Yesterday I got back from a week around California, visiting farmers and other producers, eating at amazing restaurants, and stopping by Slow Food Nation in San Francisco. For whatever reasons — mostly due to my mindspace and external circumstances, I didn’t actually intersect much with the Slow Food event, but the trip was great. And, as with any proper trip, I returned home with goodies…

* Organically farmed “Reserve” Pinquito Beans from Righetti Ranch in Santa Maria, CA

* From Brian Hunt of Moonlight Brewing in Santa Rosa: Death and Taxes black lager, Twist of Fate Bitter Ale, and Out to Lunch, a no-hops beer where the malt is balanced by food such as oranges, cherries, and peppers.

* From the Central Coast: Cayucos Beach Ale, in bottles. This used to be brewed in Gilroy, then that brewery closed, so now it is contract brewed with the same recipe at Indian Wells Brewing Company in Indian Wells. We like this beer, it is very refreshing and light with a hint of maltiness.

* And, via the Santa Monica farmer’s market:
- Primavera tangerines from Polito Farms, Valley Center CA
- Sweet honey dates from Dates by Davall, Thermal CA
- Fuji apples from Fair Hill Farms, Paso Robles CA
- O’Henry peaches and Bartlett pears from Tenerelli Orchards, Littlerock CA
- Okra, Hungarian peppers, and cherry tomatoes from Lehman Farms, Sanger CA
- Anana melons, Cavaillon melons, and white eggplant from Weiser Farms, Lucerne Valley CA
- Sweet pimento peppers and heirloom tomatoes from Baylik Farms, Ventura CA

Look for all these things to appear on our menu soon if they haven’t already.

For tonight we still have Mission’s IPA on cask, tomorrow we’ll tap a cask of Big Eye IPA from Ballast Point.

We are also tapping a keg of Craftsman .5 IPA. As the name implies, this is the exact opposite of a San Diego style IPA at only 3.7%! Feel free to drink 5.

We are building up our cask inventory in anticipation of soon being able to offer multiple casks ales at any given time, keep an eye out for options….. We also still have Tolosa Pinot Noir on cask and if you haven’t yet had it, its amazing.

Drafts on deck include:

Bock Bottom La Jolla Moonshine Porter

Victory Hop Wollop

St. Bernadus Pierre Celis Grotten Brown ( Pierre Celis is the man behind Hooegarten and the white beer revival, this brown beer rocks)

Ballast Point Abandon Ship (Holy Smoky)

and drum roll…….

Death & Taxes from our pal at Moonlight!

Jay just got back from the north with all sorts of great things. He will tell you about that soon I’m sure.

see you soon.

p.s. We still have reubens, I’m off to test this batch right now…….

That’s right, it’s a very special holiday edition of Reuben Tuesday, but on Monday this time. For those of you that know the Reuben intimately, I don’t really need to say much more except that this will be the first time the Reuben will be made with grass-fed, California-grown Tallgrass Beef. For those of you new to the Reuben, come see for yourself. Normal hours tonight: Bar opens at 5pm, and the kitchen is open from 5:30 ’til 11:30.

Just a heads up to our fellow music lovers out there, the new Ra Ra Riot CD is amazing. With the fidelity so much better than on the EP, it totally changes the effect of the strings, the vocals, the lyrics, the drive, everything. Plus the songs are all fantastic.

And remember, we (OK, Lisa) loved Ra Ra Riot before we knew Max’s brother was in the band.

My Summer 2008, In Progress:
Vampire Weekend, Vampire Weekend
The Hold Steady, Stay Positive
Ra Ra Riot, The Rhumb Line
Okkervil River, The Stand Ins (September 9th!)

It’s manifesto season, which is great. And this is the best manifesto I’ve read recently, or ever. Courtesy Roots of Change and Slow Food Nation (which I’m excited to be checking out this weekend).

I think item #8 comes to the heart of the whole issue: “Originates from a biological rather than an industrial framework.”

Gratitude to Duffystar for the heads up.

Imbibe Magazine just released their list of the 100 Best Places to Drink Beer in America, and we’re happy to say that our friends at Hamilton’s Tavern were featured on the list, as well as the Linkery.

I think that 30th Street was the only street to have two establishments listed, which would certainly solidify 30th Street — as noted by other publications recently — as the Best Street to Drink Beer in America.

(But not the best street to drive on after drinking beer — take the 2 line!)

Besides the previously mentioned cask wine, we’ve got a bunch of interesting things on the menu right now:

* In honor of the Democratic Nat’l Convention, Avery Brewing in Boulder CO recently released “Ale to the Chief”, a Presidential Pale Ale as it were. We have it in bottles right now and the proclamation on the label is as good as the beer itself.

* Now that we’ve settled into the new space somewhat, I’ve been freed up to get back into the kitchen and our curing room to work on our house-cured meats. You’ll see them sprinkled throughout the menu right now. Country ham, lamb belly confit (!), pancetta, bacon, to name a few. We also just finished curing another batch of our smoky pepperoni stix, this time made with our grass-fed beef from Spanish Oaks Ranch. Jay will be visiting Larry at Spanish oaks in the next couple days on his way to/from the Cal game, so hopefully we’ll get another blog post about that in the near future.

* The cured meat plate continues to evolve as well. Right now we’re featuring three meats that really emphasize the diversity of our library. The mortadella is an emulsified pork sausage, subtly seasoned with a creamy texture and lots of big chunks of diced pork fat (or lardelli) sprinkled throughout. The bresaola, a northern italian-style air dried meat, is a whole muscle, seasoned and cured, and then sliced thin. Usually made from beef, we used pastured bison from Wild Wind Farm for this. Finally, our newest offering, the thuringer. Named after the region in Germany where this sausage originated, it’s a heavily smoked pork link that is cold-cured several days before smoking. It’s got the characteristic tang and smokiness that many of us remember from our childhoods, minus the commodity meat. We used our finest pork from B&B Farms for this and the mortadella.

* Finally, and I’m so excited I don’t even know where to begin, FOOTBALL SEASON IS UPON US! AJ has just finished installing our projection TV, which we can use to show games on the weekends during lunch (basically for the noon game), so with the two bar TV’s we could theoretically have three different day games on. This is great since there always seems to be an occasion when Jay has the Cal game on, I have Ohio State on, and someone else wants to watch a lesser school compete.

We sell a lot of wine by the glass. Every nite, for years, when we take the empty wine bottles out to the recycling, we’d be struck what a waste the bottles are. It would be way better if we could buy wine in kegs, like we do with beer, and cut down on all the bottling and labeling costs along with the waste of glass and cork. This idea became a minor project for us.

Now, after quite a lot of asking around, Tolosa Winery in the Edna Valley (outside San Luis Obispo), has come through in a big way. Last month, when they were bottling their Estate Pinot Noir — their high-end, flagship wine — they filled 3 of our stainless steel beer casks as well. We brought the wine down from the Central Coast — rescuing the casks from the wreckage of the transporting Buick and shepherding the them to our cooler with the teamwork of many people in Southern California — where it waited until our cask wine system was complete.

Lee, Michael and Steph finished up the hardware yesterday and we now how have cask Tolosa Estate Pinot Noir by the glass!

Because of the money saved in not bottling — and the toll in Buicks notwithstanding — we are able to offer this wine at a really affordable price. It would probably be around $15/glass (and it is fine value at that price, a great tasting wine) if we bought it by the bottle, but buying in bulk we are able to sell it at $9/glass.

One thing, though, I forgot to buy carafes! Once we do, we can sell carafes too. Until then, we’ll have it by the glass only.

A little bit about Tolosa and this wine, it is all grapes grown on their property in the Edna Valley, and for this wine they select their best barrels. Here’s an article by winemaker Larry Brooks on Tolosa’s blog about the process.

Tolosa’s property is on Highway 227 in the Edna Valley, practically across the street from NZ Ranch, home of some of our pastured pork and also where Spanish Oaks Ranches cattle grazes.

Spanish Oaks beef is on our market menu right now. Even though pinot noir with beef is a non-traditional pairing, this valley’s climate is really appropriate to both and there is a long tradition of eating pastured beef in the area. So it seems like a natural match!

In the preindustrial days when we lived among the animals we raised, a meat animal would be valued in its entirety — a pig not just for its pork chop but for every bit it offered to the family or community that would eat it. The unique parts — feet, tongue, ears, etc. — might be particularly enjoyed not just because they were rare but also because they are delicious.

As part of respecting the whole animal, and reclaiming our more intimate relationship with our food, we’ve been working to make offal a regular part of our menu at the Linkery. It also happens to make for great pub dishes, particularly later at night, and that’s part of what we’re about.

So, tonite we’re rolling out a new section of our menu: The Precious Bits. Here’s the initial menu.

Grilled tongue ‘n’ cheek terrine 11.5
California Tallgrass pastured calf’s tongue and beef cheek wrapped in house cured bacon of Eden Natural pork, served with pastured chicken egg

Barbecue tongue skewer 10
Niman Ranch pork slow smoked over Central Coast red oak with house made barbecue sauce

Tripe with farro piccolo & chorizo 11.5
Tripe from pastured California beef (Tallgrass), house made chorizo from pastured Spanish Oaks Ranches beef, faro piccolo from Anson Mills.

Devil’s lamb kidneys 8.5
Pastured Rinconada Dairy lamb, spicy sauce, grilled house baked bread

These dishes (along with our whole menu) are served until 11:30pm every nite.

aka what we liked and bought at the Santa Monica Farmers Market today.

Tenerelli Orchards, Littlerock CA (here the stone fruit season runs later, they haven’t even hit the peak of their season yet while some Central Valley farms are close to done for the year).
* Fantasia yellow nectarine
* Elegant Lady yellow peach

Weiser Family Farms, Lucerne Valley CA and Tehachapi CA
* French Red fingerling potatoes
* Sugar Nut melons
* Anana melons
* Bermuda onions
* Torpedo onions
* Starship squash
* Sunburst squash

Polito Farm, Valley Center CA
* Persian lemons
* Primavera tangerines

Elmer Lehman, Sanger CA
* okra
* cherry tomatoes
* Hungarian peppers
* jalapeno peppers
* Red Flame grapes

Fair Hills Farm, Paso Robles CA
* Gala apples

Jim Pritchett, Visalia CA
* Yellow peaches
* Pluots
* Red Flame grapes

Slow Food San Diego’s annual event is being held this Saturday in Old Town. It’s both a taste of different slow-minded food and drink purveyors in San Diego and a nod to early San Diego food traditions.

We participated last year and had a really good time. This year we’re so buried with our new size that it wasn’t possible, but the folks who put it together are great and we’re big fans.

Tickets are available here.

As of last week, we’ve been baking all our own breads including burger buns, sandwich rolls, beer bread, rustic wheat, flatbreads and more. This is not only really fun for us, it allows us to exactly match our bread to each sandwich or dish, which is really essential to achieve the quality we’re shooting for. (As an example, if you had the sausage hoagie or bologna sandwich from the last few days, you know how the bun or roll was perfectly in tune with the flavor and size of the sandwich.)

It took a long time to get to where we could do this, and the last step has been when Lisa — who has managed in the front of the house for a long time — took over as our baker a couple weeks back. She’s still around at night helping in the front, so if she seems covered in flour, now you know.

Also, we would be remiss in not extending our utmost gratitude to Susanna and the folks at Bread on Market, who have supported us with their great bread since we opened three years ago. It’s because of the great work of our partners like them that we have been able to grow to the size where we can do more things ourselves. Thanks!

We just finished our first weekend of being open at noon, and we really enjoyed it. The tempo and vibe are way more mellow than dinner, and (presumably as a result) we got to see a lot of our long-time friends who probably don’t come in as much at night when it can get pretty crowded.

We ended up keeping the kitchen open from noon to 3:30 or so, and then closing it for a couple hours to prepare for dinner. The bar stayed open straight through, though.

For lunch, we ran a special of a bologna sandwich with house made bologna from grass-fed beef on house baked bun, served with pinquito beans. It changed my perception of bologna sandwiches!

All in all, we really enjoyed it, thanks all of you who shared it with us. We’ll be doing it again next weekend!

When last week we found ourselves with beautiful okra from Lehman Farms in Sanger, CA, the kitchen’s thoughts quickly turned to grits (I think our resident Atlantan, Joel, had a hand in it). And we knew what grits we wanted to serve.

We served Anson Mills grits a couple years ago when we did a Carolina dinner featuring Ossabaw pork, and we remembered how amazing the difference is between the heritage grits made by Anson Mills, and the regular grits we can buy. Anson Mills is basically recreating the way these grains tasted prior to the Civil War. This means organically growing heirloom mill corn (and in the process becoming breed stewards for the varieties), and restoring and using antebellum hand-operated milling equipment. Because of their passion for preindustrial ingredients and methods, we can taste what it was about this food that made it a signature item for a whole region in the 1800s.

We ordered the grits last week and they arrived today, so the dish will now be fully complete. It comprises wild-caught market fish, Anson Mills grits, okra from Lehman Farms, and Elegant Lady yellow peaches (natch) from Tenerelli Farms in Littlerock, CA.

With the new, outdoor friendly space, we just couldn’t resist. Starting tomorrow, we will open at noon on Saturday and Sunday. We’ll have our standard changes-every-day menu except for the market selections, which start being available at 5:30.

The kitchen will close for a couple hours before dinner service, so they can get properly ready, but the bar and dining room will remain open during that time.

The stylish designs of our own Reese — you know her, the one who always wears fantastic clothes she made for herself — will be showcased tomorrow (Saturday, August 16) at a fashion show at Sanctuary Gallery & Boutique in Barrio Logan. It runs from 6-10pm and features all one-of-a-kind clothing from Tib Nelson Designs (Reese’s company) and one-of-a-kind jewelry from Miss Delish. There will be drinks, food, shopping and music by locals Stereotech.

Mad props to FOL Evan Ross, who brought in a bunch of figs from his garden. Max wrapped them in house made lardo and stuffed ‘em with Point Reyes blue cheese. While supplies last, natch.

I first saw one of these in a pub in Australia, though I gather they’re used often in Europe. I’d never seen one in the US until the Bondi opened here in town, and then it became clear that they are so great we had to install them. In fact, it might be that a big motivation for moving to a bigger space was so we could have proper equipment such as this, our wine tree, and our big smokers so that we can work to get things just so.

The way it works is to rinse the glass out with a spray of cold water immediately before pouring the beer. This ensures that 1) the glass is at a cool temperature, 2) the surface is free of any particles or residue from washing such as soap or sanitizer film, and 3) as a result the beer pours with a regular amount of foam.

This post (along with a similar message for our email group) is meant to share what is at the heart of the Linkery, so we can all help keep that from getting buried under the noise that may surround us.

We’ve been at our new location for nearly 3 months now, and trying to do a beautiful job with it all has been exhausting, sometimes dispiriting, and sometimes quite joyous. Some days things go amazingly well, and some days we’ve struggled with it — if you’ve come here a few times you’ve probably experienced both. I am grateful to be part of a group of people, including my co-workers and you, that are contributing their gifts to this project.

It is a high-profile endeavor. You can read a lot about us now in the newspapers and magazines and even more on the web. Our culture loves to categorize, describe and evaluate things. I appreciate the attention, but prefer to focus on sharing our intentions. These are what we give of ourselves when we are here.

Our Linkery intentions are group intentions, because we are a group, and they evolve because we change with time. I can’t speak comprehensively for the Linkery — nobody could, exactly — but I can share a few elements that I think bring a lot of us here. That is, in concert with you, we come here to:

* Make space to experience the joy and belonging that can arise in each other’s company, both at the table and also through food, which carries the spirit of the people who have shaped it.

* Explore the essence of different types of food and drink, raised or made with love by people with compatible intentions.

* Maintain a community facility offering both a selection of handmade dinners with beverage for 25 bucks or so, and also a wide range of very unique and rich culinary experiences.

* Serve a pre-industrial consciousness which values people more highly than yields.

This is a long-term endeavor and we expect it to develop slowly and with great depth. Thank you for cultivating it with us.

A lot of you have asked about the wine dispense system we have on the north side of our big workbench, behind the bar. Now that we seem to have it working pretty well, I thought I’d show it off a little.

Bobby at the wine tree

We call it a “wine tree” or our wine dispense system, but I think they’re usually called by a French word cuvinet or cruvinet, I’ve seen both. It’s a method of storing and dispensing wine out of bottles, that protects the wine from contact with air, instead filling the space in the bottle with an inert gas as the bottle empties.

We use very high tech labeling systems

The purpose of the wine tree for us is that we can offer a lot of wines by the glass, from inexpensive to rather high-end, and we don’t have to worry about the wine going bad before we sell the whole bottle. Since the wine doesn’t contact air, it stays in good condition for days (I’m told it will even stay good for weeks, though I don’t know that). Also, it’s set up to make it easier to store and serve the red wine at a felicitous temperature.

The system can dispense up to 16 wines or beers

Although they’re often used by wine bars I can’t think of any place in town that uses a temperature controlled wine dispense system for red wines. They are really expensive to buy, it turns out, and there’s no way we could have afforded to purchase one. Instead, ours was custom built for us by local draft system genius (and erstwhile Stone brewer) Lee Chase, along with Linkery people Michael and A.J.

At the same time, as part of our move & expansion we’ve been joined by Bobby O’Connor, who has assumed responsibility for our wine program. If you’ve been in in the last month or so you may have noticed how much more complete our wine list is, and how many great wines we now offer by the glass — that’s Bobby’s doing, for which we are stoked and grateful.

It may have given its life on the 101, but the Roadmaster’s final act of protecting several sacks of pinquito beans (an heirloom bean from Santa Maria, and a key part of the historic cuisine of that area) is much appreciated. We haven’t had them in a few months and I forgot how wonderful they are, little round nuggets with some body to them as well as delicious flavor. I like the sausage taco plate better with the pinquito-cactus salad, and as baked beans with this new barbecue brisket sandwich, are perfect.

We took in a nice bit of summer fruit today from regions north of here, courtesy the farmers who attend the Santa Monica Farmers’ Market:

* From John Tenerelli in Littlerock (near Palmdale north of LA): Elegant Lady yellow peaches, Red Diamond yellow nectarine, Sugar Lady white peach, Satsuma plums (purple in the middle).

* From Weiser Family Farms in Tehachapi and Lucerne Valley: Galia melons, Cavaillon melons, purple potatoes, French red fingerlings

* From Elmer Lehman in Sanger: okra, cherry tomatoes, Early Girl tomatoes, eggplant, Hungarian peppers

* From the Polito Family in Valley Center: Persian Lemons (sweet, not sour), Primavera tangerines (seedless)

* From Peacock Family Farms in Dinuba: Red Flame seedless grapes and Thompson seedless grapes

You’ll see a lot of these on the menu over the next week or two.

We are now making our back room available for reserve, with a minimum food & beverage order, seven nights a week. Details here. The best way to reserve it is to email me at jay@thelinkery.com.

OK, maybe not, but 2 feature articles in 2 days is pretty cool.

This month’s Riviera Magazine (”The Restaurant Issue”) has a nice spread (see pages 82-83 of the online version) featuring Ritual Tavern, Sea Rocket Bistro, and us. Good stuff.

(On a related note, I had a fantastic bowl of gumbo at the Ritual tonite, just delicious.)

OK, this is gonna last, like 15 minutes, so we’re not going to email or anything. But we’re going to tap a 5 gallon cask of SuperFreak on Friday, at 5:30pm.

SuperFreak is Green Flash’s Le Freak Belgian-style Imperial IPA, aged in Grenache barrels provided by Erik Humphrey of San Pasqual Winery in Pacific Beach, and spiked with Brettanomyces to develop tartness. It rocks.

After the SuperFreak disappears, we will tap a cask of Bear Republic’s APEX Imperial IPA, which is normally only available at the brewery in Healdsburg. I don’t know how Steph got it…maybe I don’t wanna know. Anyway.

We’ll also have Stone Pale Ale with Hallertau hops on cask soon, if we don’t already (things move fast around here).

A neat article in today’s U-T Food section on all the great places with craft beer on 30th St. With a fetching illustration, too! (PDF link.) Mad props once again to Peter Rowe, very au courant as to the passion for hand-crafted quality that is energizing this neighborhood.

I keep meaning to mention that North By North Park is happening this Saturday (official link here). This is a music festival obvs along the lines of and/or inspired by festivals like South By Southwest.

There’s going to be great shows at a lot of venues in the area, including our immediate neighbors Bar Pink Elephant. North Park should be a lotta fun that nite, though of course really it always is.

What I did on Monday:

* Went to Tolosa Winery in the Edna Valley, where they graciously filled some firkins and pins with their ‘07 Estate Pinot Noir. We’ll be serving it through our handpumps…we are excited to 1) serve this great wine and 2) cut down on bottle waste.

(continues beneath the photos…)

Pinot Noir growing at Tolosa in the Edna Valley

Ethan Fills A Firkin

* Ate a lovely whole wheat margherita pizza at Brigadune Pizza in Baywood Park.

* Visited the Los Osos Farmer’s Market, which is absolutely super. Picked up some of the first apples of the season (”Beverly Hills” varietal) from See Canyon, along with their yellow peaches. Also the last blueberries of the season from 7th Heaven Organics, so Max could make a pie.

* Stopped at Susie-Q’s ranch to pick up some pinquito beans. Now labeled as heritage beans (which is really true, though there was a certain charm when it seemed no one there had noticed).

* Visited with our friend Clark at Full of Life (formerly American Flatbread), makers of amazing frozen organic flatbreads and operators of one of California’s most compelling restaurants (only open Fridays and Saturdays). Was gifted some flatbreads and lent an ice chest which belonged to neither of us, and directed to visit the Hungry Cat. Note to Clark: the flatbreads and ice chest didn’t make it (see below), and I did not make it to the ‘Cat (also see below).

* Drove south on 101 with Ganging Up on the Sun on infinite repeat while relishing a solid ethylene high courtesy the perfectly ripe fruit (see above).

* Slowed for traffic on the freeway at Milpa St and promptly was smashed into by a Pontiac Grand Am traveling at a high rate of speed, sending fruit everywhere and me and my car into the median wall (all the people involved are OK, thankfully, if a bit bruised). The 1992 Buick Roadmaster, with Dynaride technology, ceased to exist as such, becoming a picturesque sculpture of twisted metal.

* Waited for a couple hours — for a true friend to drive up from Santa Monica to fetch me — at the bucolic Santa Barbara Inn, along with casks of wine, boxes of recovered fruit, my bags, 150 lbs. of pinquito beans, a six-pack of Cayucos Beach Ale and a subwoofer. The folks at the SBI are fantastic, I highly recommend that establishment.

* Enjoyed dinner at Lucky’s in Montecito, a very stylish time warp into pre-Alice-Waters dining America. A real treat and a great end to a fine day!

I just discovered this bit of genius, because it was referenced by this bit of genius, which was linked to by this blog, which is linked to by The Cod. All now safely lodged in my RSS reader. I thought some of y’all might be interested in it, too.

Larry Fernandez of Spanish Oak Ranches (San Luis Obispo, CA and Edna, CA) — pasture-fed, pasture-finished Black Angus beef

Jim Neville of NZ Ranch (Edna, CA) - traditionally raised Hampshire breed pork