Aptos Vineyard will hold a grand opening for its new tasting room in Aptos Village on Sept. 3.

Lily Belli on Food: Aptos Village’s burgeoning vino vibe, Emily’s closes & getting creative for date night

By Lily Belli

Source: Lookout Santa Cruz

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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… Aptos Vineyard opened a new tasting room in Aptos Village last month on Post Office Drive between Akira and Starbucks. A grand opening will be held Sunday, Sept. 3, from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. The tasting room is currently open for tasting flights, wines by the glass and bottle sales Friday through Sunday afternoons; after the grand opening, it will be open Thursday through Monday.

Aptos Vineyard was established in 1974 by John and Patti Marlo. After John Marlo died in 2015, the label was purchased by close friend James Baker. The winery produces wines from grapes sourced in the Santa Cruz Mountains.

It got me thinking — is Aptos Village on its way to becoming a wine hub à la the Santa Cruz Westside? This new addition brings the number of tasting rooms in Aptos Village up to three — others include Sante Arcangeli Family Wines and the Bonny Doon Vineyard/Ser Winery shared space, Doon to Earth. The area also includes Cantine Winepub and Mentone restaurant, and it’s the site of the annual Aptos Wine Walk. More construction is on the way — time will tell.

Emily's Bakery on Mission Street in Santa Cruz closed at the end of July after 41 years in business.

… Since 1982, a sign hanging over the door Emily’s Good Things To Eat has reminded guests to “Relax. You have plenty of time,” but time has run out for the Mission Street bakery. Emily’s Bakery closed at the end of July after 41 years in business, and owners Emily Reilly and Robert Nahas have retired. Read more about the closure and this business’ impact on the community.

… My family gets breakfast at the Westside farmers market almost every weekend, but last Saturday our meal looked a little different. My husband and I attended a pop-up breakfast feast created by chef Katherine Stern of The Midway, one of two events held this summer to fundraise for Santa Cruz Community Farmers’ Markets educational programs. (Disclosure: The farmers market provided two tickets for me as a member of the media.)

It was the second of two farmers market pop-up breakfasts held this year, marking the return of the popular event series after a three-year hiatus caused by the pandemic. The five courses prominently featured ingredients from farmers market farms — like the stunning main, braised pork shoulder from Fogline Farm with grilled green figs and crispy sage leaves. More on the meal and the significance of this event series later this week.

The history of Soquel Vineyards; an exquisite tasting experience in the Santa Cruz Mountains

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IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

Chef Jose Ortega at Firefly Tavern, which opened in downtown Santa Cruz in April, worked with former Soif chef Santos Majano at The Kitchen at Discretion for years. Now in his own space, Ortega offers a creative menu of comfort food with bold flavors and thoughtful details. I reflect on one notable dish — the fried chicken and waffles — in Friday’s Eaters Digest.

NOTED

74,000,000,000 — Number of chickens raised and slaughtered in the world annually, far outpacing other livestock, whose numbers reach only into the millions. That number is expected to jump to 85 billion chickens by 2032. The world consumes such an astronomical amount of chicken that some archaeologists believe that chicken bones will define our modern age. How did this happen? Vox breaks the story down.

LIFE WITH THE BELLIS

Food correspondent Lily Belli rediscovers cooking with her husband through weekly date nights.

When my husband, Mike, and I first started dating, we cooked together all the time. But over the past couple of years since our family grew by two humans, one of us is designated the Baby Wrangler while the other gets food onto the table. Then we usually try to enjoy dinner as a family — a somewhat chaotic event where a significant amount of the meal ends up in places that aren’t a mouth, including the table, floor and usually someone’s hair.

But Mike and I decided we miss cooking together, so for the past few weeks we’ve been changing up our weekly date night. Now, instead of going out, we put in a little extra effort to make sure the kids are in bed by 8 p.m. (hey, it’s summer, we’ve been getting lazy) so we have time to make an adult meal in our kitchen. Sometimes we’ll use special ingredients, like freshly caught halibut or our favorite grass-fed ribeyes, and sometimes we’ll get creative with what we already have around.

This week, our improvised tomato salad was so delicious, I wanted to share it with you: We used three or four large, juicy heirlooms from the farmers market; crisped up ribbons of salami in a pan; and fried slices of halloumi cheese. Finally, we tossed everything with a big handful of fresh basil, balsamic and red wine vinegar, really good olive oil and flakey salt. I enjoyed it with a fizzy glass — from a can — of Birichino’s 2022 malvasia bianca pét-nat and fresh focaccia.

It was an incredible meal, and one we’ll make again. But of course the best part of the meal was my handsome date, whom I still love cooking with as much now as I did then.

THIS WEEK, I’M THINKING ABOUT …

… service fees on restaurant bills. These surcharges based on a percentage of the bill have been in the news again lately: A group on Reddit is tracking service fees at restaurants in Los Angeles that it claims go to the owners and not the staff. It’s clear that, despite outcry from customers, they’re here to stay and their popularity might be increasing. I spoke with local restaurant owners in December about why they have added — or say they will never add — service fees to the bills. Check out the story here.