It’s been a little over a year since Scotts Valley restaurateurs Danny and Marty Soliz reopened the former Heavenly Café as the renamed and revamped Heavenly Roadside Café.
Since then, the husband and wife team have completely transformed the menu, the kitchen, and the dining area of the restaurant — long an institution in Scotts Valley, and Felton before it.
Now, heading into their second year of ownership, the Soliz family is preparing to take the next step in making their restaurant a destination — as they are planning to obtain a beer and wine license, cater to rehearsal dinners, and host wine tastings, corporate meetings and events in the large dining area on the west side of the building.
“Because we’re not open at night, we can offer this space,” said Marty Soliz. “It’s something we’ve done in the past.”
She said that she and her husband had waited until this year to begin because they wanted to allow time to acclimate to a new restaurant and new customers, in addition to the fact that they were in the process of selling their other restaurant, the Center Street Grill in Santa Cruz.
“We just wanted to ease into it and hopefully do a good job,” Soliz said. “Once we do the lighting and bring out the linen, it’ll be really nice.”
She said that she was encouraged by the support that the Scotts Valley community has shown the restaurant during her family’s first year of ownership and added that her goal is to maintain the legacy of the Heavenly Café, while simultaneously making it something new.
“We know the restaurant had its following,” she said. “People seem to be genuinely happy that we left the ‘Heavenly’ in there … we wanted to keep the people happy, but we wanted to introduce some new items, too.”
