OK, where to start? There’s a lot to go over, I guess.
It’s time for us to change things at the Linkery, to make the next step into being the restaurant we want to be. We need to do that, because in these times, only the best restaurants are going to survive and thrive.
It was our belief, as we’ve seen the numbers change over the last year, that we have plenty of loyal members of the Linkery community, but that you just can’t afford to come in as often as you like. Our survey bore that out. You told us that:
* You love the quality of the food we’re putting out
* You would come in more often if we could find a way to offer a broader selection of mid-priced food at the same high quality
* You aren’t particularly tied to any specific dishes
I think this lays out our path quite clearly.
We need to focus not on any specific dish or menu, but in taking these special ingredients we get, building on our special relationships with farmers and brewers and winemakers, and putting together a broad range of delicious offerings at a neighhorhood-friendly price. Beyond that, we need to make it easy to come in for just a drink, for a drink and a snack, or a memorable dinner.
At the same time, it’s become apparent to me, over the last year, that the mission that’s animated us for the last five years no longer requires us in quite the same way.
In 2005, we opened our first restaurant and discovered how awful the local food system was, and saw that we would never get great ingredients for our community restaurant if we bought the food we were being offered. For over five years, we have dedicated ourselves to doing everything we could to helping build a robust local and independent food system that we could count on for the best quality ingredients, food that you could serve in a world-class neighborhood restaurant.
By early 2010, it started becoming apparent that the local food system had, in many ways, reached that level. Not good enough yet for the city as a whole, but good enough to build a legit farm-to-table restaurant on (which we did, in fact, with El Take It Easy).
Earlier this year I was talking with Lucila from Suzie’s Farm about how large their farm is and about their ability to deliver to restaurants five days a week, and I found myself saying: whatever difference the Linkery has made in the food system the last few years, the ball isn’t really in our court any more; farms like Suzie’s are what is going to bring the movement forward now while we are watching and cooking and eating. It’s great, and scary, to make that transition from being at the center of what’s going on in a movement, to being just another face in the retinue.
So, what now? Well, what makes a great neighborhood restaurant?
With all this great food at our fingertips, finally in large quantities, we can first of all create a menu that serves you well and that we don’t have to change every day. It’ll probably change every week, still, after all, we still have growing seasons. But not every day.
This one change, to a more stable menu, will allow to serve you so much better in many dimensions: deeper product knowledge to share with you; more time to spend with each dish finding better ways to bring it to life; the ability to be more accommodating in hospitality, freed of the anxiety regarding the intricate dance happening every day between our kitchen and our farms.
Will there still be limits bounding our food? Yes. We will run out of things. We will still buy whole animals, and serve through a given part until it’s gone. When asparagus or winter squash goes out of season, we’re not going to buy it from remote corners of the globe. Pomegranate season in San Diego will probably continue to be about a week long, at least at our farms.
What shall become of the sausages? We don’t know yet. Making great sausage always be in our repertoire, and I suspect it will be on our menu, but it’s important for us all to remember that any one dish is not the point. The point is for us to get the best ingredient from the best farmers, and to make you great food, with love, that you can come in and eat. If running a sausage factory (which, seriously, is what we do now) means that we can’t do that job at a price you can afford, then the sausage factory is expendable. Serving you great food as often as we can, is not.
I feel sadness in recognizing the ultimate unimportance of sausage, because we’ve invested 6 years getting good at it. Even in the last few months, I judge that we’ve attained a new level of quality, and I’m proud of it. I love offering it. But in the end, it’s not central to why we’re here, in the same way that making great meals for you is.
So, you ask, what’s the program? Expect the following:
* Starting now, we’re shifting our beer and wine buying practices to allow us to offer a broader selection of excellent craft beers and wines at the lower end of the price scale (about $5 for beer, $6-9 for wine). At the same time, we’re simplifying, and will (except for special events) reduce our selection of cask beers from 4-6 to 1-2, and bring the wine list down from 60 or 70 down to a more manageable 30 or 40.
* In about six weeks, we’ll shut down for a few days to implement all these changes. If there’s something on the menu that you really really love (green beans, choucroute, picnic plate, burger with an pastured chicken egg on it, etc.), now’s a good time to come enjoy it. We’ve got a great event lineup planned in November, too, including Beer Week events. And, before we say goodbye to the current Linkery, we’ll have some events (a Reuben Tuesday, and so forth) to celebrate all the great things that have happened in this iteration of the Linkery. I think there is a lot to celebrate.
* We’re going to do a “refresh”, like a remodel but only over a few days, in which we reconfigure the space to make it as comfortable as possible whether you want to just come in for a drink, come in for small plates, or have a special dinner. We’re going to get rid of the cafe booths, reconfigure the bar area, and add a private dining room in what is now the North Park Meat Co. We’re going to improve the aesthetics and make the space cleaner, modern, cozier, and better suited for whatever mood you’re in.
* We are going to figure out a way to keep serving our bacon clientele. We treasure your loyal patronage!
* We will re-open with a new menu, based on providing you great dishes made with the best local produce and the best, properly raised meats in the country, all at prices that make sense in our neighborhood and in this economy. With a menu designed around the ingredients we have access to, we’ll be able to make even fewer compromises than we do now. We will serve only grassfed beef, heritage breed pork raised outdoors, local pastured poultry, and pastured lamb and goat. ‘Cause that’s the restaurant we want to be.
It’s funny, we did something quite similar to this in 2006, back at our old 50-seat location, and it worked out amazingly well. In fact, that was the change that propelled us forward to where we are today. The biggest difference is that, in 2006, I think we planned the whole thing over drinks on a Thursday, and by Sunday nite we were closed and doing the remodel. Meanwhile, at our current scale, a six week lead time is aggressively fast!
While change is always scary, the more we’ve worked on this project the last couple weeks, and the closer we get to it, the more excited I get. One one hand, there is so much to be nostalgic about, in what the Linkery has been a part of the last few years. On the other hand, the only way out is up: into being a better restaurant, serving you better, using only the best ingredients, creating a more comfortable place that you can come more often.
We asked you, you laid out this path for us, and I like it. I am confident that you will too.
And, please, for the next six weeks, please keep coming in, enjoying the new wine and beer selections, and the last dance with the current menu. It’s all something to be celebrated, after all, while we look forward to what comes next.
NOTE: Due to all the publicity this has been getting, I’ve closed the comments on the post, as this sort of thing tends to bring out a lot of people who aren’t part of the Linkery world, who have an axe to grind for whatever reason (don’t like the service charge, don’t like places that try to use better ingredients, don’t like my hair, whatever). Since these changes we’re discussing are about you, our core patrons, I really don’t want to open the conversation up to the random malcontents of the online world. If you’d like us to know what’s on your mind, please feel free to email me. Thanks for reading.
The only reason I haven’t eaten at The Linkery is the price. I shall look forward to coming in for a $5 beer and a small plate!
Meanwhile, check out http://www.wurstkucherestaurant.com for a sausage fest next time you’re in LA. They make no claim to local, but do demonstrate the possibilities presented by an exceedingly simple menu.
I guess my husband and I are in the sausage buying minority. We’ll have to pop in for his usual choucroute dish, I guess. I do admit to having made the jump from JUST sausage to the rest of your fantastic menu, but sausage is what drew us to The Linkery in the first place and is what we always used to encourage others to visit.
Whatever the changes, I know I’ll probably dig ‘em. But I know my husband will pout about the choucroute!
Mog,
While I’m sure Wurstkuche is a very good restaurant run by good people, it also appears to be exactly the kind of operation that is driving us to focus solely on high-quality food, rather than also on sausages. If I infer correctly from their menu and website, they keep their prices lower by making their links from factory meat, which I would never choose to serve you.
If I’m wrong about this, and they’re serving non-factory meat, then they must have substantially different operational parameters than we do, in some important way — perhaps being in L.A. they have access to many more customers. Please somebody correct me if I am making the wrong inference and they are serving non-commodity meat.
I know that most people are fine eating factory meat, but I know how gross it is and it makes me sad to see people choosing to eat it, when for the same price we can buy great local produce and make far-better-tasting and more wholesome vegetarian food.
But the factory meat people set the market prices these days, and that means that sausages made from independently farmed meat, particularly if they are hand made by people in the community, are going to be priced more than people, in general, are willing to pay on an everyday basis. It’s not a choice I like, but it’s also not something I have a lot of control over.
However, we do have the advantage that the meat we buy also tastes a lot better than factory meat. So if we find preparations that people will pay for, they’ll continue to prefer our products due to their quality. That’s really the only way we’re going to get to provide the quality of food we want to provide.
Stephanie,
We’ll still make great food, and, to some degree, sausages. I wish there was more of market in our community for us to explore very expensive preparations of the best ingredients, like our chocroute dish (hand made sausage, house cured sauerkraut from Suzie’s Farm cabbage, Alsatian white wine, independently farmed pork). Unfortunately, it seems we don’t have as much room in the market as we would need to do that. So we’ll make different dishes from the same ingedients.
No matter what happens you have to keep selling the awesome bacon to-go Jay!
Looking forward to the next phase at the Linkery.
Hi Jay,
You mentioned you’d still be serving your “grassfed beef, heritage breed pork raised outdoors, local pastured poultry, and pastured lamb and goat”, but will you also still be serving locally-caught, sustainable seafood? The yellowtail I sometimes see on your menu is always delicious, and it’s by far my favorite dish you serve, regardless of the sides. I am excited to see your changes, but I hope you keep seafood dishes on your menu!
While this all sounds very exciting, I must admit that I will miss the picnic plate.
Hanna,
We will absolutely keep our seafood program — we feel about it the same way you do. We’re lucky to be able to get the quality local fish that we do, and we want to serve it to you.
Heather,
We’ll be serving it for at least another month, so I hope you have plenty of chances to enjoy it before the menu changes.
Sad to hear the chocroute is likely getting the axe. Will the sauerkraut still be available from time to time? It is hands down my favorite item on the menu and the best I’ve ever had – even compared to what I’ve sampled in Germany.
Thanks Liz, we’ll be developing the new menu over the next month and probably won’t have any firm answers until right before we do the remodel/changeover. In the meantime, we will for sure have it through November!
Are you going to rebrand the restaurant? When I think of the Linkery, I automatically think of sausage. If that is no longer going to be the focus, maybe the name no longer applies either.
Looking forward to checking out your changes firsthand. We have always enjoyed our visits to the Linkery, but admit the prices have kept us from coming more often. I’m curious: If you’re getting away from a focus on sausages, and you’re doing away with the meat shop, will you still be named the “Linkery”? (which is a very “sausagy” name)
Mike,
Thanks for asking. We did consider changing the name, but decided against it, because the point of our name has always been primarily about connecting neighbors to each other, and connecting farmers to diners, along with the pun about making sausages. Even if the sausage element becomes less important, our primary focus stays the same, and the name the Linkery explains what we do quite nicely. Plus, it’s pretty associated with our personal identities at this point!
The primary reason we don’t eat there more than we do is that we do not live close by. We’re in the Mira Mesa/Sorrento Valley area, so at least it’s a straight shot down the 805.
That’s not to say we don’t eat there when we can (we were just at the Linkery Saturday afternoon and ETIE on Sunday), but we need to be able to make the drive south to get there. When my kids are in school, school nights are pretty much out (I TRIED last Reuben Tuesday, but homework had to be done).
BTW, the tagliatelle with pesto and meatballs was fantastic at TL, and everyone (even the kids) loved the octopus tostada at ETIE. I think it was the best octopus I’ve ever had. Keep it up with the tasty good foods and we’ll keep making the trek.
Can’t wait to see what the new Linkery offers! I love that you guys (and gals) are constantly seeking to change it up, improve, and be community-minded. Most restaurants simply rest on their laurels so this is quite an admirable move for you to make. Your explanation totally makes sense in light of the food to table movement and all that has meant to the San Diego restaurant scene in recent years.
I see this story is on SignonSanDiego.com now so get ready for the usual barrage about the no-tipping policy. Yawn.
We live in North County so we don’t come down to the Linkery as often as we’d like. But The Linkery is one of the first places we think of when planning a dinner night in SD. Admittedly, the sausages and choucroute are our usual choices more often than not.
When you are making over your menu, please keep in mind the growing number of those who don’t eat wheat (or grains in general). I don’t mean necessarily offering GF buns or bread instead (which are often just processed starch cr*p), just consider ways to easily leave grains/wheat off the plate entirely on request without requiring a lot of special attention in the kitchen. A menu with enough choices that don’t include breading, batter-dipping, or breadcrumbs, and sauces without flour thickeners, etc. makes ordering so much easier for the waitstaff, the kitchen, and the customer.
There’s nothing I love more than a plate of sustainably-raised local veggies with a nice serving of humanely-raised and pastured meat/poultry/eggs or wild-caught fish – that’s primal eating at its finest. That’s what we eat at home and try to eat when we dine out.