Get ready to drool. Santa Cruz is now home to a thriving Pop-up restaurant movement. Innovative, burgeoning chefs are experimenting in their craft and making amazing food at locations all around town, including farms and wineries in the surrounding area. Get it while it lasts!
A Pop-up is generally a restaurant without a permanent location. Pop-ups can jump from place to place both literally and figuratively: some experiment wildly with their menus, serving say, Portuguese tapas one week and anything from Bavarian faire to Vietnamese street food another. Others stick to a tried-and-true menu that their regulars have come to expect. Some have set schedules at a specific location, such as the Santa Cruz Food Lounge, which hosts recurring Pop-ups weekly from Sunday through Wednesday. Others hop around from place to place and one can never be quite sure where they’ll “pop up” next.
Due to the inherently erratic nature of the Pop-up scene, our helpful guide includes juicy information on the Pop-up restaurants themselves and where you can follow them to get the latest scoop, as well as the venues and curators that currently work with them.
