Kendra Baker and Zachary Davis are expanding their delicious domain over the Santa Cruz food world with their third—and perhaps most ambitious—project. The owners of the Penny Ice Creamery.html and the relaxed oceanfront Picnic Basket café are taking their big step with a full-service restaurant, slated to open early next year on Pacific Avenue.
With the name Assembly, the new restaurant—which will be one of the biggest in downtown Santa Cruz according to sfgate.com—will include beer and wine and celebrate farm-to-table cuisine.
“It will be a full restaurant, more than a sandwich shop but a place that you can go more often than a fancy restaurant,” Baker, who was once head pastry chef for Manresa, told sfgate.com.
The restaurant's Facebook page lists its address as 1108 Pacific Avenue, which is the former site of Aqua Bleu.
Assembly’s construction will be done by Nielsen Architects and Design Studio and Santa Cruz Green Builders.
UPDATE Oct. 21 6pm:
After a brief “hiccup” at the US Small Business Administration caused by the recent government shutdown, Davis says he's “definitely excited” to get started on the new project, which will focus on what he's calling “rustic California” style. He wants to create a “Santa Cruz cuisine” that focuses on locally sourced ingredients and does not draw on any particular ethnic or regional influences from outside the county.
He sees this all as an extension of a mission he and Baker started when they opened Penny Ice Creamery in 2010.
“Rather than just making another Penny and another Penny and [taking] that cookie cutter route—if we wanted to grow, we always had this idea of having a complimentary ecosystem of food businesses that would share a common philosophy of local sourcing seasonal ingredients, using organics,” Davis says. “But they would not necessarily be the same thing—each would have its own identity and would support each other but allow us to be creative in different ways.”
Davis has promised some friends they will be able to have Valentine's Day dinner there but hopes to open by the end of January.
