Welcome to Lily Belli on Food, a weekly food-focused newsletter from Lookout’s food and drink correspondent, Lily Belli. Keep reading for the latest local food news for Santa Cruz County – plus a few fun odds and ends from my own life and around the web.
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… Congratulations to Beckmann’s Bakery on winning multiple blue ribbons at a national pie contest! The Santa Cruz-based bakery won Best in Show at the National Pie Championships in Florida last month for three of its pies: berry bomb (mixed berry), cherry, and peach, a new flavor set to be released in June.
Operations manager Tony Stumbaugh shared what it was like to be “a small fish in a big pond” against other major industrial bakers, but believes it’s Beckmann’s all-butter crust and hands-on approach to pie-making that allowed its recipes to win out against the other competitors. Read the story here.
… Santa Cruz-based Humble Sea Brewing Co. is on a roll – the 9-year-old brewery announced Tuesday that it will open a new taproom in San Francisco. This will be its sixth location, including a seasonal pop-up beer garden on the Santa Cruz Municipal Wharf. A post on Instagram announcing the new taproom did not give many details or share where it will be in the city.
Humble Sea was founded in 2015 by Nick Pavlina, Taylor West and Frank Scott Krueger, three friends who grew up in the San Lorenzo Valley. They established their first taproom on Swift Street on the Westside in Santa Cruz in 2017, followed by new locations in Pacifica in 2021 and Alameda in 2023. They opened the Humble Sea Tavern in Felton in 2022, and after a brief closure, reopened in January with chef Lance Ebert of SC Bread Boy.
… At long last, Tuesday is opening day at the new Whale City Aptos. This is the second location for the Davenport-based institution, located in the former Burger spot on Soquel Drive. The restaurant will be open all day every day, from 6:30 a.m. to 9 p.m., and serves a similar menu of hearty breakfasts, sandwiches, salads and baked goods.
I plan to stop in to check it out over the next few days – watch for a story later this week.
… Longstanding Seascape restaurant Palapas Restaurant y Cantina will close this weekend after 34 years, but two new restaurant owners plan to revive the space as Dos Pescados, a Mexican seafood restaurant, in June. Fresno-based restaurateur Brandon Smittcamp and chef Trent Lidgey of One Fish Raw Bar in Campbell are teaming up to open Dos Pescados, and aim to bring an elevated but approachable dining experience to the village. Last week, the new owners offered their plans for the space. Here’s what they said.
… In March, local winemaker Megan Bell of Margins Wine told us about the enormous effort it took to open a tiny 120-square-foot tasting room on the Westside. The process took an astonishing 483 days, and nearly bankrupted her small business. Give that story a read, if you missed it.
In a story that came out last week, Bell spoke with San Francisco Chronicle senior wine critic Esther Mobley on other dire issues plaguing California’s wine industry, which has stagnated after years of consistent growth. Read it here.
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IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
This month, our friend the Giant Dipper turns 100, and I think that deserves a special toast. Discretion Brewing has us covered with a special-edition craft beer to commemorate the centennial. Giant Dipper Golden Ale will be released this Saturday, the same day as a ceremony and a fireworks show, but I was able to taste it during its first canning run at the Soquel brewery last week. Check out the details on this limited-edition beer, and don’t miss this story on the iconic roller coaster’s milestone by my colleague Wallace Baine, who got a behind-the-scenes look at the Dipper when he walked the tracks with the Boardwalk’s maintenance team.
EVENT SPOTLIGHT
Santa Cruz-based event company Collective Santa Cruz’s dessert festival Sweet Home Santa Cruz will return for a second year the first weekend in June. This sugar-coated weekend is packed with local makers and bakers of sweet treats, art and live entertainment, including power yoga, an all-ages rave and a Candy Land circus. On Saturday, June 1, I’ll be on stage during a live cookie-baking demonstration with Jessica Yarr, chef at The Grove Cafe and Bakery in Felton, alongside local food influencer Double Meat Please. Each day promises a new lineup of pop-ups and entertainment. Tickets are $20 per day, with discounts for kids and two-day passes. More info here.
LIFE WITH THE BELLIS
I finally got around to watching “The Taste of Things,” a new film by Vietnamese-born French director Tran Anh Hung starring Juliette Binoche and Benoit Magimel, and my goodness, I can’t remember the last time I was completely swept off my feet by a film. The story is a romance between the two protagonists, but mostly it’s about food, with long, unhurried, nearly silent scenes of laborious cooking, meticulously served meals and focused, reverent eating. I promise, it’s riveting. You could probably fit all of the dialogue for this movie on a single page, but every line was poetry. All of the scenes were so gorgeous the film might as well have been painted. You can watch the trailer here, but I would recommend just diving in so that you can be surprised by all the tender moments.
FOOD NEWS WORTH READING
➤ In an opinion piece for Lookout’s Community Voices, climate and anti-pesticide activist Woody Rehanek remembers the Santa Cruz of the 1960s and 1970s, when the county was on the cutting edge of agricultural innovation. He implores us to return to those roots and embrace healthy, organic soils to fight climate change. Other counties are doing it, he writes, so why not us? (Lookout)
➤ Chances are, you have a bottle of hot honey somewhere in your kitchen. At the very least, you’ve almost certainly eaten it on pizza, ice cream, fried chicken, cheese or swirled into a cocktail or a cup of hot tea. “Hot honey has joined the ranks of pumpkin pie spice, ranch and chili crisp,” Julia Moskin writes as she dives into the trend. (The New York Times)