Lucio Fanni has owned restaurants in the San Francisco and Santa Cruz areas for 27 years. For the past seven, he has owned Caffe Lucio on Soquel Avenue, where he works with partner Mirjam Kuusik—with whom he has two kids and a yellow Labrador Retriever that frequents the restaurant. The restaurant has a flavor all…
Articles
A First Outing to Assembly
Rita and I made our IPO (initial public outing) to Assembly last week for a late lunch, joined by an inquiring crowd of fellow foodies. In addition to those antler chandeliers (shades of True Detective!), and an inviting front bar, the uncluttered interior is equipped with urban sleek and plenty of light. Banquettes line the…
Preview: Peppino D'Agostino at Rio
Though it’s rarely talked about, there are opposing forces at work in the art of the guitar. There’s the unstoppable force of technical skill, and the immovable object of poetic soul, and one often threatens to drown out the other. A lot of guitar wizards stake out a position in the technical camp, pouring down…
Secret's Out About Sentinel Café
Lauren Bates-Rodriguez likes shopping at the farmers market to buy salad and soup ingredients for the Sentinel Café, where she’s worked for over a year. Located in the Cruzioworks building, the coffee shop also has pastries from Kelly’s Bakery, bagels from the Bagelry and coffee from Verve. SCW: What kinds of people come by here?…
Felton Gets a New Brew Spot
A vintage 19th-century hotel in Felton will soon find a new batch of patrons thanks to Santa Cruz Mountain Brewing‘s Emily Thomas, who is teaming with SLV New Leaf entrepreneur Bob Locatelli on The Cremer House project. The partners plan to transform the former 1880s lumberjack boardinghouse into a purveyor of craft brews wrapped around…
Preview: Leo Kottke at the Rio
Leo Kottke sits down with an acoustic guitar—likely one of his trademark Taylors—as the uproarious applause of the full theater before him quiets. He launches into “William Powell,” plucking and hammering away furiously at an open E chord for about four bars. Then he takes a breath and stops. “That’s a little fast. I’m going…
West End Tap’s Unusual Influences
Geoff Hargrave, a Texas-raised chef, knows there’s beer for every occasion. “When it’s hot outside, I love a Kolsh,” says Hargrave, chef and co-owner at West End Tap. “When it’s cold outside, I prefer a porter.” The eight-month-old restaurant in the Swift Street courtyard sits in the former site of Le Cigare Volant, and will…
India Joze’s Persian New Year
In what could well be the culinary deal of the season, the inimitable Jozseph Schultz will finesse the annual India Joze Now Rooz Festival, Sunday March 23. To celebrate the Persian New Year, the master chef unleashes one-seating-only of dish after dish of flavors that launched a thousand and one nights. It starts at 5pm,…
Santa Cruz Author Events for Spring
A number of author appearances and book-related events are taking place this spring at Bookshop Santa Cruz. One of the more noteworthy is a stop by Mary Roach, who is skilled at making science both accessible and humorous. She’s dug into cadavers (in Stiff), the afterlife (Spook) and sex (Bonk). Her latest book, Gulp (now…
Spring Lit: Reviews
Carol and John Steinbeck: Portrait of a Marriage By Susan Shillinglaw University of Nevada Press, cloth, $34.95 Seventy-five years on, John Steinbeck’s masterwork, The Grapes of Wrath, remains potent reading. The opening prose poem about the drought that drives the Joad family to the promised land of California—“The sun faced down on the growing corn…
