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.
… Researching my story on three Santa Cruz County bakers on the rise was such a fun and rewarding project. Not only was I blown away by the sourdough at Melo Bread in Watsonville and pastries at Spontaneous Confections in Capitola and 11th Hour Coffee in Santa Cruz, I was also moved by each baker’s story about why they invest so much into their craft.
After years working in elite kitchens in Germany and California, Kevin Grenz of Melo Bread realized that the aggressive pace and lifestyle wasn’t for him. “I burned out,” he told me, and discovered he was drawn to bread – the soft textures, natural materials and slower pace.
“My business is art first, and my art just happens to be edible,” said Justin Lenorovitz of Spontaneous Confections. A lifelong hobby baker, he dove headfirst into pastry-making as a way to manage post-traumatic stress after serving in the military.
Talia Damon spent two years crafting exquisite desserts for Aubergine in Carmel. In 2024, Damon returned to her hometown of Santa Cruz to plan her next move, and started working at 11th Hour Coffee’s bakery – temporarily, she thought. “I pretty quickly took over the whole program,” Damon told me. Read the full story here.
… Congratulations to Sleight of Hand Pizza, a local pop-up and catering company that came home with several high rankings at the World Pizza Games in Las Vegas last week. Owner Justin Wadstein told me that he and six of his staff competed in 14 different international competitions.
Patrick Baumann – Wadstein’s “right-hand man” – placed fourth overall out of 110 competitors from around the world in the Non Traditional category. His winning pie was topped with homemade salted watermelon jam, mozzarella, stracciatella, cotija, serrano and mint. It will be available at Sleight of Hand’s new brick-and-mortar space inside the forthcoming Cruz Room in Santa Cruz – here’s my story on the Cruz Room from last week, ICYMI – hopefully by late April.
Baumann also placed second in the Traditional category for the South West region, and Jostin Barber, Wadstein’s cousin, placed second in the acrobatic pizza-spinning competition. Barber works for both Sleight of Hand and downtown Santa Cruz’s Kianti’s Pizza and Pasta Bar, and his mom – Tracy Parks-Barber, Wadstein’s aunt – co-owns Kianti’s, another pizza-spinning cornerstone, with Kelly Kissee.
“This is a full-circle thing, because I first went to the world championships in Vegas with Kianti’s in 2005,” said Wadstein.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
Gran Gelato Caffè, a new Santa Cruz gelateria from the owners of Pizzeria La Bufala in Abbott Square, has opened on Cedar Street. The café serves house-made Italian gelato in traditional and creative flavors – from Nutella to orange-marzipan – as well as pastries and espresso, with outdoor seating along a pedestrian walkway that runs between Cedar Street and Center Street. Gran Gelato is among the first retail tenants in the new downtown developments. Read the story here.
NOTED
Nine people, including children, have been sickened in an expanding outbreak of E. coli food poisoning tied to raw milk and cheddar cheese made with it from Raw Farm, a Fresno producer, health officials said. Half of the cases are in children younger than 5, and seven total cases are in California. Here’s more info.
EVENT SPOTLIGHT
The inaugural Santa Cruz Vegan Chef Challenge kicks off Wednesday and runs through the end of April. Throughout the monthlong event, 27 restaurants, pop-ups and food trucks across the county offer new plant-based dishes on their menus, from Bookie’s Pizza and Chocolate in Santa Cruz, to Caruso’s Tuscan Cuisine and La Marea in Capitola, to Circle & Square Bistro in Corralitos and beyond. Diners are encouraged to rate and review their favorites. View the menus at veganchefchallenge.org/santacruz.
LIFE WITH THE BELLIS
My family rented a house in Hawaii with our friends last month for a week, and every evening I caught myself staring at their kids’ dinner. Their children are almost the same age as my own – Marco is almost 5, and Cecilia just turned 3 – but their evening meals are worlds apart. My friend served her children a variation on what the adults ate, with a vegetable – sometimes two! They returned to the kitchen reasonably clean.
Food – cooking it, sharing it, writing about it – is a huge part of my life, but despite an abundance of healthy exposure to new foods, Marco and Cecilia’s meals are often mundane. Marco, in particular, is very resistant to trying new foods, and eats only microscopic amounts of vegetables, while Cecilia is more adventurous. They eat a lot of pasta.
I have to accept that while I wish my kids ate differently, our family isn’t there yet. I try not to worry about it, and would rather they be full and have a stress-free mealtime. I remind myself that I, too, was once a very picky eater. And look at me now!
FOOD NEWS WORTH READING
➤ In January, California became the first state to require food makers to add folic acid, a crucial vitamin in early pregnancy, to corn masa flour used to make tortillas and other traditional Hispanic foods. The federal government successfully decreased devastating birth defects by adding folic acid to bread and other wheat products in the 1970s, but these issues have remained stubbornly high among Latina mothers. (Associated Press)
➤ State lawmakers officially renamed the March 31 holiday from César Chávez Day to Farmworkers Day, effective Tuesday. The quickly ratified changes come weeks after allegations that Chávez, a historic civil rights leader, sexually abused girls and women, including fellow leader Dolores Huerta. (Associated Press)