Skip to Main Content

25th Anniversary: Chocolate the Restaurant

Category: Event Calendar

Date and Time for this Past Event

Location

Details

Friday November 1st: Noon to 6pm Anniversary Happy Hour, with discounted cocktails and mocktails. 

Saturday November 2nd: Noon-10pm Anniversary specials, discounted special drinks. Saturday all day and evening we are inviting our former employees over the past 25 years to stop by for a visit and say hi!

Sunday November 3rd: *Noon-4pm Noon-4pm Anniversary lunch specials, with discounted cocktails and mocktails. *5pm-9pm Special Invitations will be sent to our regular customers for our Anniversary Party with complimentary appetizers and spumante, and a special musical guest.

When Chocolate on Pacific Avenue opened in November of 1999, Downtown Santa Cruz was still enjoying the celebration of being re-built and re-vitalized, after recovering from the 1989 earthquake.  Pacific Avenue had become the go-to center for entertainment and shopping in Santa Cruz. Giorgiana’s, the sidewalk cafe located where Chocolate is now, had been a lively meeting place since the old St. George Hotel had been rebuilt in 1993.

Bookshop Santa Cruz was open every night until 11, as were several shops around and across the street. During the previous 5 years, Chef/owner David Jackman had been operating another restaurant on Front street called So Say We; serving dinner until 2am every night. Hard to imagine now. But the restaurant catered to performers, evening restaurant workers, and many others getting off-work late and ready for a good meal. 

For several years after the turn of the century, Chocolate was to became one of the few places offering patio dining; especially at night.  Chocolate kept that late-night  service going for 20 years.; even as neighboring shops downtown began to close earlier. Now in 2024, recovering those rhythms more familiar before the pandemic, arriving customers are welcomed for seating up until 10pm for dinner on weekends; 9pm all other nights. And now Chocolate has finally returned to a long lunch service every day of the week.