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.
Eat this: Ceviche at Hook + Line
I’ve been a fan of chef Santos Majano’s for at least 15 years, since he was the executive chef at Soif in the mid-2000s and later, when he created gorgeous meals that defied the typical “pub style” dishes at his own mini-restaurant, The Kitchen at Discretion Brewing, from 2014 to 2020.
So although I had high expectations for Hook + Line, his new restaurant in downtown Santa Cruz, ironically – or perhaps fatefully – located in the former Soif space on Walnut Avenue, I wasn’t at all surprised when Majano and his all-star staff easily met them.
On Monday, I’ll share everything about my dining experience and what a restaurant like Hook + Line, with a skilled chef like Majano at the helm, might mean for Santa Cruz’s dining scene, but today I’ll leave you with a simple instruction: Go. And whatever you do, order the ceviche.
Hook + Line’s menu focuses on sustainable seafood, from oysters to trout to mussels and Dungeness crab. The ceviche ($21) is made with halibut, both a responsibly sourced, local fish and a decadent one. Majano’s ceviche leans Peruvian, rather than Mexican, with white, firm-fleshed fish, ripe avocado and – a delightful surprise – creamy sweet potato, all bound by a tart, barely spicy leche de tigre marinade. It’s an uncluttered and utterly perfect dish, marrying flavors of the sea and of the earth. I’m not too proud to say that I tipped the bowl back to capture every last drop.
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 recent food news stories from Lookout that you might have missed.
- The more mushrooms the merrier: Santa Cruz Mountain Mushroom Festival sprouts at Roaring Camp (Lookout)
- Dolphin Restaurant to be demolished due to damage as city plans ‘reimagining’ of end of wharf (Lookout)
- Live Oak farmers market signs lease with Swenson to stay at East Cliff mall for another year (Lookout)
- With new leadership team in place, Mentone launches into its next season of life (Lookout)