Addictively salty while thirst-quenchingly fresh — plus, as spicy as you like, from mellow to mouth-tingling — the line of salsas sold by Santa Cruz Market engage the tastebuds like an edible orchestra, hitting all the notes needed to make this condiment the star of your meal. I occasionally make that salsa-with-chips my entire meal, often by accident, as the small tub evaporates in one sitting, leaving me full and satisfied.
“Edward Pena,” Tom Modugno replied when I called him up to learn of this salsa’s origins. “He’s the guy who should get the credit.” He also gave props to the current salsa don, Rogelio Castrejon, who’s in charge of its creation at both the Old Town Goleta and West Montecito Street in Santa Barbara locations, and led the brand’s expansion into guacamole, ceviche, and more.
Modugno knows because his family owned this region’s Santa Cruz Markets for more than 45 years until selling in 2024. Back in the mid-1980s, they started preparing a few packaged deli items for pickup, like sandwiches. “They never took off that much,” said Modugno. But that opened the door to Pena — who was from the Santa Ynez Valley and worked as a butcher for the markets — to make salsa, reportedly based on his mom’s recipe.
Sales were “real low-key” to start. “It didn’t blow up right away,” said Modugno of the salsa’s first couple of decades. “We would run out and it was no big deal.”…