Some of the new dishes:

Hangtown Fry: fried oysters, fried local pastured hen egg, house cured bacon, purple potato hash purples

Pastured hen egg, house cured bacon, Spring Hill cheddar on a house baked biscuit

Summer Scramble: Local squash blossoms, local summer squash, pastured local hen eggs

House made granola, creme fraiche, local strawberries

Meat Scramble: House cured city ham, house made sausage, house cured bacon, local pastured hen eggs

House made biscuits with house made sausage gravy

Brunch is served Saturday and Sunday from 11am to 4pm — see you then!

Thursday, May 10th (after 5pm): Roasted suckling pig, grilled local snap peas, local red orach. Also, a flight of 3 sparkling wines — white, pink, and red — for $12.

Sunday, May 13th: Strawberry-stuffed squash blossom pancakes (all from Suzie’s Farm), from 11am to 5pm. All day and nite: a flight of 3 sparkling wines — white, pink, and red — for $12.

The featured beers will look something like this:

cask
Cali IPA easy as ABZ Californian grown malt

draft
Belgian Bruin Belgian dubbel ale
2nd Anniversary Belgian IPA
Cali IPA easy as ABZ Californian grown malt
Barrel Aged CismonTAPs Saison, collaboration with Cismontane and Taps in OC, aged in chardonnay barrels
Classified Doppelsticke alt-bier 8.5ABV
Blacks Dawn heavy strong stout brewed with coffee, brown sugar and oats
Oaked Dos Cone Es
Coulter IPA Brewed with a hit of rye, named after the Coulter big cone pine tree

We’ll also have five more tap handles of craft goodness, and Thursday is chili nite of course, so really you should join us.

Photo of Cismontane beers via Cismontane Brewery

Suitable for Cave Aging Imperial Smoked Porter-a Tribute to Danny Williams
Stone Mix Tape GK & LU’s Blend Volume 1
Stone LeVariation Ale
Bottleworks 13th Anniversary Ale by Stone
The Alchemist/Ninkasi/Stone More Brown than Black IPA
Cask of Rock Bottom Coffee Stout (brewed by SD Brewer’s Guild President Marty Mendiola)
Cask of Stone Smoked Porter with vanilla beans

And… 10 June 2010 SuperFreak (Belgian IPA aged in wine barrels with brettanomyces)

In celebration, Ethan has a nice series of treats lined up for the beer list. Monday through Wednesday, we’ll be featuring special releases from Stone on draft and cask. On Thursday, we’ll have a spotlight on Cismontane Brewing from Rancho Santa Margarita. Sometime during the week, Ethan’s going to throw on Superfreak from Green Flash. He’s got some other tricks up his sleeve, too.

And over at El Take It Easy, the Bruery 4th Anniversary party and pairings happens on Thursday.

Sam from our kitchen recently went to Belgium on a food and beer tour. Soon, he’s going to be leaving us for the Rocky Mountains, to work in a distillery, but before he goes he’s going to leave you with a Belgian Beer Dinner to remember him by.

Here’s notes from Sam on his travels:

For many years now I’ve been a Chef. I have been lucky to work in some great restaurants and in truly amazing beer bars, in which I have been exposed to a culture that is unlike any other. It was in these places that I fell in love, first with food, and then with beer.

It started off with the local micros, which will always have a special place in my heart, and then evolved into whole new world of delicious. The world of Belgian beer. It’s easy to taste a great Belgian beer and see why it has such a strong reputation, but I never truly understood the passion, culture and tradition that existed behind the glass until I had the chance to travel to
Belgium.

For ten days I would explore breweries large and small, exploit amazing beer bars and indulge my palate with all Belgium had to offer, from fine dining to late night street food. For me the experiences were life changing. From breweries and monasteries with histories dating back hundreds of years to more recent breweries with all the amenities carrying on the same tradition, from the most quant countryside, to the busier streets in Brussels; the theme was the same, to do what you love and to create a product that at the end of the day is to be enjoyed. It’s hard to explain the thoughts and feelings I had while drinking a fresh Belgian Blond, eating house made cheese and pates on fresh baked bread, but it was definitely of things I had never thought or felt before.

One night in particular captures that theme better than anything else. It was at Moeder Lambic, a beer bar in Brussels, where I had the privilege of sitting in on a tasting of beers from the owners private cellar. He would crack open bottles and serve us house cured charcuterie, cheese and pates. Tell us about the producer and what is was the brewers were doing that was special; say why he thought this beer was great. Tell us about the rich history of Belgian beer and where he thought the future of Belgian beer was going.

It was in between vintage bottle of Cantillion that I kept thanking him for his hospitality and generosity when he responded sincerely but seriously, “ Stop thanking me. Its just beer. Beer is made to drink with friends.” It was this motto partnered with such welcoming hospitality and amazing food that seemed to resonate everywhere we went. If I could bring anything back to share it would be that… that and a few hundred bottles of beer!

And here’s the dinner: It’s this Thursday, April 26th, available anytime (while the food lasts) between 5pm and 11pm. Each course is $13, order as many as you like.

* Coarse ground pork terrine and cheese, served with roasted malts.
Paired with Van Hosebrouk St Louis Gueze Fond Tradition.

** Mussels steamed in beer with grilled brussel sprouts, lardon, and grilled bread.
Paired with De Ryck Arend Tripel.

*** Rabbit Pot Pie: Roasted rabbit and seasonal vegtables in rich gravy with a flaky crust.
Paired with De Halve Maan Straffe Hendrik Quadrupel.

**** Belgian waffles and ice cream topped with syrup and seasional fruit. The waffle batter is made with a quad, the ice cream is made with a trippel, and the syrup is made with a dubbel.
Paired with Van Den Bossche Buffalo Belgian Stout.

Sam will see you on Thursday!

Starts at 11am, we’ll see you here.

House made pasta Bolognese made with local duck sausage.

*
Local carrot & ginger soup [or]
Local Bibb salad, lemon vinaigrette, Easter eggs

**
Fritatta: House cured ham, local spinach, pastured hen eggs [or]
House made duck sausage, house made pasta

***
Local carrot cake

We’ll also have strawberry Bellinis made with strawberries from Suzie’s Farm. Join us!

This photo is not actually a New York cut, but whatever.

We’ve cured a few of our beloved city hams, and we’re selling them this week for those of you who would like to serve ham to your family and friends this weekend. They’re $40 or $50, depending on weight, for a quarter ham made from Eden Farms pork.

We have a very limited number, so come in tonite to be sure to get one. I can vouch for it personally, I macked the pictured one in like two minutes. Yum.

I don’t have the decades of wine tasting experience that some wine buyers have, and I’ve been drinking wine for fun and not business the last few years. So it was not practical for me to put together a list driven by technical or geographic criteria — I just don’t know enough of what’s out there. Also, we’ve seen that as our business has grown our guests are better served by a more streamlined list — “carefully curated”, as they say (meaning “short”).

So, my task has been to bring the list down in size while still keeping it full of delightful wines, particularly food-friendly wines. And to communicate what’s unique about our take on wine, which if we do it right helps make this a really fun place to come for a couple glasses.

Ginny pours a glass of Bonny Doon "Le Posseur" Syrah from the cruvinet

While still keeping a reasonably broad spectrum of prices and flavors, by now our list principally comprises wines I like to drink. That includes my biases toward high-quality local wine from San Diego and Baja (we’re temporarily out of Baja wine here but that will change soon), and toward lighter-bodied, old-fashioned wines from Europe.

Recently, we re-formatted the wine list to include some of my personal notes, which I hope you find helpful or at least not too distracting. I do hope to encourage folks to take a risk on a new wine, a new varietal, a new region, if they see something that catches their eye. Also, we’ve brought in a few more high-end “cellar” bottles for those of you who feel like splurging on something a cut above.

In the next few months, we’ll be adding a few more local selections, including wines from Vesper Vineyards/Triple B Ranches and also from Baja California. Many of these are wines that I’ve been tasting for a while now as they get closer to ready and we’re very excited to be able to offer them.

I hope you like the wines here as much as I do, and I’ll see you at the bar!

chili cheese sausage sandwich with house made sausage and house baked roll

chili cheese fries (cooked in grass-fed beef tallow)

chili cheese bowl

See you Thursday!