The best things I ate and drank in Santa Cruz County in March

With temperatures that reached into the low 90s throughout Santa Cruz County, March felt like the first month of summer. The food scene also felt like it was heating up, with memorable dishes made by local chefs that felt fun and celebrated spring flavors: orange marzipan gelato or focaccia French toast with local honey, anyone? 

In March’s installment of my monthly “Best Things I Ate” series, I’m spotlighting four treats, from a bakery, a pizza parlor and a gelateria that I wrote about last month – and one new option from a beloved food stall. 

At Melo Bread in Watsonville, I took home a shiny, wide loaf of olive fougasse, a rustic French style. At Santa Cruz’s weekend farmers markets, Melrose Café transformed airy focaccia into poppy-seed French toast topped with seasonal fruit. Neapolitan-style pies at Pogonip Pizza, which opened near UC Santa Cruz in February, stand out for intriguing vegetable-focused toppings. In downtown Santa Cruz, I returned to Gran Gelato Caffè for original gelato recipes like orange-marzipan. 

Melo Bread is open just two days a week for three hours a day, but it’s worth clearing your schedule to be first in line at the downtown Watsonville bakery. Baker Kevin Grenz molds chestnut-brown loaves of sourdough, golden sandwich bread and plant-based treats like cinnamon rolls and “grandma slices” of pizza. 

This is bread to give a friend, to cherish at the table, with a tender crumb and a rippable crust. There are no wrong choices, but there’s one that’s so lovely and distinct that I couldn’t stop taking pictures of it. Not many area bakeries make fougasse, a rustic French style that’s cut in the shape of a leaf, and at Melo, Grenz creates a wide, golden masterpiece, shiny and fragrant with olive oil and studded with whole olives ($10). No matter how many loaves you leave with tucked under your arm, be sure to grab it while it lasts. 

In 2024, I fell in love with baker Cameron Meyers’ airy focaccia and sandwiches at Melrose Café, a food stall that appears weekly at the farmers markets on the Westside of Santa Cruz on Saturday and Live Oak on Sunday. The front of her booth is constantly obstructed by a waiting crowd eager for a breakfast sandwich with bacon from Westside butcher El Salchichero and scallion salsa verde, or stuffed with seasonal produce like delicata squash, roasted onion and romesco. 

Meyers has added another swoon-worthy addition to her menu by making her focaccia into French toast ($14). Golden slices soaked up a poppy-seed batter, and remained fluffy after they came off the griddle. She sweetened it with whipped ricotta, a drizzle of honey and fruit from the market – mine was topped with candy-like cara cara oranges, and the next week she switched to spring’s first strawberries. 

When Pogonip Pizza opened in a small shopping center near the base of the UC Santa Cruz campus and started filling up with hungry fans, I asked owner Ryan Thompson what fresh ideas he was bringing to Santa Cruz’s pizza scene. 

His answer surprised me. For one, the combinations on his Neapolitan-style pies defied my expectations, using mostly vegetarian ingredients. My favorite is the Santa Carla ($22), named after a fictionalized version of Santa Cruz in the 1987 cult hit “The Lost Boys.” Tangy house-cured zucchini kimchi gives a dynamic crunch to a white pie, with a touch of heat from Aleppo pepper and plenty of garlic (to keep the vampires away). 

Thompson also reframed the idea that there is an excess of pizza restaurants in the county. Santa Cruz has a pizza-making tradition that stretches back to the middle of the last century, when Italian immigrants advertised pizzas locally long before it became a symbol of American food. Thompson, a fourth-generation Santa Cruz restaurant owner, argued that the dish is part of our history, and we should be proud of it. 

“I don’t really like to be confined to a box,” he said of his pizza-making style. “I think that pizza is an international food, and we live in an area that has lots of cultures in it, and I like to bring all of those things into my pizza.”

From now on, every time I eat gelato, I’ll think of what Sandro Costanza told me at his gelateria in downtown Santa Cruz: The first sensation in your mouth should be warmth, not cold. 

“If you taste cold, it’s not gelato. It should feel like fresh whipped cream,” said Costanza. In March, Costanzo opened Gran Gelato Caffè in downtown Santa Cruz alongside his wife, Luciana, with 12 flavors made in-house. They range from traditional – like chocolate-hazelnut, cookies and cream, and strawberry – to the more adventurous, like banana sorbet and vanilla panna cotta studded with rich Amarena cherries. 

After trying them all, the orange-marzipan ($8) – one of Costanza’s original creations – stood out. It hits your palate with a silky burst of orange zest and sweet almond, and transported me to citrus groves in southern Italy. 

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