Seabright Social hits its stride with new gastropub menu

Santa Cruz’s Seabright Social opened in 2020 in the former Seabright Brewery, but only within the past month has the restaurant finally found its stride with a new menu crafted by local fine dining chef Desmond Schneider. 

Keiki and Jason McKay, owners of Cantine Winepub in Aptos, and Jon Bates, previously of Soif in Santa Cruz, purchased the restaurant and former brewery in March 2020, just days before California issued its pandemic shelter-in-place order. Seabright Social opened a few months later during some of the most difficult conditions in restaurant history. 

Since then, it has struggled to create a consistent menu and form an identity that differentiates it from Seabright Brewery, which held the space for more than 30 years and was a popular neighborhood destination. 

When it launched in 2020, Seabright Social’s opening menu offered seasonal California cuisine like salmon ceviche, tamarind-glazed spareribs and brick-roasted half-chicken. But the staff shortages and high employee turnover in the restaurant industry during the pandemic made it difficult to maintain the menu’s standards, and the dishes didn’t translate to a delivery format, which customers preferred at the time. “We had to dumb down the menu to just really simple burgers and sandwiches, because that when you’re closing and opening and closing and opening it, that’s all you can really do,” says Keiki McKay. The restaurant continued to offer standard pub fare for the next couple of years. 

At the end of last year, the owners met Schneider, who was the chef de cuisine at Alderwood in Santa Cruz for three years before launching Pizza Bones, a Neopolitan pizza pop-up, in 2023. They decided to bring him on as a consultant for a complete menu overhaul, and to evaluate kitchen functions like ordering ingredients and kitchen supplies and training staff.

In early February, Seabright Social launched a gastropub-style menu that focuses on share plates, sandwiches and burgers, salads, entrees and pinsa, or Roman-style flatbreads. The dishes are intended to be approachable and affordable, while offering guests an elevated pub experience, says Schneider. The result is a menu that’s fresh, modern and interesting, and feels appropriate for the large, neighborhood-oriented space. 

Many of the dishes are brand new, like the crispy maitake mushroom appetizer with smoky tomato vinaigrette ($10) and the fried chicken thighs over a buttermilk waffle with maple syrup spiked with Calabrian chilis ($18). The shrimp and grits ($19) were one of Schneider’s passion projects, with specialty grits that have both creaminess and bite, and shrimp cooked in a phenomenal homemade Cajun-spiced butter that’s impossible not to lick off your fingers. 

He also improved items from the previous menu. Schneider created a new smash burger ($15) with white cheddar, rich onion jam and housemade bread and butter pickles, and recreated the mac and cheese with a more rich and creamy sauce. All of the salads are new, including a towering, partially deconstructed wedge salad ($19) with refreshing leaves of iceberg lettuce layered with bacon, tomatoes and toasted walnuts, bound with a funky  Point Reyes blue cheese dressing. 

“That was my major goal with the new menu, to not completely wipe the slate clean and do a brand-new menu from scratch. I wanted to keep some of those older elements in there,” says Schneider. 

All of the items are à la carte; the menu includes a list of seven sides such as shoestring french fries ($4 for a side, $8 for a basket), onion rings ($9) and French green beans with herb butter ($6). This format is intended to keep the prices of entree items down, and allows guests to easily customize their meals, says Schneider. And there’s less food waste. 

I didn’t miss fries as I dug into a smoked brisket melt ($18), although I was grateful that the rich sandwich came with a small pile of zippy pickled onions and bread and butter chips. The tender beef almost melted into layers of gooey white cheddar and a tangy whiskey barbecue sauce. A classic fish and chips entree ($19) did, as it suggests, come with fries. The lightly battered and tender rock cod was served with a kicky tartar sauce with whole-grain mustard on a bright blue plate. 

The menu will continue to be updated as the seasons change. Hearty fare like the pork belly and white bean cassoulet ($22) will rotate off the menu, while dishes with fresh peas and asparagus will be added in the spring. In the summer, the popular elote street corn will make a comeback. 

Schneider isn’t the only member of the Seabright Social team with a foundation in fine dining. Bates began his career at Chez Panisse in Berkeley, and later became the wine director at famed Italian restaurant Oliveto in Oakland. 

It’s been a struggle to pull Seabright Social out from under the shadow of the former Seabright Brewery, says Bates. The brewery did not have a reputation as a dining destination, but nevertheless had frequent customers who loved certain dishes. While the new owners stress that Seabright Social is an entirely new business, they have also made an effort to honor the previous establishment’s history and its place in the community. 

Seabright Social does not brew beer, as Seabright Brewery did for many years, but does offer Seabright’s flagship Blur IPA and Pelican Pale on draft; the recipes are brewed locally by Corralitos Brewing Co. in Corralitos. The house beers are joined by other craft brews from local breweries like Sante Adairius Rustic Ales and Humble Sea Brewing Co. 

After four years, Bates feels as though the restaurant is finally going in the right direction. “I’m really happy with where we are,” says Bates. “And I look forward to people giving us a chance to see how good it is really becoming and getting better.”

Seabright Social is located at 519 Seabright Ave. in Santa Cruz; 831-426-2739 and seabrightsocial.com. 

Have something to say? Lookout welcomes letters to the editor, within our policies, from readers. Guidelines here.