Cruz

[Drunk Monk]

Santa Cruz restaurant India Joze to close shortly after new year
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India Joze’ Jozseph Schultz in the kitchen in 2006. (Shmuel Thaler/Santa Cruz Sentinel file) India Joze’ Jozseph Schultz in the kitchen in 2006. (Shmuel Thaler/Santa Cruz Sentinel file)
By [color=var(--primary)]RYAN STUART | rstuart@santacruzsentinel.com | Santa Cruz Sentinel
December 26, 2021 at 5:00 p.m.
SANTA CRUZ – A half century of Asian and Middle Eastern inspired cuisine comes to an end in Santa Cruz.
India Joze, at 418 Front St., is set to shutter its doors permanently shortly into the new year. The restaurant’s owner, Jozseph Schultz, has two more events planned for the restaurant before its final day.
First, the restaurant plans to serve black-eyed peas and greens on New Year’s Day, which Schultz says is for good luck in the new year. Secondly, India Joze will have a closing party Jan. 8 to mark the end of its service.
The end of India Joze has been in sight for a few years now, Schultz noted. Now, the moment has finally come as 50 years of the restaurant will end in rubble.
“It’s really hard to stay open when the building is not standing,” Schultz said.
The restaurant’s current location is set to be bulldozed. Then it will be replaced with storefronts and condos overlooking the San Lorenzo River.
The current site for India Joze is the site for the proposed Riverfront project, a seven-story mixed use building. The project currently offers 175 condos, 15 of which are deed-restricted at 50% of the area median income and another five deed-restricted at 30% of the area median income.
During the last five decades India Joze has had five different locations, but Schultz said this one will be the restaurant’s last. Instead, Schultz has his own version of a retirement plan.
“I’ll be teaching classes at home and be doing small scale catering events, but I have no plans to open another restaurant,” he said. “Fifty years is enough. I have been in business for five-zero years, since 1972.”
While he steps away from the restaurant business at 70 years of age, Schultz said he’ll miss everything about it. He called restaurants an “essential community resource.” To him, they are a place for all people to come together and socialize over good food, and what he liked about his establishment was the casual and friendly nature of those gatherings.
Now, Schultz prepares to strip his eatery down to the walls. He never was someone that believed in taking useful equipment to the dump. Instead, he wants to provide equipment for people looking to start their own restaurant and use the rest of his equipment to help feed the homeless.
“There’s always people thinking they are going to make it big in the restaurant business. If I can help some of them, I will,” Schultz said. “Some of it I’ll probably use for Food Not Bombs and some of it we’ll see. I try to make the best, highest use of all my stuff.”
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India Joze’ Jozseph Schultz provides the food as Food Not Bombs serves the hungry a 2021 Thanksgiving dinner in downtown Santa Cruz on November 25. (Shmuel Thaler/Santa Cruz Sentinel file) India Joze’ Jozseph Schultz provides the food as Food Not Bombs serves the hungry a 2021 Thanksgiving dinner in downtown Santa Cruz on November 25. (Shmuel Thaler/Santa Cruz Sentinel file)

Schultz has been helping Food Not Bombs provide meals to Santa Cruz’s homeless population for decades. He typically cooks meals for the organization twice a week. However, the closure of his restaurant may make that more difficult.
Food Not Bombs co-founder Keith McHenry is prepared to not have Schultz available to help cook for at least a month after the restaurant’s closure. During that time, most of Food Not Bomb’s operations will either run out of the Little Red Church or through the parking lot on Laurel and Front streets, McHenry noted.
But as resources dwindle, the need continues to rise. McHenry has noticed a boom in people that need help from his organization over recent months. Shipping containers full of food that used to last Food Not Bombs all week have begun to run dry after just two days.
McHenry first noticed the increase in demand in October. By the start of November, the change had astonished him.
On Nov. 4, the nonprofit had run out of food even though it prepared a similar amount to what it did one week prior. That came as a shock to McHenry because food needs tend to be lighter at the beginning of the month when people receive their paychecks and food stamps, he said.
In total, McHenry estimates the amount of homeless people he has served since the start of the pandemic has increased by roughly one-third. He expects it to get worse with the new year right around the corner.
“I’ve been doing this for 42 years and I’ve never seen such a huge increase so dramatically,” McHenry said.
Food Not Bombs needs to increase its orders and store more food to meet increased demand, McHenry noted. That will be more difficult without one of its primary storage facilities at India Joze.
To offset that, Food Not Bombs plans to invest in an additional storage container, something it would have likely needed to do anyway as demand has begun to exceed its current capacity. Additionally, it will need to train more cooks to meet the growing food demand.
Despite the challenges, McHenry is confident Schultz will be back to help feed the homeless once the restaurant is sorted out. Schultz also plans to help Food Not Bombs once the dust settles, but he is unsure what form that will take.
“We can depend on (Schultz) to help us,” McHenry said. “There is no doubt that as long as he can breathe, that’s what he will be doing with us.”

End of an era. IJ was painfully Cruz. We didn’t eat there that often but it was always welcoming. The last time I can remember was a few years ago when one of Stacy’s friends had a small art installation showing there. Shultz was a cool dude - always looked out for his customers although he could be a bit absent minded. 

I hate this new construction. It’s gentrifying downtown in the most unpleasant manner.