Sometimes truth in advertising is understated.
That may be the case with barely three-week-old Spontaneous Confections (next to Daily Grind in the Capitola Mall Food Court), as SC logistics chief Stephanie Lenorovitz helps illuminate, while celebrating her pastry chef-chocolatier husband’s gift for innovation.
“True to our name, Justin is creating all the time, updating, rethinking,” she says. “So our menu changes very often.”
That means compelling holiday treats for Thanksgiving, including pumpkin tarts with vanilla chantilly and candied hazelnuts, apple tarte tatin domes over caramel and almond cream, and chocolate tarts with ganache and chocolate whipped cream ($55/9-inch).
That presents mouthwatering news for the fans the couple has gathered at farmers markets, special events and Food Truck Fridays at Sky Park in Scotts Valley, which wrapped last month.
Those treats pair with fresh holiday hours (noon–5pm Thursday–Saturday), aka additional good cheer for those looking to lighten the seasonal dessert workload with a few of their celebrated Dubai bars, mini mango-passionfruit tarts, eye-catching holiday butter cookies or fancy, glossy and multilayered entremet cakes befitting Justin Lenorovitz’s training at the Bourdeaux region’s Institut Culinaire de France. spontaneousconfections.com.
NO POISON PLEASE
Public health and education officials teamed with labor and anti-pesticide advocates in Watsonville City Plaza on Nov. 18—in concert with news conferences in Fresno, Modesto and Oxnard—to call for a statewide phaseout of all fumigants near schools, expanding the quarter-mile school pesticide buffer zones to at least 1 mile, while infilling the buffer areas with organic farming, noting new 1,3-D pesticide “regulation” allows school kids and farmworker community members to be exposed to concentrations 14 times greater than the lifetime cancer risk threshold established by the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment. Safe Ag Safe Schools’ Yanely Martinez sums up the situation by saying, “The policy and the whole process is a cruel and glaring example of environmental racism.” pesticidereform.org.
AS GOOD AS EVER
I’m thrilled to report one of my favorite food businesses continues to conduct a tidy two-step by 1) limiting food waste and 2) stoking eaters with outstanding value for unsold dishes. Too Good to Go is a nonprofit that launched in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 2016 and came to Santa Cruz in 2023. Restaurants participate by packing their choice of “surprise bags” of day-fresh goodies for designated time windows, then interested appetites can download the app, punch in a search radius, see what restaurants, bakeries and other eateries are offering, link payment and dig in. A friend just brought over two small Round Table combo pizzas for $6 and told me Whole Foods now does all sorts of bundles too. Other Santa Cruz outposts active at the moment include 11th Hour Coffee (1001 Center St., Santa Cruz), El Rosal Bakery (21513 East Cliff Drive, Santa Cruz) and Pono Hawaiian (120 Union St., Santa Cruz), among others. toogoodtogo.com/en-us.
ON THE OTHER HAND
Other times, truth in advertising is overrated: Woodhouse Blending & Brewing should be called Woodhouse Blending & Brewing & Music & Dancing, as the downtown hub keeps flowing great craft beer and also outsize entertainment, like line dancing (Nov. 19), global bass dance outfit Outernational (Nov. 21), high energy/deep groove practitioners Tokyo Hot Tub (Nov. 22), and NPR Tiny Desk 2024 winner The Philharmonik (Dec. 5), woodhousebrews.com/events…Savvy and stylish cocktail outpost Front & Cooper (Abbott Square, 725 Front St., Santa Cruz) reanimates its epic Christmas-themed pop-up “Miracle” with intense decor and seasonal drink specials, Nov. 24 through Jan. 1, 2026, frontandcooper.com…Blue honey is a thing now, from Alive, a Greek company that farms and sells colorful spirulina (the nutrient-dense algae often deployed as a dietary supplement), and just made its US debut via Laconic Foods under the label Cyano…Victor Hugo—a French Romantic author, poet, essayist, playwright, journalist, human rights activist and politician—fly us out: “Life is the flower for which love is the honey.”
