For years, Soquel Village worked as a one-shift town. You came for dinner at Home, maybe stopped at Bargetto on a Saturday afternoon, and left. The daytime hours belonged to the antique shops and the coffee counter crowd. That has quietly changed. As of this summer, the same kitchen that made the village a dinner destination is now feeding people at lunch too, and the winery a mile up Main Street has turned Thursday evenings into a standing appointment. If you live here, the practical result is that a Wednesday errand run through the village now has three or four more reasons to slow down.
This post is a working map of what has actually opened, what is happening this week, and what is on the calendar through September. No relocation talk, no market data. Just the texture of a Soquel summer in 2026.
The Home kitchen now runs all day
The single biggest change in the village is that Chef Brad Briske and Linda Ritten opened a daytime sister spot to Home in late 2025, and it has settled into a full Wednesday-through-Sunday rhythm in 2026. Home Away sits at 4901 Soquel Drive, in the space the old VinoCruz wine bar used to occupy, a short walk around the corner from Home's original location at 3101 N. Main Street.
The format is different from the mothership. Home Away is counter-service, oriented around lunch and shareable small plates, with a menu that changes daily to follow what is fresh, local, organic, and in season. There is no full kitchen on site, so dishes are prepped at Home and walked over during the day. That logistical detail is why the two menus rhyme without repeating each other.
A few specifics worth knowing:
- The empanadas are a collaboration. Home Away serves beef cheek empanadas made with Briske's brother-in-law, Chef Diego Felix of Fonda Felix on the Santa Cruz Westside, with fillings created exclusively for the Soquel location.
- The bar leans local and low-key. Beer, wine, and dry farmhouse ciders from Tanuki Cider on draft, priced for an afternoon rather than a special occasion.
- The raw bar exists. The opening menu included Marin Miyagi oysters at $3.50 each and a vegan trumpet mushroom ceviche at $10, alongside house-cured charcuterie and warm marinated olives.
"It's kinda like I got myself a new restaurant for my birthday," Briske told Lookout Santa Cruz about the December opening, which landed one day after his birthday.
The reason this matters for anyone who lives in the village is simple. Home built its reputation on nose-to-tail dinners and a hyperlocal, seasonal ethos over nine years. Home Away extends that ethos into a price point and a time of day that fit an ordinary Tuesday afternoon. Pretty Good Advice, the vegetarian spot a short walk away, and Home now form a three-restaurant cluster in the village that all pull from the same "cook what's in season" principle. That is a food scene with a point of view, which is rare for a town this small.
Bargetto's Thursday music series is the new standing plan
The other change in the summer rhythm is that Bargetto Winery, at 3535 N. Main Street, has turned its Creekside Courtyard into a weekly free concert venue on Thursday evenings. The format is unfussy on purpose. Shows run 6 to 8 p.m., there is no cover charge, wine is sold by the glass, and food comes from a rotation of trucks including ItaliaFire and S.C. Eatery. Seating is open, no reservations are taken, and outside food is not permitted during the music nights.
The lineup gives you a sense of the range they book:
| Date | Artist |
|---|---|
| May 7, 2026 | Alex Lucero |
| May 14, 2026 | James Durbin |
| May 21, 2026 | The Joint Chiefs |
| May 28, 2026 | Sambada |
| June 4, 2026 | Continuing series |
Bargetto has been operating on this corner since 1933 and is the longest continuously operating winery in Santa Cruz County, so the courtyard itself has some history to lean on. What is new is the frequency. A weekly, no-ticket, walk-in concert series inside the village turns a Thursday night into something you can decide on at 5:45.
Two smaller things at Bargetto worth putting on your radar:
- Trivia Wednesdays run 6:30 to 8 p.m., hosted by Michael Gaither. Outside food is welcome after 5:30 p.m. on trivia nights, which is a useful loophole if you want to bring takeout from Home Away and settle in.
- Courtyard Yoga with Alison Trybom Lucas is $25 and includes the class plus a glass of wine afterward, capped at 20 guests with reservations required.
The through-line here is that Bargetto has stopped treating its courtyard as a Saturday-afternoon-only asset. Between yoga in the morning, trivia midweek, and music on Thursdays, the space is now programmed roughly four days a week.
The September calendar is already set
If Home Away and the Bargetto series define the weekly cadence, Taste of Soquel is the annual moment the village points itself toward. This year it lands on Saturday, September 26, 2026. The event is a benefit for Second Harvest Food Bank, produced as a project of the Congregational Church of Soquel, and it pulls together Soquel restaurants, wineries, breweries, and live bands into a single afternoon. It is not a regional festival dressed up in a Soquel address. The vendor list is genuinely local, which is the whole point.
For anyone who has lived here a while, the interesting thing about the 2026 date is what it collides with. September 26 is also the day of the Boardwalk Fiesta en Playa in Santa Cruz and the Sonoma County VegFest up in Santa Rosa. If you have out-of-town friends who visit that weekend, the pitch writes itself. Skip the boardwalk crowds, walk two blocks between tasting tables in the village, and put your ticket money into a food bank.
Two other September notes on the calendar:
- The Capitola Art & Wine Festival returns for its 42nd year and functions as the summer's last hurrah for the Capitola-Soquel corridor. Twenty-three Santa Cruz Mountain wineries and 125-plus fine artists set up in Capitola Village. The 2026 festival glass is $20.
- Bargetto's Wine Club Summer Celebration on Sunday, September 8, from 12:30 to 3 p.m. in the Creekside Courtyard includes BBQ, barrel sampling, and live music. Club membership required.
A working weekday in the village
Put together, here is what a Soquel resident can actually do in a normal week this summer, without leaving a two-mile radius:
- Wednesday, late afternoon. Pick up empanadas and a cider at Home Away, walk them up Main Street to Bargetto for trivia at 6:30, and be home by 8.
- Thursday, after work. Bargetto Creekside Courtyard, 6 to 8 p.m., whichever band is on that week. Grab a slice from ItaliaFire, buy a glass, take the walk-in seating.
- Friday or Saturday evening. Reservation at Home for the wine cellar or the backyard patio with the pizza oven, if you planned ahead. Otherwise, Home Away's small plates until they close.
- Sunday. Yoga in the Bargetto courtyard if you got one of the 20 spots, or the Sunday shift at Home Away for a slow lunch.
That is a village that programs itself four to five days a week without the resident having to drive to Santa Cruz proper. Five years ago, that was not true.
What this means for the shape of the village
The pattern behind the individual openings is that Soquel is filling in its own daytime economy rather than importing one. Home Away is not a new brand from a Bay Area group. It is the same husband-and-wife team, the same sourcing model, one block over, at a lower price point. The Bargetto music series is not a promoter's calendar dropped into a rental venue. It is the winery's own courtyard, using its own history, on its own nights. Taste of Soquel funnels money to a Santa Cruz County food bank through the village's own churches, restaurants, and wineries.
For a small unincorporated village, that kind of vertical integration of the food and drink scene is unusual. It also happens to be the reason walk-in Thursday nights actually work here. When the same people run the kitchens, the bars, the courtyard, and the benefit, the calendar coheres.
If you have been in Soquel for a decade or twenty years, you already know the shape of the village well enough to notice when it shifts. If you have moved in more recently, the summer of 2026 is a good week-by-week introduction to what "living here" actually looks like on a Wednesday night. Either way, Genie Lawless is happy to talk about the neighborhood, the corners of it that do not show up in any listing description, and what a quiet Thursday in the village tells you about the community underneath. Get Your Home Valuation when you are ready to talk numbers.
