Walk past 1222 Pacific Avenue on a Tuesday around 7pm and the room glows different than it did two years ago. There's a raw bar up front with oysters stacked on ice, low art deco lighting, a couple splitting chicken liver pâté at the counter. For a long stretch this address was Betty's Eat In, and before that it sat as one more darkened storefront on a block that had gone quiet. Now it's Mane Kitchen & Cocktails, and it's one of five addresses around town that spent months or years empty and now have new tenants, or tenants on the way.
That's the part worth knowing if you live here and haven't walked Pacific or Mission in a while. This isn't one new restaurant. It's a cluster of them, landing in the exact rooms that had been sitting vacant, in some cases for well over a year.
The rooms that went quiet, and who's in them now
Downtown restaurant turnover in Santa Cruz has historically dragged on for quarters at a time, sometimes years. What's unusual about this stretch is how many of those vacancies ended around the same time, in a cluster of addresses close enough to cross on foot in twenty minutes, plus one more a short drive away on the Westside.
| Address | What used to be there | What's there now | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1222 Pacific Ave | Betty's Eat In | Mane Kitchen & Cocktails | Open, Tuesday to Saturday, 5 to 10pm |
| 725 Front St (Abbott Square Market) | Rotating pop-up stalls | Luna's Borikén Bites, India Gourmet | Open |
| 1108 Pacific Ave | Alderwood Pacific, then Assembly | Breakfast Club at Midtown | Still filling the space |
| 320 Cedar St | Poet and Patriot | Alley Oop Cocktail Bar | Still finishing build-out |
| 1520 Mission St, Westside | Burger., then D20 Pizza | The Cruz Room | Open most nights, closed Tuesdays |
Three of these are already serving. Two more are still getting there. Four of the five sit inside that same downtown pocket. The fifth is its own story a couple of miles over.
What's actually open right now
Mane Kitchen & Cocktails made its debut on Halloween night, which is one of downtown's busiest of the year, and the four-night opening run filled the room fast. The kitchen belongs to chef Desmond Schneider, who spent more than four years at Alderwood during the years it held Santa Cruz's only Michelin listing, then cooked at Pete's in Capitola and Seabright Social before this. His business partner, Julianna Mireles, tends bar with more than a decade behind her at the Red Room Cocktail Lounge, Hollins House, and Alderwood, where the two first met. The menu runs French and Italian technique against California coast ingredients: fresh oysters from the raw bar, a Wagyu blend burger, French onion soup finished with a full grilled cheese sandwich on top, and a caviar service with milk bread and crème fraîche for those in the mood to splash out. Cocktails sit around $14, oysters run six for $24 or a dozen for $48. Schneider has talked about wanting the room to complement its Pacific Avenue neighbors rather than compete with them.
Over on the Westside, at the corner of Mission and Bay, The Cruz Room takes a different shape entirely. It's the project of Matisse Selman, a Santa Cruz native who runs two shared commercial kitchens in the county, Extra Kitchen and Kitchen 831, where between fifteen and twenty five small food businesses rent space to build their brands. The Cruz Room is his first brick and mortar, and instead of a single kitchen it's built as a shared room for multiple concepts. The anchor tenant is Sleight of Hand Pizza, run by Justin Wadstein, a pizzaiolo who has collected more than a dozen championships at the Pizza World Cup and the International Pizza Expo in Las Vegas. Selman and his wife Daniella handle the bar and desserts, pouring beer and wine alongside milkshakes and chocolate dipped bananas. There's also a free arcade, a dollar for a game of pinball, and a rotating lineup of local bands and DJs. It's less a restaurant than a hangout with a wood fired oven in the corner, open five nights a week with Tuesdays off.
Over at Abbott Square Market, two familiar names moved from pop-up status into permanent kiosks. Luna's Borikén Bites brings Puerto Rican flavors, including slow-roasted pork shoulder sandwiches, rotisserie chicken, and a plantain lasagna known as piñon. India Gourmet, a longtime fixture at the Downtown Santa Cruz and Watsonville farmers markets, now serves wraps and bowls out of a simple kiosk setup a few steps away.
What's still coming
Not every address on this list has its doors open yet. Breakfast Club at Midtown, a South Bay microchain, is expected to take over 1108 Pacific Avenue, the space that most recently housed Assembly and before that was known as Alderwood Pacific. It's one more previously dark room on Pacific getting a tenant.
Around the corner on Cedar Street, Alley Oop Cocktail Bar has been circling an opening in the old Poet and Patriot space for a while now without landing a firm date. Whether it opens on the timeline the owners have floated matters less than the fact that the room, empty for a stretch, already has someone signed on for it.
Why this matters if you already live here
None of this required a new building or a rezoned block. Every one of these restaurants moved into a space that already existed, sat empty, and needed someone willing to take it on. That's worth sitting with for a second, because it means the character of a two block stretch of downtown changed in the space of about a year without a single new structure going up. The room where you used to grab a Betty's breakfast is now where you'd go for oysters and a martini after 9pm. The room that housed a rotating cast of casual pizza spots is now a place with pinball machines and live music most nights of the week.
If you're already someone who walks these blocks on a regular Tuesday or Thursday, the downtown loop is simple enough to do on foot. Grab a plantain lasagna or a wrap from India Gourmet at Abbott Square, then walk a few minutes to Mane for oysters and a cocktail. On a different night, the Westside version of this story is a short drive to The Cruz Room for wood-fired pizza, a free game of pinball, and whatever band happens to be playing in the corner.
The rooms at 1108 Pacific and 320 Cedar are still catching up. Give them time. Based on how the rest of this stretch has gone, they'll probably be worth the wait.
If you're already spending your evenings walking these same blocks and find yourself wondering what it would take to live even closer to them, that's a conversation Stacey Mitchell is glad to have. Let's Connect.
