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Eat this: Tamales at El Rosal Bakery
Walking through the doorway to El Rosal Bakery from the gray Live Oak Shopping Center is like stepping from black-and-white film into Technicolor. Cheerful papel picado flags and colorful piñatas hang from the ceiling, the market shelves are stacked with packaged snacks and treats, and a pastry case of housemade panes dulces shines in the back of the bakery.
Immediately, the aroma of cornmeal and chilis hits your senses, warming you to your bones. El Rosal makes tamales all year round, but during the holiday season it turns into a tamale-making factory, churning out thousands of tamales a day.
A sign on the outside of the bakery brags that El Rosal serves “the best tamales in town!” But does it? Here’s what I think.
Best of the Weekend
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 the food news stories from Lookout that you might have missed.
- Dungeness crab season pushed to at least Jan. 11 in Monterey Bay, opens Jan. 5 in northernmost California (Lookout)
- New Cabrilo Wine Studies degree raises profile of Santa Cruz’s wine industry (Lookout)
- Backed by Apple design luminary, Scotts Valley company’s portable blender inks Williams Sonoma deal (Lookout)