Found Treasure: Honey B Market

February 24, 2023 – It sounds suspect to hear someone say they love an eatery before they’ve tried it. 

But that’s something that happens with Honey B Market on the regular. 

I get it. 

Such is the energy shining through the owner-operator-chief bootstrap grabber Katie Belanger on social media—and the uncommon type of life-affirming food she furnishes, like kabocha squash coconut curry bowls, chickpea tempeh sausages and vanilla bean-cashew cream cheesecake.

To try them, visitors would do well to arrive early. Those items can and will sell out. And, as Belanger is fond of saying, it’s not like she can run to the kitchen and grab reinforcements. 

“I tell my customers if we run out of something, we’re out,” she says. “That’s how homemade it is. We can’t just open up another can in the back.”

In other words, her food is crafted slowly and thoughtfully, with an obsession with organic ingredients involved and fermentation.

“There’s a spiritual alchemy behind fermentation,” she says. “You’re using literal air and bacteria, what we breathe every day—and if you think about wine or cheese—basically everything that tastes good is activated by the air we breathe.”

Her modest spot, hiden in plain sight next to Found Treasure-level Bad Animal in the heart of downtown Santa Cruz, opened less than two months ago.

Having Honey B here was a long time coming. When Belanger had her fill of the weather in her native Chicago, she decanted for the West Coast. Her job at Whole Foods in Southern California, however, didn’t fulfill her desires for more, well, wholesome products.

“Whole Foods can claim a high standard, but the main reason I started my business is they fall short in so many ways,” she says. “I thought, ‘I’m going to do a real whole food business.’”

When she won TNT’s cooking game show “On the Menu” and the $75 grand that came with it, she also won her liberty from the grocery aisle. 

She leapt into the catering game with her cinnamon snail in the lead.

It remains her headlining item, even as her approach to it has changed. Now they’re made with a sourdough milk bun, cinnamon date swirl and probiotic cashew icing. 

“Once I used white flour and refined sugars, but now I’ve grown as a chef and grown as a human,” she says. “I’m such a big believer that you gotta keep growing as who you are. Sometimes I cringe at what I used to serve, now I [appreciate] when friends say, ‘I can’t wait to see what you’re creating in 10 years!’

“We have to keep growing and learning and getting more intuitive with our own bodies.”

But the soul of the sweet treat is also unchanged.

“Life goes in spirals, and this is my spiral,” she says. “Here I am still making it 10 years later, only amplified.”

She opened her first Honey B in Santa Barbara before a former employee and pal recruited her to Surf City, which feels like a cosmic spot for an earthy operation. 

On my visit much of her seasonal inventory was sold-out (on-brand), including the fresh spring rolls with ginger peanut dip and the cinnamon snails.

I did get to munch on a flaky baby shiitake mushroom galette with Far West Fungi shrooms and a zippy “fizzy lemonade,” a kefir-fermented sparkling situation with honey, strawberry and lemon. 

I also tried a “fudgy brownie” crafted with walnuts, macadamias and chocolate date frosting. It has to be one of the denser desserts to hit these lips, rich and creamy and nutty at the same time.

The final experience turned out to be a Valentine’s Day coup, a tiny chocolate tartlet that approximated French silk pie. 

The spring seasonal menu buzzes in come March, with breakfast burritos made with hand-rolled whole wheat tortillas fresh off a two-day ferment; expanded grab-and-go marketplace items like salads and side dishes; and sourdough carrot cake with pistachio and walnuts plus probiotic cashew cream cheese icing. 

Meanwhile another standby here appears via another startup with heart, namely Conspiracy Coffee Co., a COVID-era creation from Eddie Alaniz. 

If there’s a coffee outfit that rises to the level of Honey B’s attentiveness and sourcing, it’s this one, built around single origin beans, slow-as-it-comes cold brew and 20 years in the industry. The shared DNA with Honey B: authenticity.

“We don’t know how to fake it,” Belanger says. “We’re too awkward.”

The first thing that greeted me at Honey B was a sandwich board out front that says, “When we heal ourselves we heal the world.”

The last thing I encountered at Honey B was homemade tempeh, pure and unpasteurized, so fresh it was still warm. 

The cynical among us might subscribe the sweet sayings and slow-cultivated tempeh to Santa Cruz vortex gone overboard, but it quickly becomes apparent that the healing sentiment and homemade tempeh hail from a deeply rooted place. 

Not only does Belanger obsess over the most beneficial inputs, she holds love very close to her methods. Part of her inspiration, she offers, is to transmit the spirit of her sister, gone prematurely.

“My sister has passed away,” Belanger says, “but she’s stayed with me throughout this journey.”

Maybe this is a long way of saying—similar to others before me—I liked this place in theory before I visited. 

And that it’s great when the feels Honey B reveals in person are as real as can be.

Honey B Market is open 9am-4pm Wednesday-Sunday. 1005 Cedar St, Santa Cruz. 630-456-3603. instagram.com/thehoneybkitchen