42 PUNCHMAGAZINE.COM same table, pours wine and chats with guests. Butternut squash ravioli—embellished with sliced apples, goat cheese and pumpkin seeds in sage with brown butter and honey truffle oil—were so perfectly creamy, crunchy and sweet that I’ve tried to replicate the dish at home. Another enticing choice is Copal for Oaxacan Mexican food, which serves four different types of mole and mixes up mezcal-based cocktails. For a laid-back town, Santa Cruz has an astounding variety of places to get caffeinated. At florist Flower Bar, pick out bouquets while sipping on lavender and rose lattes made with Ritual coffee. Its other offerings include Feve artisan chocolates, pastries, sandwiches and wine. Roaster 11th Hour Coffee sells plants, food and coffee equipment in a roomy café with wood-slab tabletops. It also has a cocktail bar and hosts pop-ups for fried chicken, dumplings and ramen on its large, umbrella-shaded patio. If all you know of Santa Cruz is the boardwalk, it’s time to refresh your notion of this beach town and veer off the tourist track. With a bookstore that also houses a natural wine bar and a highend Thai restaurant, as well as a flower shop that doubles as a café and chocolate bar, the area hosts an array of multi-tasking hybrids. Why limit yourself to just one thing? And if your visit coincides, as mine did, with UC Santa Cruz’s Monster Festival—where scholars explore cultural and literary monsters from Greek mythology to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein—all the better. Thanks to its free talks, readings and an exhibit of women comic book artists at the Museum of Art and History, I came back marvelously informed. Santa Cruz 2.0 is wonderfully whimsical and weird. PHOTOGRAPHY: COURTESY OF PHILIP LIMA WHERE TO EAT Craving books and a bite? Bad Animal is the place to go if you have an appetite for fiction, poetry, philosophy, rare books or the occult. “It’s one of our best-selling sections—Santa Cruz has a lot of people interested in this stuff,” says bookseller Nick Pillsbury. It’s also the place for superb Thai food from a chef with a pedigree from Michelin-starred Manresa in Los Gatos, a wine list that roams the globe from Slovenia to the former Soviet Republic of Georgia and a soundtrack from the 1960s and ‘70s. Restaurant-in-residence Hanloh’s chef Lalita Kaewsawang has wowed guests since late 2022 with Thai specialties like shrimp red curry with pineapple and apple. A block away on Cedar Street, you’ll find charming Gabriella, an Italian-inflected, European-style restaurant. Delighting diners since 1992, it sources its food from organic farms like Live Earth, Dirty Girl and Rodoni. Owner Paul Cocking always sits at the {due west}
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