully adorned dining room, and still managed to earn Mentone its own Michelin recognition – a Bib Gourmand, the only one in Santa Cruz County – in 2021.

Now, a new chef, returning to the Central Coast and eager to immerse himself in local ingredients, a general manager joining Mentone by way of Shadowbrook, Soif and La Posta, and a wine director with experience at Michelin-starred restaurants in New York City have all joined within the past year, and are leading Mentone into its next phase. 

It’s a coincidence that three new leaders are converging on Mentone at the same time, but it’s an opportunity to move forward with ideas that will inspire both guests and the staff, says Kinch. That includes fresh takes on French and Italian classics, a new expansive wine program and the upcoming reopening of Little Beach, Mentone’s seasonal outside lunch service. 

Head chef Jason Grubbs is the most recent addition to the team, relocating from the Midwest to lead the kitchen in March. It’s not his first time in California: Grubbs studied baking and pastry at the Culinary Institute of America in Napa Valley after spending six years as a rescue swimmer and combat medic in the U.S. Navy. 

After graduating, Grubbs worked at some of the best restaurants in the area, including The French Laundry, Meadowood and Solbar. He first met Kinch in 2018 while interning at Manresa Bread, the bakery offshoot of Manresa run by baker Avery Ruzicka, and while there took up a second job at The Bywater, Kinch’s New Orleans-inspired Los Gatos restaurant. 

When Grubbs considered a move back to the West Coast, it wasn’t just the idea of working with Kinch that excited him, but the ability to work with the Central Coast’s ingredients. An interview in January at Mentone sealed the deal. 

“I wasn’t sure what I wanted to cook because in Missouri, it’s potatoes and cabbage. I get here and I’m like, what in the world?” Grubbs says, marveling at the bounty of fresh produce available even in the dead of winter. 

Now, his weekly schedule includes trips to local farmers markets, where he’s been selecting shelling peas, fava beans, artichokes and broccolini to incorporate into the spring menu. 

Kinch isn’t in the kitchen much these days, and instead manages his restaurant empire while traveling and enjoying semi-retirement. He says it’s Grubbs’ maturity, leadership skills and experience baking that make him a good fit to lead Mentone. “You can’t just be a good cook and be militaristic or demanding. You have to be able to earn the right to be respected,” says Kinch. “And Jason was ready to come back. He was drawn back to the area for the same reason that I was, because of the quality of the ingredients.”

Kinch, whose flagship Los Gatos restaurant, Manresa, earned the ultimate three Michelin stars before it closed in 2023, has a history of attracting passionate individuals to his staff who share his commitment to both the finest local ingredients, producers and makers, and an exceptional customer experience. In fact, he says his staff members are what drive him to create new restaurants. 

“[At Manresa,] I had a lot of really great, talented people working for me. And instead of them working with me until they could no longer be challenged or compensated and then moving on, I realized I had to learn how to create opportunities for them to come into the family,” says Kinch. “Every place we open from Manresa Bread to The Bywater to Mentone has been to create more opportunities for people who spend a lot of time with us.” 

So while at first glance Mentone, a French-Italian neighborhood joint, and Manresa, a globally renowned icon of modern California cuisine, seem like they don’t have much in common, they share an ethos of rigorous hospitality and great food.

Mentone is the Italian spelling and pronunciation of Menton, a town on the French Riviera on the border of France and Italy. 

The restaurant’s menu celebrates this region and the intersection of the two cuisines, with an emphasis on light, seasonal fare and coastal ingredients – think delicate and fish-focused, with more provincial proteins like rabbit or veal, and lots of fresh herbs, rather than red sauces and tomatoes, says Kinch. He quotes chef Ferran Adrià, who said, “Remember that a very good sardine is always preferable to a not that good lobster.” “It’s not about the luxuriousness of an ingredient but the quality of it,” says Kinch. “That’s what always has attracted me to that part of the world.”

Grubbs is beginning to bring his own dishes to Mentone’s menu. One dish, the tagliatelle pasta with lamb ragu and fava beans ($34), was typically Ligurian and springy. The delicate yet hearty sauce clung to tender housemade pasta, gamey lamb mingling with the fresh, green pop of peas and lightened with mint. 

The steak tartare ($25) was packed with sharp shallot, briny capers and French red wine vinegar, the assertive flavors enhancing rather than overpowered the rich raw beef. Shavings of cured egg yolk took the place of the traditional raw egg, increasing the amperage on this umami-packed dish, which we piled onto lacey crostini. 

Another dish showed promise but indicated that Grubbs might still be getting his feet under him in the new kitchen. An entree of Spanish octopus ($33) offered an exquisite, perfectly cooked tentacle, shimmering with a glaze that delicately crisped its textured exterior. But the beluga lentils that accompanied it and darkened with squid ink were a clever but rather bland accompaniment to such a beautiful fish. The kalamata olives were overpowering, and I craved more of the smoky romesco. 

There are several items on the menu that never leave, and are what I would consider “classic Mentone,” including a pile of mild, oozing stracciatella cheese ($18) doused in bright local olive oil and served with tall slices of oily focaccia, and a side dish of roasted eggplant ($17), blistered, sweet and smoky, smoldering with oregano, fennel and Calabrian chili, and soft bites of fromage blanc. These dishes, enjoyed many times in the past, sparked joy yet again. 

Throughout the meal, the seasoned staff offered unwavering hospitality and attentiveness. The front of house is now led by Sean Fyock, who became Mentone’s general manager last May. Fyock worked at Shadowbrook in Capitola for 10 years, eventually becoming general manager, before joining the teams at Soif and La Posta in Santa Cruz. 

Now, he’s committed to upholding Kinch’s high standards for service. “Having chef Kinch come from the three-Michelin-star achievement, we want this place to be far more approachable but have that quality of food, wines and service,” says Fyock. 

He’s looking forward to the return of Little Beach, Mentone’s lunch service, after Memorial Day. Available only on the weekends during the summer, the seasonal lunch service takes place outside on a covered patio, with a simple menu meant to entice guests with a long lunch of pizza, salads, salumi and drinks. “We call it Little Beach so that it feels separate from Mentone, and a bit more like a pop-up in the parking lot. Guests could walk in from the beach and enjoy just being outside under an umbrella,” says Fyock. 

Emma Bavera now heads the wine program, and in less than six months has expanded Mentone’s list from 50 titles to almost 400. The wine list once fit on a single sheet of paper; now, it’s a 20-page book. 

Kinch says he wants Mentone to be a wine destination in Santa Cruz County, and believes Bavera is the woman to bring a wine program to Mentone that can compete with those in nearby Monterey County at restaurants like Bernardus Lodge & Spa and Casanova in Carmel. 

Bavera comes to Mentone from New York City, where she attended culinary school and was drawn to wine. After graduation, she worked at several Michelin-starred restaurants, including Gramercy Tavern and Joomak Banjum. Since she joined Mentone in November, she has focused on filling out the wine list with French, Italian and local wines at a variety of price points that are biodynamic and sustainably made from small producers. 

She says that while the list size will remain the same, the wine selection is fluid.

“One of the fun things about a wine list and just wine in general is that things are constantly changing,” says Bavera. “Right now, the thing that I’m striving towards is just having a list that is up to date with what people want, but still offers a wide range of things for everyone.” 

Guests can deepen their knowledge with new monthly wine classes, always on a Sunday from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. Each class hosts a different producer, with tasting and light snacks provided by the restaurant. On April 28, Julie Raynaud from European Cellars will discuss different wine styles produced in and around the famed Châteauneuf-du-Pape region in France. 

Bavera also introduced a new quartino program, a special list of three wines available by a quartino, or a glass carafe, that contains about one and a half glasses of wine. The goal, she says, is to highlight specific regions and producers and allow the guest to explore more wines than they would by the glass. 

In April, the theme of the quartino list was A Look at the Loire, and it included three wines from the Loire Valley in France, priced from $20 to $95 for a quartino. Future lists might include more playful themes, Bavera says. In honor of the European soccer championship tournament this summer, the quartino list will offer Italian wines associated in some way with players on the Italian team. 

“I think that at the end of the day, it’s meant to be enjoyed, and you can’t be too intellectual about it,” says Bavera. “Or you can definitely be intellectual about it, but it can’t stop the fun.”

Since Manresa closed for daily service at the end of 2022, Kinch has focused more on Mentone and his other restaurants. Then, in January, he reopened Manresa as Ritual x Manresa, where he hosts monthly pop-ups featuring some of the finest chefs in the world. Now that he’s going back and forth between the two spaces, Kinch says he prefers the vibe at Mentone over haute cuisine. 

“I don’t miss it,” he says of Manresa. “I don’t miss all that attention to detail, tension and perfectionism at all costs. I find really what floats my boat now is this light, animated kind of off-the-cuff simplicity. At this time of life and this point in my career, that’s what really floats my boat.”

174 Aptos Village Way, Aptos; mentonerestaurant.com.