October 14, 2013 – The visionary entrepreneurs behind the Penny Ice Creamery of Santa Cruz are building a new full-service restaurant with seasonal, locally-sourced cuisine right downtown on Pacific Avenue, but its opening date has been delayed due to the government shutdown.
The 100-seat restaurant will be called “Assembly” and will be located about halfway between the Del Mar Theater and Chianti’s Pizzeria in a 6,000 sq ft space formerly occupied by Aqua Bleu.
“Our focus will be on community dining,” said Zachary Davis, co-owner of the Penny and the Picnic Basket Café with chef Kendra Baker. “It will be a gathering place in keeping with our philosophy of using seasonal and local products.”
“Assembly to us means both a place where people can get together and an assemblage of the local food artisans, growers and purveyors that we work with,” he added.
The new restaurant was set to open by the end of the year, but $500,000 in financing from the Small Business Administration has been held up due to the government shutdown in Washington. “We got all the paperwork in and now we wait. The government’s closed down,” Davis told CBS Evening News in a report aired Oct 11.
“You know, I have a business partner and we have disagreements. But there is no disagreement that would be so serious that we would close the doors of our business to try and figure it out. That would be the death of our business. It just makes no sense to me,” he said of the gridlock in Washington.
But Davis and Baker are optimistic their financing will eventually come through and they now hope to open sometime in January. Meanwhile they are “in talks” and auditioning a couple of people for the position of Executive Chef. “We are looking for a rustic take on California cuisine, food that is familiar but done with a lot of care and a lot of skill,” Davis said.
Baker—who was voted 2013 Chef of the Year by the readers of Edible Monterey Bay—will oversee menu development.
Renovation is already underway on the large, high-ceilinged restaurant space that they are trying to transform into something “warm and inviting, filled with a lot of vitality.” There will be a large community table, along with small tables and family-sized ones. “We want to make it accessible to the community in terms of the pricing and the food,” said Davis. “We don’t want it to be a once-a-year thing, but a place a family can go to and feel good about.”
There will be a small bar area offering a carefully curated craft beer menu and wines from “some of the more obscure, but fun winemakers around the Bay Area.”
The outdoor sidewalk seating area is also getting a makeover, with changes to the façade of the restaurant to make outside diners “feel more included.”
“We want to be the kind of place that is representative of Santa Cruz. An amazing dining place that is not exclusive in any way,” he said. “We’re going to have Santa Cruz cuisine—which hasn’t really been defined yet, but we’re going to try.”
Since opening the popular Penny Ice Creamery in 2010, business partners Davis and Baker haven’t missed a beat. Their company—The Glass Jar—opened an ice cream kiosk on Pacific Avenue, followed by the Picnic Basket Café across from the main beach a year later. Earlier this year they debuted a second ice cream shop in the Pleasure Point area of Capitola. They also have a mobile ice cream shop that participates in dozens of community events and Farmers’ Markets each month. The kitchen of the new restaurant will provide much needed additional space to help meet the needs of their expanding business.
About the author
Deborah Luhrman is publisher and editor of Edible Monterey Bay. A lifelong journalist, she has reported from around the globe, but now prefers covering our flourishing local food scene and growing her own vegetables in the Santa Cruz Mountains.
