At the beginning/end of every year, I take a little time to appreciate what we (you and us together) have accomplished here in the last twelve months; and size up what we can look forward to in the next twelve. Stock-taking, visioning, and all that. It’s helpful, no? Plus, I think this year was interesting for us, and will in time prove to have been pivotal for our project.
One year ago, we had just re-opened a re-designed, re-engineered Linkery. We de-emphasized sausages, brought our commitment to local and seasonal produce sharply into focus, narrowed the menu, reduced the frequent menu changes, and jumped aboard the nothing-under-$20 train that started rolling after the 2008 economic breakdown. Personally, I really loved the menu, and everyone agreed the dishes were tight. We saw more guests come through the door, I think due to the number of lower-priced dishes we were offering.
Over the course of six to nine months, though, we felt the energy wane, and it became clear that this was a cost of the commitment to offering only inexpensive dishes: with the quality of ingredients we’re interested in serving, there’s a very limited universe of things we can offer at a low price. What’s more, those things tend to be flour-based — you’ll notice that a lot of under-$20 restaurants are loosely Italian-inspired, leaning heavily on pasta, pizza, and polenta. Flour based food isn’t the most interesting thing in the world, and those dishes start to lose appeal, at least to us, after a while.
During summer and fall we experimented with a few ideas to liven up the menu, offering more specials, bringing back a wide selection of house made sausages, offering dishes centering on pastured-beef-tallow-cooked fries, even getting playful with the menu format itself. At the same, we noticed that a many local restaurants we consider our colleagues just bit the bullet and started offering a wider selection of dishes, including more expensive ones. And, frankly, that seemed only sane.
I think a lot of chefs and owners came to the conclusion this year that, if we’re going to serve the best possible food to our guests, we’re going to have to offer a complete range of ingredients and prices. I personally was particularly inspired by our neighbor Matt Gordon at Urban Solace, who added “luxury” dishes to his menu like grass-fed steak and veal preparations and, if I recall correctly, foie gras. With this “new new paradigm” in mind, our offerings evolved by the end of the year to include a lot of the things that I think makes our chef, Max Bonacci, special: dishes using every part of every animal; super-premium ingredients like grass-fed steak in delicious, unpretentious contexts; daily menu changes reflecting what our farmers have brought us.
We stil have almost the same number of inexpensive dishes, but we’ve complemented them with dishes using more precious ingredients, as well. I’m hopeful everyone will find their sweet spot, so to speak.
In another subtle change you may have noticed, we reduced the broad array of vegetarian dishes we serve; now we’re more like most restaurants, with just a few, carefully composed vegetarian options, and some other dishes that you can order without meat and are still tasty. The reason for this? The vegetarian plates, for the most part, don’t sell very well. We kept the ones that sold the best, and the others we replaced with meat dishes (which also, it turns out, showcase what most makes us unique, the quality of meat we serve). At the same time, to better accommodate vegetarians and vegans, we’ve started offering a weekly 3-course vegetarian dinner for $20, at El Take It Easy (and once a month we offer the meal as vegan). I think this is better for everyone: it’s a great deal, and because we do a different dinner each week, it’s always unique and totally driven by local, seasonal ingredients. I encourage all you vegetarians in our community to check it out.
Other evolutions this year at the Link:
* We added taps to where we generally have 10 or 11 craft beers on draft, and reduced casks so where we generally have one or two. Cellarmanship of casks in San Diego (where we don’t have actual cellars) is really expensive, it just got to be too hard to explain why we had 5 or 6 beers on at $8/glass (which was actually too low anyway considering our costs). So we reduced to just one or two, for the cask lovers ready to pay a premium for great cask beer with a great dinner; and made up the difference in a wider selection of drafts. That’s gone over really well, I’d say.
* Speaking of beer drinkers, to properly service our neighborhood imbibers, we added a late nite happy hour where all beers are $3.93 ($5 after tax & service) after 10pm. We figure some of you are going to have a beer before you go to bed, anyway, and we’d like you to have it with us.
* We hooked up with some new, great local wine! On tap, no less. Our relationship with winemakers Chris Broomell and Alysha Stehly of Vesper Vineyards/Triple-B Ranches finally bore fermented fruit, as we added four of their wines to both of our restaurants, plus a fifth (Los Pilares) they make for a another, amazing, craft wine project in town. Local wine made like this had been too expensive for us to serve, but together we made it work by eliminating bottling and moving the wine in kegs. Look for a Sauvignon Blanc and a beautiful rosé to arrive this Spring.
All that said, the biggest changes/accomplishments this year were over at El Take It Easy. I’ve written in depth about the evolution of that restaurant both here and on my personal blog, so I won’t recount all the details here. Suffice it to say that we developed a craft cocktail program people love, a mezcal selection which is really enjoyable for us to share with you, and a focus on Mexican wine country cuisine which has allowed us to cook the great local ingredients we get in a way that’s delicious and still new to a lot of people in San Diego.
On a numbers basis, El Take It Easy is now twice as popular as it was a year ago and appears to be continually growing. I’m super proud to be a part of what’s going on there. While I always enjoy visiting both of our restaurants as a guest, I find the small scale of EZ and the dynamism of its youth particularly invigorating. If you haven’t checked it out recently, I hope you do soon.
As for my personal year, like most people’s, it had plenty of ups and downs. It seems that’s the new normal, in an economy that continues to decline (cf. finite resources, maladapted species). One purely joyous occurrence: I rediscovered the music of Paul Simon, at first due to the unexplained ubiquitous playing in counter-service restaurants of Negotiations and Love Songs this fall, and then due to Cerebral Decanting’s review of Simon’s latest album, So Beautiful or So What. If you didn’t listen to both records a hundred thousand times in 2011, you still have 2012. At least until the Mayans get done with it, I guess.
Also, concurrent with both restaurants developing to the point where I’m not necessary to their operations — they now are run, better than I ever did, by Michael, Max, Jeezy, Rachel, Ethan, Chuckey and a bunch of other talented folks — I discovered that I no longer envision myself living in San Diego when I grow up. Which is, for a lifelong and proud San Diegan, an interesting thing to experience.
For most of my lifetime, I rejected the idea of city-shopping as consumerist and shallow, but now…well, the truth is I want to live somewhere where I can safely and happily ride a bike most places; where I rarely have to drive a car; where there are lots of restaurants and stores trafficking in local food and handmade products; where there is a well-developed wine culture; and where pursuing excellence in craft is culturally encouraged. On one hand, a lot of talented people have been working to make these things true in San Diego; on the other hand, those changes will take decades if they ever happen all, and I’d like to have a better quality of life while I’m still able to enjoy it.
When the whole Velo Cult store — owner, staff, and stock — up and moved to Portland at the end of December, it really hit home with me and a lot of my friends. An internationally-acclaimed business dedicated to pushing our culture forward so we can enjoy our city life more, finally just threw their hands up, quit, and moved to a place where there’s already a market for what they do. It’s hard to believe they won’t be better off for it. And that, of course, makes me suspect I should be thinking the same way about my own life.
So, for me, 2012 promises to be a year of exploration. Of places, ideas, and, of course, food and drink. I’ll keep you updated about interesting things I discover, on my personal blog and, when it pertains to the restaurants, here.
Many thanks to all of you, as always, for being a part of this project. I think I speak for all of us who work at both restaurants when I say how grateful we are that your support lets us do this work that is so interesting and fun. Next month it’ll be seven years! It’s amazing to be able to say that, and we appreciate the privilege.
Happy 2012!