Stunning focaccia the star in sandwiches, and sweet treats, at farmers market stall Melrose Café

There is a kind of casual magic about the thick, paper-wrapped sandwiches served by Melrose Café, a stall that launched at the Westside Santa Cruz and Live Oak farmers markets in late summer. Sandwiches, although humble, are tricky to perfect. Each individual ingredient has to be excellent in order for it all to come together as a harmonious whole. But 26-year-old baker Cameron Meyers creates masterpieces with a quiet grace, stuffing them with seasonal combinations of ingredients sourced from the market, including El Salchichero bacon and chorizo, heirloom tomatoes and pickled fennel. 

The star at Melrose Café isn’t really the sandwich itself; it’s the bread. Specifically, Meyers’ deeply browned, springy loaves of focaccia, chewy crust dotted with burst sungold tomatoes or sprinkled with salty asiago cheese. Her approach to flavors can be nontraditional, especially the dessert versions of her bread, which on different visits were topped with roasted peaches and a caramelized cinnamon-and-sugar lid, and layered with homemade jam like a jelly donut. 

You might think someone learning the art of making focaccia would do so in Italy, the bread’s homeland, but Meyers honed her craft in about as un-Italy a place as possible: remote Alaska. 

Three years ago, the Santa Cruz native was hired as the executive chef at the Kachemak Bay Wilderness Lodge, a coastal resort accessible only by boat. The position was six months on, six months off, and required her to live on site and cook breakfast, lunch and dinner for up to 16 guests. 

By that time, Meyers had already been cooking at high-end local restaurants, such as La Posta and Bantam in Santa Cruz and Home in Soquel, for four years. Due to its climate and remoteness, the new environment’s food options were far more limited than what she was used to on the Central Coast of California. What she couldn’t buy she tried to grow in the resort’s greenhouse, forage in the wilderness or make herself. 

“That’s where I started baking a ton,” said Meyers. Inspired by the focaccia sandwiches with prosciutto and mozzarella she would grab on her way to the beach during a trip to Liguria, Italy, she started making it every day for the resort’s guests’ packed lunches. 

Meyers grew up eating homemade focaccia – her mother would bake it frequently to take to her classical music recitals – but she wanted to create a loaf that was taller than her mom’s flatter, thinner style. She started tinkering with her recipe daily, increasing the amount of high-protein flour and experimenting with sourdough bread baking techniques. “I realized that using a stretch-and-fold technique like sourdough is what gets those big bubbles,” said Meyers, describing a technique that involves lifting and folding naturally fermenting dough periodically over several hours in order to develop the gluten. Meyers’ focaccia uses conventional yeast, but the effect is the same. “It gives it life, makes it fluffier, taller, with a big bubble structure,” she said. “It develops gluten, so you get that chewiness.”

Meyers returned from Alaska a year ago and began working at Companion Bakeshop in Santa Cruz, honing her skills and helping owner Erin Lampel expand the Westside bakery. Meyers had previously worked at other farmers market stalls known for their commitment to simple, seasonal foods, including The Midway – Meyers calls chef Katherine Stern “a mentor” – and Burn Hot Sauce. 

Meyers reached out with the idea for her own stand to market director Nesh Dhillon, who was a big supporter. She launched Melrose Café – named after the street she grew up on in Midtown – at the Saturday and Sunday markets in August. 

The menu is flexible, with three to four sandwiches ($13 to $16 each) and quarter-loaves of focaccia ($8) made with whatever catches Meyers’ eye at the Wednesday downtown market, where she sources many of her ingredients for the weekend. In September, sweet, roasted Jimmy Nardello peppers and tomatoes mingled with milky fior di latte mozzarella, bright pickled fennel and spicy Calabrian chilis. The breakfast sandwich with a fried egg, avocado and cheddar was finished with peppery arugula and a kicky scallion salsa verde, and a BLT combined sweet end-of-the-season tomatoes with bacon from craft butcher El Salchichero. 

Her sweet versions of focaccia ($5) are still a work in progress, but farmers market guests seem to be willing guinea pigs as she experiments baking the bubbled loaves with apples, pears and chocolate. 

At Melrose Café, the secret ingredient is time. Meyers makes everything from scratch from high-quality ingredients, down to the organic egg yolks in the aioli. “That’s an important part of it, that even if you’re just getting a BLT, that the bread is baked well, and everything is hand-prepped,” said Meyers. “I really like the idea of simple food, but every single component is made well and with really good ingredients. It’s important to me to run things that way.”

Instagram: @melrosecafesc.

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