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.
… Santa Cruz County’s food and drink businesses are bracing for price increases on vital ingredients and goods due to tariffs on products imported from Mexico, Canada and China. Last week, local businesses received notices from distributors that the cost of certain goods will go up by double-digit percentages.
Most business owners I spoke to are taking a “wait and see” approach until the final invoices come in before raising menu prices, but told me that this feeling of uncertainty, on top of already high prices due to shortages and inflation, makes planning for the future difficult.
“It’s so unclear and stressful, and it’s hard to know which end is up,” said Gayle’s Bakery co-owner Louisa Beers.
Carolyn Rudolph, owner of Charlie Hong Kong, is considering raising the price of salmon, the restaurant’s most popular protein, by 6 to 8% in response to a 25% tariff increase, but wants it to be affordable for her customers. “I don’t want to price our community out of having healthy food, or price out the people who harvest our food being able to eat it,” Rudolph said.
Even though Fruition Brewing owners Tallula Preston and David Purgason purchase American-made aluminum cans and California-grown grain for their Watsonville craft brewery, they’re preparing for a price increase as tariffs affect these global commodities. “When the price of grain goes up anywhere, it puts pressure on the rest of the supply, even if it’s not a tariffed good,” Purgason told me.
… If you saw green at your local coffee shop on St. Patrick’s Day, it probably wasn’t just a holiday celebration. More local coffee shops are expanding their menus of matcha drinks.
Matcha, a concentrated powdered green tea used in hot and cold beverages, is already a familiar site on many café menus in the form of matcha lattes. But over the past year, matcha has experienced a sudden global surge in popularity. With higher caffeine levels than loose-leaf teas and a slew of purported health benefits, a new wave of drinkers is seeking out matcha as a healthy alternative to coffee.
In Santa Cruz County, coffee shops are promoting higher-quality matcha with stronger matcha flavors, and a wider range of matcha beverages, like citrus-infused iced matchas and espresso-style drinks like cappuccinos made with matcha, in addition to fun twists on the familiar matcha lattes with different kinds of milk and fruit or simple syrup infusions.
… Attention Lookout members! Join me for a Westside Wine Walk on Sunday, April 6, from 2:30 to 4 p.m. At this members-only event, we will visit three fantastic local wineries in the hip Westside neighborhood between Fair Avenue and Swift Street – Madson Wines, Santa Cruz Mountain Vineyard and Margins Wine. We will taste two wines at each stop and learn about the winemaking process from the winemakers, while enjoying snacks from a nearby food business. I’m looking forward to tasting some fabulous wines and showing off one of my favorite neighborhoods in the county. Tickets are $10 each, and there are only a few spots left. Reserve your spot today.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
The effort to transform an unused baseball field on the Del Mar Elementary School campus into a working farm and educational center for Live Oak School District is closer to reaching its $250,000 funding goal with a $125,000 matching donation from an anonymous donor. This May, the nutrition program will host a farm dinner fundraiser to show the site to community members and support infrastructure and future programs. Here’s the update.
EVENT SPOTLIGHT
On Saturday, April 19, the DIYine Homebrewing Festival returns after a five-year pandemic hiatus. At this homebrew tasting event at the Veterans Memorial Building in Santa Cruz, amateur fermentation enthusiasts share their kombucha, beer, fruit wines, soda, mead and any other creative combinations they can dream up. A $35 ticket comes with a punch card for 10 tastings, access to a charcuterie snack board and live music.
LIFE WITH THE BELLIS
We celebrated my daughter Cecilia’s 2nd birthday last weekend, and as I promised in this column a couple of weeks ago, here is a picture of her homemade “Frozen”-themed birthday cake. Not bad for an amateur, if I do say so. Almost-4-year-old Marco, her older brother, loved adding the white sprinkles for a snowy effect. And Ceci hasn’t stopped carrying around the little cake toppers for two days.
After I shared my plans for this cake earlier this month, reader and teacher Darren G. reached out to tell me about a wonderful local nonprofit. Cakes With Care is a volunteer-run organization that creates custom birthday cakes for financially and socially disadvantaged people, like foster youth and older adults. I teared up looking at its gallery and the obvious care that went into making these cakes and cupcakes. How sweet!
FOOD NEWS WORTH READING
➤ Last week, President Donald Trump doubled down on his proposed 200% tariffs on wine and Champagne imported from the European Union, set to go into effect on April 2. The EU retaliated by promising high tariffs on American goods, including a 50% tariff on whiskey. (ABC News)
➤ The U.S. Department of Agriculture has ended two pandemic-era programs that provided support for schools and food banks to purchase food from local farmers and producers. The cuts will hurt school districts with chronically underfunded school meal budgets, school representatives said, and are a blow to farmers in those communities. (The Associated Press)
➤ Special coasters available at some Santa Cruz bars are helping to protect patrons from “date rape drugs.” The coasters act as drug testing kits that are able to immediately detect whether drugs like ketamine or GHB are present. (Good Times)