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. Check out all of my food and drink coverage here.
… Grey Bears, a nonprofit that provides groceries and meals to older adults in Santa Cruz County, broke ground on a new facility on Thursday. The Kristina Mailliard Center for Healthy Seniors — named after the organization’s founder — will greatly expand Grey Bears’ ability to provide nourishing food with a modern kitchen, indoor market, large indoor gathering space for dining and meeting, offices and ample food storage. It’s located next door to its existing facilities on Chanticleer Avenue in Live Oak.
The project is expected to be completed in 2028. I reported on it in April — here’s the story, in case you missed it.
… I have updates from two highly anticipated food and drink businesses. Alexis Carr and Dede Eckhardt, owners of Soif Wine Bar & Merchants, relaunched soifwine.com for wine purchases, and will open in the former Caffe Pergolesi building on Cedar Street in Santa Cruz for pickups only Wednesday through Sunday from 2 to 6 p.m. starting Nov. 11. They also have a wine club available, and six-packs for the holidays, while they continue to work through the permitting process in order to fully open the doors as a wine bar and shop.
Manresa Bread’s new Westside bakery and co-owner Avery Ruzicka’s adjoining restaurant have a name and tentative opening date. The Manresa Bread neighborhood bakery will offer bread, pastries, coffee “and so much more,” according to an Instagram post last week. As Ruzicka told me last November, this will be the only location out of the five throughout the Bay Area where everything will be baked on-site, rather than distributed from a central commissary.
Bar Select, a separate but adjoining French bistro, is a project from Ruzicka and sibling to her business partner David Kinch’s Mentone in Aptos. Its website lists winter 2026 as an opening date. Both businesses will be in the former Izakaya West End space, which closed in July 2025.
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… Tomato Tomato, a gourmet grocery, opened in October in downtown Santa Cruz with items for curious foodies: ghee, soy sauce and Japanese mayo, and locally sourced groceries, including eggs from Corralitos’ Pajaro Pastures, chicken from Pescadero’s Fogline Farm and pies and cookies from Santa Cruz’s Companion Bakeshop. Ad Astra Bread Co. in Monterey delivers fresh bread and pastries three times a week, and owner Lizi Barba plans to offer organic produce in the coming weeks.
“I really want to be a place where the people downtown who live and work here have a place to come in every day,” said Barba.
Tomato Tomato is part of a wave of new businesses in the downtown area within the past two years. In early 2025, Pacific Avenue and the surrounding blocks were plagued with nearly 40 empty storefronts. While some longstanding vacancies in large retail spaces remain, 29 new businesses have opened since January 2025, with 11 more opening soon or in process.
All of the new businesses, with the exception of two national chains — Anthropologie and Insomnia Cookies — are locally owned or operated. Here’s what’s behind the downtown business boom.
… One of the area’s most popular IPAs took top honors at a national beer competition. Uncle Dave’s IPA, brewed by Discretion Brewing in Soquel, earned a gold medal in the English-Style ESB or IPA category at the 2026 Great American Beer Festival.
“I’m really happy that we won for this particular beer,” said brewmaster Michael Demers in a media release. “Dave’s is our flagship. It was one of the very first recipes I developed for Discretion, and we’ve been brewing it continuously since we opened our doors in 2013.” Uncle Dave’s IPA is available in cans and on draft at Discretion’s taproom off of 41st Avenue, and at many locations locally and throughout the Bay Area.
NOTED
The Felton farmers market is closed for the season. The Scotts Valley farmers market will continue on Saturday mornings through Nov. 21. The Watsonville, Aptos, Live Oak, downtown Santa Cruz and Westside markets are year-round.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
Anyone holding out hope for a holiday crab feast needs to make other plans. The commercial and recreational Dungeness crab seasons won’t open before the end of the year, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife announced Friday.
Crab fishing using traditional pots is prohibited from the Oregon border to south of Morro Bay, including the coast off of Santa Cruz County, until at least Jan. 1, 2027. Sport fishing using other methods, such as hoop nets and snares, is allowed after this Saturday, Nov. 7.
This is the seventh year in a row that the opening of the season for the Dungeness crab fishery — one of the most important in Santa Cruz — has been delayed due to risks to sea life. Here’s the story.
EVENT SPOTLIGHT
Mark your calendars for two wine walks coming up next weekend. The Capitola Village Sip and Stroll will be held on Nov. 14 and the Downtown Santa Cruz Wine Walk will be Nov. 15. Both offer opportunities to sample local wines while exploring these shopping districts. Tickets are $55.20 for the Sip and Stroll, and the Wine Walk is $30 in advance, $45 day-of.
LIFE WITH THE BELLIS
The heat wave in mid-October seems to have finally been the last hurrah of a summer that felt like it started in March. I could not be happier for the cool, rainy weather this week, and have fully shifted into cozy dinners: quick soups and chowders, pot roast and stew simmered in a slow cooker, and piles of roasted vegetables. I warm my fingers in the afternoons by wrapping them around hot hot hot mugs of tea. Evening fires with hot cocoa and mini-marshmallows with our kids, Marco and Cecilia, ward away the chill.
FOOD NEWS WORTH READING
➤ General Mills teamed up with Ziploc to give its customers something they’ve long asked for: a resealable cereal bag. Boxes of Cheerios and Honey Nut Cheerios now feature a pantry seal to keep the bag’s contents fresher. (USA Today)
➤ Goodbye, Torani? Homemade flavored syrups are becoming the latest trend at independent coffee shops, while mass-market brands such as Torani and Monin face online backlash from customers seeking made-from-scratch ingredients in their coffee. (Eater)