Dinner at El Take It Easy shortly after opening, summer 2010
Dinner at El Take It Easy, May 2011
When, in 2009, we were floating the ideas that became El Take It Easy, I had a brainstorm that I shared with Michael, our GM: we would do a soft opening for a year, at least, before even announcing that the restaurant was open. Because, both previous times we had opened a new restaurant, it had taken about a year for the place to become the right thing, and for us to figure out how to shape our own work so that the restaurant began to fulfill its potential.
Waiting for takeoff, April 2010
The idea of a year-long soft opening, of course, was a nonstarter: we had construction bills to pay, and a team that needed sales to make a living, and so we rolled out our work full steam, last summer.
And yet. At our one-year anniversary, it feels like we are now finally opening the restaurant we intended to, a restaurant we’re all very stoked on, a restaurant with the feeling in the air that our guests are excited about it, digging it, and that very big things are coming soon. Maybe it wasn’t a year “soft opening”, but it has certainly been, at the least, a long hello.
Macking on a goat & egg torta slider, summer 2010
Our original idea was simple, conceptual. We have these great friendships with both local farmers and artisans in California, and with artisans, chefs and winemakers in Mexico, and we wanted to bring together all that talent and love into one culinary place that existed, theoretically, not on either side of the border but in an undivided metropolis called Tijuego.
Our cuisine would draw freely from ingredients, products and, most notably, cultural influences from both sides of the border: channelling inspirations from both Californias: from Chez Panisse to Laja, from Garces Lounge to Alembic. We’d play on local traditions like Kentucky Fried Buches while still presenting the best ingredients from our farms.
On the menu yesterday: local Sea Bass confit, local tomatoes, Baja California olive oil, sea salt.
A few funny things happened on the way to the gastronomic forum, of course. Unexpected expenses during construction, combined with the collapse of the commercial credit system for small businesses, depleted our funds and forced us to open before we had a license to serve distilled spirits. So the “bar” part had to be put on hold for nearly a year.
Meanwhile, neighboring businesses went under, the street lights went out for months, a huge construction project hid us beneath a wall of scaffolding. We felt like we were in the punk-est part of New York City in the early 1980s.
Most profoundly, the kind of food were cooking, free-form border-influenced tapas with spicy/salty/sour/sweet flavors, weren’t really resonating with many people. Certain touches, like our use of offal, were fun for gastronaut-types, but that’s not a big market in San Diego. We found ourselves with a core of great, loyal regulars, but without an adequate or growing clientele. Our intellectual exercise in developing a kind of “Tijuego cuisine” fell, ultimately, quite flat.
Berkshire pork, achiote sauce, wheatberries, local carrot salad
Into the void left by the collapse of our original cuisine, grew something natural, something that developed much more from our hearts than from our brains. Still working with the same ingredients, and same people, we began so simply take inspiration from things here that we love; loved to eat, loved to drink, loved to cook or serve. Max and his team took the freedom that comes when there’s no requirement to do any one type of food, and started building a menu. As the dishes took shape, they in turn defined our “concept”, rather than the other way around. It works better that way, at least it did for us.
Not necessarily a Gobernador: stir-fry shrimp melt taco, featuring produce from Suzie's Farm
Over the last four months or so, the menu has evolved into a real celebration of both our experiences working at the Linkery with local farmers, and of the joy we experience from our friends’ projects in Ensenada, in the Valle de Guadalupe, in Tijuana and in Mexico City. Without trying for it — because we stopped trying for it — the cuisine at El Take It Easy is becoming what we intended: a border-free zone of good local food with great ingredients and ideas influenced by our friends.
Cheeseburger and fries
Dean checks out a Satan's Playground
And then there’s the cocktails.
Maggie, juicing
Waiting nearly a year for our spirits license was, of course, a blessing in disguise, even if the disguise was rather expensive. In that year, the restaurant and our understanding of it grew, and by the time we started serving spirits a month ago, we knew exactly what we needed to do with them. And, of course, during that year, our friend Dean James had moved to San Diego and was able, when our license came through, to lead us in creating the kind of spirits program that we want to share with San Diego.
Unfortunately, no matter how hard we worked on the restaurant end of things, until the liquor license was active, there was always going to be hole in the middle of things, where we missed cocktails, mescal, tequila, and bourbon. We made a lot of improvements over that year, but El Take It Easy never hung together right until the booze came to town.
Before cocktails (B.C.), I would almost cringe sometimes when people came in and sat down, reading from their bodies and faces that they weren’t going to “get it”, no matter how well we executed the food and service, no matter how good the menu was. Nothing is more demoralizing than doing good work and having it not move people. Since the spirits program has been going, however, that thing just doesn’t happen any more, or at least not in that way: every now and then people may not like it, but everybody seems to get it.
Even for people who don’t drink the spirits or cocktails, their presence and what we’ve chosen to serve, in combination with our food, beer, wine, and service, makes it clear what El Take It Easy is for. That takes a huge burden off of everyone, and makes it a lot more fun to work here and I think also to be here a guest. What a great difference, and more than anything the reason this weekend feels more like a Grand Opening than a first anniversary.
Pink is the new Brown
Vena Cava from Valle de Guadalupe, one of my favorite wines to drink in the world
Other aspects of El Take It Easy are coming together, too. More of our friends’ wine from the Valle de Guadalupe has started to export to the US this year — we’re really happy to be able to share Vena Cava with you now, and a few more labels will be with us soon — and some friends have been arranging to bring excellent new single-village mescals to us, as well. Our idea that this place would be a celebration of the talents of both our American and Mexican colleagues has turned out to have a life of its own, even when — maybe especially when — we don’t push it very hard.
Friend of EZ, Turista Libre's Derrik Chinn, at El Take It Easy, summer 2010
We have a lot of people to thank, who have helped us out so much during our year-long opening. There are too many to name them all here, but certainly I think everyone associated with the project is grateful to Steph and Bobby, our opening GM and Assistant GMs, who kept things going for the first year despite the many challenges. They’ve moved on to other work now, but not before they nurtured a living thing that now stands, and grows, on its own.
Dinner at the Banquette, Spring 2011
No project I’ve ever been a part of has baffled or alienated so many people who basically like me and our work at the Linkery, and that’s been, seriously, an amazing experience. It really helped me define what it is we do at the Linkery, and what we want to accomplish at El Take It Easy. It’s put me in a lot of uncomfortable situations where I don’t have any good answers to important questions, and I can’t imagine a better way to grow and improve as a person or as a business owner.
Best of all, here at the end of June in 2011, I get to be a part of a team I love, serving guests I love, bringing together food and drink from some of the best producers around, knowing that most people who come in will enjoy most of what we’re doing, and together we celebrate that every nite. That is a gift for which I’m most profoundly grateful.
Cured Berkshire pork from Jim Neville, with citrus from Schaner Farms
More pork from Jim Neville's Berkshire, topped with apricots from Wingshadows Hacienda in Warner Springs and sprouts from Suzie's Farm, near the border
With that gratitude driving all of us, we’ll be celebrating our anniversary — or maybe it’s our real Grand Opening — this weekend, each nite offering special whole-pig dishes Max is making from Jim Neville’s Berkshire pig. And from lots of great local produce, and serving alongside fantastic spirits and cocktails, local beer, and even some Baja wine to complement the European stuff. I hope you can join us, and I hope you enjoy, or will enjoy, being a part of it as much as we do.