Driving along a mountain ridge-top roadway, widely interspersed houses, shift past your view up against sometimes oak forests, and sometimes redwood forests. Over a few miles, a vet and a fire station are joined with a church, a couple vineyards,and a school that fail to transform the mountainside views into anything like a business hub. And while another oak grove teases you with sun-strobe-dance-club views of beautiful meadows that slip you only a tease of serenity-junkie view into the flicker-laced staccato light ... visual valium to your eyes and mind California oaks a corner bends around you and the Summit Market Center is just suddenly there: a Santa Cruz Mountains Xanadu or Brigadoon.
I wrote about coming to it this way because this is a place that truly seems almost impossible .... maybe even a little magical. You are at the top of the Santa Cruz Mountains. There is nothing else around you between a vineyard and a mountain meadow. Yet you are at a compacted version of Lundardi's, Andronicos''s or Whole Foods. The store is small. The selection in jaw dropping.. You won't find everything your refined palette has learned to love. But you will find some examples of it in any category. Produce is fresh and varied, staple foods and pantry essentials are all available. Dairy, juices, prepared foods, beverages, snacks ... everything but this is where it starts to pass into the surreal. You will find an espresso bar, and a deli.. The meat counter could cause vegetarians a moment of doubt with its pre-packed cuts with many house-made marinades (the Bloody Mary marinade on any of them has never left even a scrap uneaten from the serving platter at my house).
Beef, chicken or pork not your preference? OK, just turn around. The sushi chef is standing right behind you setting out combo packages that the lid snapped onto just a moment ago. No cooking required ... just like the food now at your side. There is A daily-changing bar of freshly house made meat, vegetable and fruit salads and hot morning or daytime entrees and side dishes and none of them shamed by being bland, mushy steam-table gruel.
And in the final moments of your Brigadoonian Food Foraging, you'll find a selection of beers, ales, and ciders that will almost surely leave you deciding if you might want to try something you never saw or heard of before. Santa Cruz Mountain wines rival the best in the world and they are there (may I suggest a Burrell School Cabernet Franc if it fits your menu and palette. But it you feel more like a cocktail, I have found things here that were phenomenal and never seen anywhere else ever among them wereRusty Blade Gin and a cognac that had been around the world in an oak barrel on centuries old sailing ship with a name I tragically cannot recall.
Sunny tables outside are coaxing you to veer off Hwy 17 and travel the 10 or so minutes southeasterly along Summit Road to find this unlikely and ample/parking vaguely-magical food oasis.
By the way: the way I describe Summit Market will have many of you saying "paid review". Not the case! It's the way I really see this it and admire it's creators and operators for their vision in making it exist anf operate (oh, but tale down those new garish, money-grubbing ad banners along the parking lot fence. They are detracting so much from your otherwise-incredible place!. I mean, the occasional one for local charity is understandable and makes you look good even, but the rest ... huh-uh). read more