Quick Take
After seven years, Soquel wine bar VinoCruz has closed, with its final service held last Sunday. While the French-inspired menu continues at Adorable French Bakery in Scotts Valley, the VinoCruz space will soon reopen as Home Away, a casual lunch and wine spot from the team behind Soquel’s Home restaurant.
After seven years, Soquel wine bar VinoCruz has tapped out. The final day for a glass of Santa Cruz Mountains pinot noir and charcuterie was last Sunday.
But fans of VinoCruz can travel to Scotts Valley to get their French food fix, where the menu and vibe will live on at Adorable French Bakery, an old-world bakery and bistro, in the former Malone’s Grille on Scotts Valley Drive.
The Soquel space won’t be vacant for long. Home restaurant, located around the corner on Main Street from the former VinoCruz, plans to open Home Away, a lunch and early evening spot with a market, by mid-June.
Adorable French Bakery’s new Scotts Valley location in the former Malone’s Grille serves sweet and savory baked goods. Credit: Kevin Painchaud / Lookout Santa Cruz
It’s been a year of changes for the popular Soquel wine hub. In September, Adorable French Bakery owners Muriel D’Agostino and her husband, Nicolas Lossky, established their successful bakery as a brick and mortar in Scotts Valley, and purchased VinoCruz.
Before then, the Santa Cruz-based business served D’Agostino’s wide selection of traditional French pastries, savory quiches and bread at farmers markets throughout the Bay Area. They renamed the Soquel location Adorable French Bakery at VinoCruz, and updated the menu with French bistro classics like a cheesy potato gratin dauphinois, tate Provencal with vegetables, pesto and herbes de Provence, and ratatouille.
Despite a successful merge with VinoCruz, Adorable French Bakery wasn’t able to negotiate a long-term lease with the property owner, said Lossky. “What we were able to accomplish at VinoCruz was incredible. It was a great learning curve for us, but we’re going to focus on Scotts Valley and move on,” he said.
Lossky and D’Agostino brought all of the tables from Soquel to the Scotts Valley restaurant and moved display cases of baked goods in order to create more seating for breakfast, lunch and dinner service. “In Scotts Valley, we want to bring the experience of a real French bistro,” said Lossky. He expects to receive a beer and wine license sometime this month.
Home restaurant in Soquel will open lunch spot and market Home Away in mid-June. Credit: Kevin Painchaud / Lookout Santa Cruz
Back in Soquel, Home Away will open early this summer with a menu of small bites, charcuterie plates and wine in the evening, grab-and-go items that people can take away, and a simple lunch menu of hearty farmer market-sourced soups, salads and fresh foccacia, said co-owners Linda Ritten and chef Brad Briske.
It will also offer a market with many of the “Home-made” products they offered at the restaurant’s farmers market stalls during the pandemic, like charcuterie, fresh pastas and pasta sauce, fermented pickles, cured olives, patés, and sausages to take home and cook.
“We missed the farmers markets, but haven’t been able to go back. Home Away will be a lunch spot with a permanent farm stand, with a wine bar in the early evening,” said Ritten, who operated the stall at multiple markets a week during the pandemic while the restaurant was closed, but stopped when Home reopened for service.
Home restaurant opened in 2016 and has become well-known in the area for its fine dining that focus on hyper-local and seasonal ingredients from the Central Coast and California. Home Away will continue to use all locally sourced and organic ingredients, while incorporating more world flavors. There will also be a raw bar, with fresh oysters, ceviche, poke and tartar.
The VinoCruz space doesn’t have a full kitchen, but because of the proximity of Home Restaurant, Briske will be able to create far more menu options for the space and bring them over daily.
They hope to create a community-focused environment and collaborate with chef Diego Felix, Ritten and Briske’s brother-in-law and owner of Fonda Felix and Collectivo Felix, and friend Robby Honda of Tanuki Cider.
Details are still being firmed up, but Home Away will likely be open Wednesday through Sunday from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m.
“We’re really, really excited,” said Ritten. “It’s been Brad’s dream for a long time. It’ll be a fun way for us to expand and utilize more ingredients and different styles of food.”
Home will never serve sit-down lunch, said Briske, and Home Away is an opportunity to make Home’s cuisine more accessible. “The menu isn’t cheffy. It’ll be straight-forward, honest food for the community like I’ve always done, with the same quality, but more casual,” he said.
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