Santa Cruz is an urban city with a small town mentality. That means neighborhood friendliness and loyal local sup- port—but also a generally casual dining scene. So it used to be the case that most chefs with big ambitions would just take the short trip up to San Francisco and explore more sophisticated opportunities. But now, the opposite is true; trained chefs from the city are choosing to move back down the coast and set up shop here in our little beach town. Lucky us! The newest delicious example is Ban- tam Restaurant.
Owners Sarah and Ben Sims have struck upon a perfect formula, creating a space on Santa Cruz’s Westside that with its lofty exposed steel beams, glossy polished cement floors and Mugnaini wood- fired oven is sleek and industrial, yet warm and inviting. Most importantly, they are crafting food that people want to eat over and over again.
The couple met eight years ago at Ristorante Avanti, a Santa Cruz institution for seasonal, Cal-Ital offerings. Ben was the chef, blending his Chez Panisse training into the Avanti kitchen while Sarah worked the front of the house. (Ben attended cooking school in San Francisco and in addition to cooking at Chez Panisse and Avanti, worked in restaurants in London and Tuscany, as well as San Francisco’s Michelin-starred Acquerello. Sarah most recently ran the front of the house at La Posta.) They married and eventually started tinkering with the idea of opening something of their own.
After more than two years of wending their way through financing, location-scouting, city approvals and construction, the Westside restaurant finally opened in November and quickly became packed every night.
While it was always more of Ben’s personal dream to have his own restaurant, both owners say they love working together and find their shared aesthetic and propensity to excel at different things create an ideal business partnership.
Ben is also quick to give props to his mighty kitchen staff. “I am continually blown away at the food our chef Melissa Reitz is creating. She and Troy (Wilcox) decided to move down here [from San Francisco], and we really couldn’t do it without them.” It is no small thing to land such talent, as both chefs having a long list of cooking experience at some of the Bay Area’s highest caliber locations. Chef Reitz has worked at Michelin-starred Quince, as well as Pizzaiolo and Zuni Café; most recently, she was sous chef at Oakland’s Camino. Wilcox, the restaurant’s pizzaiolo, or pizza-maker, previously practiced his craft at Boot and Shoe Service and Pizzaiolo in Oakland and Tony’s Pizza Napoletana in San Francisco.
But back to the food, which is presented as a changing daily menu utilizing the area’s pristine local bounty. The pizza is astounding, al- though Ben humbly calls it “pretty standard Neapolitan.” The perfect chew and yeasty complexity of the charred crust is credited to the prefermented Biga starter that Bantam has been feeding since the very beginning. The in-house sensibility continues with canning projects, evident with a simple glance at their pantry shelf, so you can expect to sample some of Reitz’s exciting fermented concoctions soon. Just re- member to go early—while you can get a table.
Bantam
1010 Fair Ave.
831.420.0101
bantam1010.com
About the author
Amber Turpin is a freelance food and travel writer based in the Santa Cruz Mountains.
