Eaters Digest is delivered as a free newsletter via email, as well as on our website. Sign up for texts from me to get an alert the moment it’s in your inbox. To read the full story, click here to become a Lookout member – and access all of Lily’s food and beverage reporting.
DRINK THIS: BENT DIME LEMONCELLO
During the holiday season, it’s a good practice to keep a few bottles of wine on hand to exchange, bring to parties, and enjoy when a festive mood strikes, but I also think it’s fun to keep something a little different around to break up the endless parade of pinot noir and chardonnay. Enter: limoncello.
If you’re wrinkling your nose at the mention of this sweet, lemony Italian digestif, you might have been the victim of a cloyingly sweet version served thick from the freezer in a tiny shot glass, to which I say: yuk. But if you get your hands on a decent bottle and serve it properly, you’ll discover how versatile and appealing it is before or after a big meal. The floral, citrusy flavor is refreshing after endless heavy snacks and courses, and it can be used in cooking as a marinade for meat or in icings and soaked into cakes.
I’m a fan of Bent Dime Lemoncello, a local collaboration that launched earlier this year between bartender Enrico Zampieri and winemaker Les Wright of 37th Parallel Winery in Scotts Valley. Bent Dime limoncello is made with fortified wine, rather than liquor, and was created by Zampieri and Wright to sell to restaurants that don’t have a liquor license. It’s intensely floral and lemony, and less sweet than other versions I’ve tried.
Zampieri likes to serve it as a cocktail. It shines as a spritz when topped with a healthy pour of prosecco and finished with a lemon twist, and in what he calls a “Vesuvian mule,” a play on a Moscow mule but with limoncello instead of vodka and ginger beer, or splashed into a gin and tonic. Honestly, over ice ain’t half bad, either.
Find it at Shopper’s Corner in Santa Cruz, Aptos Foods and Seascape Foods in Aptos and Scotts Valley Market, for around $22 for a 375-milliliter bottle (price may vary from store to store), and on cocktail menus at local restaurants like Lago di Como in Live Oak, Buzzo in Soquel, Akira in Aptos and Santa Cruz and Iveta Café in Santa Cruz.
BEST OF THE WEEK AHEAD
Below, find a curated list of the best food and drink events in Santa Cruz County for the coming week. At the top, I share my picks of unmissable local happenings.
NEWS OF THE WEEK
ICYMI – here are food news stories from Lookout you might have missed.
- After 40 years, family-owned Mackenzies Chocolates to close on Christmas Eve (Lookout)
- Return of “The Bean”: Watsonville favorite El Frijolito reopens after nearly two years (Lookout)
- Santa Cruz City Council unanimously backs live music at Woodhouse Brewing (Lookout)
- Portland darling Nico’s brings fruit-blended soft serve to downtown Santa Cruz (Lookout)
- Dungeness crab season closure will continue into December (Lookout)
