Mentone

About Mentone

Mentone sits in Aptos Village, six miles down Highway 1 from the Santa Cruz Wharf, and was created by David Kinch — the chef behind Los Gatos's three-Michelin-star Manresa — as a coastal-Riviera bistro built around wood-fired pizza, handmade pasta, and seasonal pristine crudos. The restaurant holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand, the Guide's explicit designation for restaurants offering exceptional quality at a generous price, and it is among the strongest arguments in Northern California for the proposition that a Michelin-recognised dinner does not require a Michelin-star bill.

The menu reads like a love letter to the arc from Nice to Genoa — Ligurian focaccia with olive oil; pissaladière with caramelised onions, olives, and anchovy; trofie al pesto with green beans and potatoes; and a rotating selection of wood-fired pizzas built on dough proofed for forty-eight hours and finished in a 900-degree oven imported from Naples. Pasta is extruded and rolled in-house. The Sea Urchin Bucatini is the most-photographed dish on the Central Coast for good reason — chili flake, citrus, fresh breadcrumbs, and the raw sweetness of California uni pulled that morning from the Monterey Bay.

Crudos arrive with almost austere restraint — kampachi with cucumber, fermented pepper, and shallot; kanpachi with fennel and meyer lemon. The wine list is short, Riviera-obsessed, and heavy on Italian whites (Vermentino, Erbaluce, Fiano) with a growing cross-section of southern Rhône rosés. The list is priced with genuine generosity by Bay Area standards. Service is assured without the stiffness that often accompanies a chef's second project — the room is warm, the staff genuinely enthusiastic, and the pacing calibrated for an unhurried dinner.

The dining room was designed with a discreet nod to Riviera cafés — blue banquettes, white marble counters, an exhibition kitchen framed by the pizza oven and a pastry counter. Sixty seats inside, another fifteen on the sidewalk patio when the weather holds. The restaurant opens Wednesday through Monday for dinner, with a lunch service on Saturday and Sunday. Reservations — through OpenTable — book out two to three weeks in advance for weekend dinner and can be pulled, with persistence, for weeknight tables inside seven days. Mentone is the most compelling destination restaurant in Santa Cruz County.

Best for First Date

For a first date where the objective is to signal taste without projecting pressure, Mentone is the most intelligent reservation in the Monterey Bay. The Michelin credential does the reassurance work before you have ordered. The menu is universally legible — pasta, pizza, crudo — and universally impressive. The room is warm rather than cold. The bill, managed with care, lands in the sixties per person. Order a bottle of Vermentino, the sea urchin bucatini, and a pizza to share; the conversation will follow.