Your Most Read Stories of 2021

December 31, 2021 – We’re not Neo’ing out in the Matrix yet, but the world is getting more digital by the nanosecond, a pattern accelerated through this elongating period of pandemic-driven change.

That applies with Edible Monterey Bay too. 

For the past ten years, our publication has proudly enjoyed one of the strongest digital readerships in the coast-to-coast family of Edible magazines thanks to an uber-engaged audience, enthusiastic underwriters and hungry reporting that appears in our weekly Tuesday newsletter.

In 2021, EMB upped its digital efforts adding an EMB Weekend newsletter on Fridays featuring my “Found Treasures” and “Grape Escapes” by Laura Ness, the latter unlocking a wonderland of storylines from the tri-county world of wine. 

When we ran the numbers on the most-read, most clicked on digital stories of the year, three Found Treasures appeared on the list, including number one, a profile of a special pizza and the surf town spot that brings it to life.

“Pizza 1 Rises to the Top” is the type of story that evokes a journalism truth: The best place to unearth new stories is often researching others. 

In this case, I was scouting the region’s best barbecue places for 2021’s summer issue, which took me to Corralitos Market & Sausage Co.

I heard the butcher murmur into the phone, “OK, 20 pounds of Cheesy Bavarian,” referring to the shop’s best-selling sausage.

“Did someone just order 20 pounds?” I asked. He explained it was a pizza shop down the way.

At that point a stranger snuck up behind me and uttered something guttural in my ear. “It’s the best pizza I’ve ever tried,” she said dramatically. 

I went straight there.

Taken together, the portrait these most read 14 stories compose is not a complete one of the year gone by. 

But they do capture many of the year’s most compelling plot lines, hitting on everything from restaurants we’ve lost (good news: some have returned from the ashes!) to COVID-driven trends (ghost kitchens!) to much-awaited debuts (Stokes Adobe and Humble Sea!). 

1. Found Treasure: Pizza 1 Rises to the Top  The oven is a relic that repairmen won’t let the owner retire because it’s the best at what it does despite all the upkeep it needs. The dough approach is exacting. The recipes are clever. The ingredients—from the pizza pie toppings to the enthusiastic young team—are money. Which all points to why Pizza 1 is number one.

2. Humble Sea to Open Three New Taproom-Restaurants  The pioneering and youthful Santa Cruz brewers prepare to take a momentous—and multifaceted—leap.

3. Monterey County’s Top Restaurants of the Decade  A lot happened between 2010-2019 in the area food world, and readers are very much into digesting all of it.

4. Stokes Adobe Has a New Restaurant Owner  One of Monterey Bay’s most storied properties finally got new leadership, from a familiar place.

5. Bill Lee’s Barnyard ‘Ghost Kitchen’ Offers Big Value Fried Chicken and Waffles Ever-reinventing Bill Lee, now on his umpteenth restaurant, did something deft (*and delicious) to boost COVID business.

6. Found Treasure: Café Guarani  Small but mighty family-run Guarani gives Pacific Grove and the wider Monterey Peninsula something it didn’t have previously—and apparently sneaky craving. 

7. El Charrito Comes to Downtown Monterey  The Salinas institution—also the subject of a Found Treasure dedicated to its incredible flour tortillas—swoops across the Lettuce Curtain to give a linchpin spot multidimensional reinvention.

8. Winter Foraging: Mussels on the Beach  This how-to on scouring local coasts for mussels and making them magically delicious on the sand demonstrates staying power as one of the few on this list written the year previous.

9. Two Santa Cruz Restaurants Get Michelin Nod  The secret shoppers at the celebrated Michelin Guide revealed their wisdom (with the Mentone and Alderwood love) and their iffy on-the-ground awareness (no new recognition elsewhere in the area).

10. Stokes Adobe Set to Open  Here Stokes logs the only double appearance on the list (see also: number four). For those still hungry for more reporting, we published a sneak peek tasting piece after it opened that also registered a lot of looks. 

11. Napa Chef Comes Home to Open Trestles in Capitola This was one of the few restaurant openings of the year in Santa Cruz County and proved to be a winner.

12. In Memorium – To All the Restaurants We’ve Lost  You could call this piece a gut punch. But it’s more like 30 or 40 gut punches, and a sobering reminder of the toll COVID has taken and will continue to take.

13. California’s First Seltzery Coming to Pacific Grove  The timing and marketing is of the moment. And the occupation of the gorgeous space adjacent to Lovers Point was long overdue.

14. Found Treasure: Baja Fish Tacos in Moss Landing  A digital list concludes with a digital-first Found Treasure, fittingly enough. The tempura-battered, super-fresh fish straight from the family’s own boats certainly merits the love and affection.