There is a kind of casual magic about the thick, paper-wrapped sandwiches served by Melrose Café, a stall that launched at the Westside Santa Cruz and Live Oak farmers markets in late summer. Sandwiches, although humble, are tricky to perfect. Each individual ingredient has to be excellent in order for it all to come together as a harmonious whole. But 26-year-old baker Cameron Meyers creates masterpieces with a quiet grace, stuffing them with seasonal combinations of ingredients sourced from the market, including El Salchichero bacon and chorizo, heirloom tomatoes and pickled fennel.
The star at Melrose Café isn’t really the sandwich itself; it’s the bread. Specifically, Meyers’ deeply browned, springy loaves of focaccia, chewy crust dotted with burst sungold tomatoes or sprinkled with salty asiago cheese. Her approach to flavors can be nontraditional, especially the dessert versions of her bread, which on different visits were topped with roasted peaches and a caramelized cinnamon-and-sugar lid, and layered with homemade jam like a jelly donut.
You might think someone learning the art of making focaccia would do so in Italy, the bread’s homeland, but Meyers honed her craft in about as un-Italy a place as possible: remote Alaska.
Three years ago, the Santa Cruz native was hired as the executive chef at the Kachemak Bay Wilderness Lodge, a coastal resort accessible only by boat. The position was six months on, six months off, and required her to live on site and cook breakfast, lunch and dinner for up to 16 guests…