I keep meaning to post about how awesome Edible San Diego is. The Willises, who publish the magazine, have done two issues now and I’m blown away by how much work they’ve put into it and by the issues themselves. (Full disclosure, I wrote a small piece in their most recent issue but frankly it was kind of a sidebar, everything else in the issue is much richer.)

Anyway, the magazine is a great resource for learning about farms in town and about the remnants of what’s left of the food infrastructure in San Diego…what’s left from the days before the nearly complete industrialization of our food. There’s not much, but it’s heartening to learn about what’s out there and to find out there are a lot of folks working independently to re-establish viable local food. What the Willises are doing is connecting all of us who are interested in seeing this happen, so we can be more effective and really have it come to fruition. I’m very grateful that they are putting forth all this effort so we can experience eating in a more meaningful way, more often.

You can get a copy of Edible San Diego for free (!) at one of these locations. I’m eagerly awaiting Issue #3.

A nice piece in Street explaining the meaning of the little stickers you see on fresh produce. Good stuff.

Sea Rocket Bistro, which serves great, thoughtful, local seafood in the location we used to occupy, is celebrating their Grand Opening this weekend.

If you haven’t visited Sea Rocket yet, I recommend doing so. They are perhapest the localest of them all, really, and one of the few San Diego restaurants where one can experience the food bounty of this place we live.

Tomorrow we will be tapping a cask of Moylan Brewery’s award winning Imperial IPA- Moylander. We also have their Hopsickle on draft now.

The LBC is in effect — the Linkery Brewing Company, that is. Our first batch is something that is a real favorite of ours, kombucha. This is a nonalcoholic fermented black tea, that has a lot of the character of a sour beer, including a little carbonation. Steph and Michael made it from black tea from Calabria, so it’s definitely a North Park local.

Kombucha is neither sweet nor particularly caloric, because the sugar gets fermented out of it, and the resultant alcohol *also* gets converted into other (sour, acidic) compounds by the active culture. But because the drink has good acid, lots of complexity and a little bit of carbonation, it makes a great pairing with food in the same way that a sour beer would.

I just added Wes to our blogroll…if you’re interested in saving water and energy and having a great looking landscape at your home or work, he’s a great resource. His most famous contribution to the Linkery was to suggest the white sage with which we infuse our water, it being a native plant historically used for such things.

(This endorsement is totally unpaid! We just generally support keeping our dollars in town with independent businesses, and specifically know Wes does great work.)

On the other hand, if you’ve got a nice bit of space you’re looking to plant, email me…let’s grow some food!

Matt & Max put together a very delicious fish main for tonite which really speaks of the place we live — which, when we do this farm-to-table thing right, is the big added bonus.

It’s white sea bass from off of San Diego, drizzled in Rancho Cortes olive oil from the Guadalupe Valley (about 80 miles south of here), served with a cake of polenta, Winchester Gouda Cheese (Winchester is near Temecula) and three kinds of basil from Wingshadows Hacienda in Warner Springs. It’s topped with marinated red peppers and onions, and Persian lemons from Polito Farms in Valley Center. It sounds complex when it’s all spelled out but really it’s strikingly clear when you taste it.

Today we’re featuring pastured beef from a new farm in the Central Coast, Spanish Oak Ranches in San Luis Obispo. They actually pasture their animals on a couple different properties, including that of our friends the Nevilles in the Edna Valley.

This beef is Angus breed and it is amazing, I think it’s the fullest, richest California grass-fed meat we’ve had yet. We bought exactly one heifer, so each part will only last a short while. Tonite we’re offering 5 oz. ribeye steaks.

As I discussed when talking with Jed, one of our primary goals with the Linkery is to help create a viable, pedestrian- (and bicycle-) oriented urban community, both by being a workplace we can walk/bike to, and by being a third place for our neighborhood.

That’s why it was so gratifying to see this at our celebration on Thursday.

This photo not from Portland, San Francisco, or Seattle

Speaking of New Urbanism (which is the framework for us, in an urban planning sense), I recently ran across this post from CoolTown Studios which recaps the 13 points of pedestrian-oriented development as detailed by one of the leading firms in the field. I had read these points a few years ago, and they definitely still bubble around in my mind. It struck me when reading them again that not only do they apply to how we perceive our use of space in the city, we also applied some of the principles (a clear center, narrow streets, variety of living types) within the design of the restaurant interior itself. I think that dynamic urban design, itself being a model for felicitous human living, may be pretty fractal.

Other photos from the weekend’s celebration:

Joel, Matt and Jon prepare for business

Chuck Silva of Green Flash presents us a commemorative bottle of Super Freak

Everyone says handmade cheese

The night coasts to a close

Michael went to Catalina Offshore today and found there a huge locally caught white sea bass, which we are happy to be cooking and sharing.

I’ve found myself conversing with a lot of folks lately about the rising price of food, and to a certain extent, the rising price of fuel. Largely there’s just a curiosity about how much it affects our operations (the answer is that we are impacted but not as much as some other restaurants, more on that further down).

In discussing the food/fuel rises, I’ve come to notice something very few news articles touch on, even in nominally analytic media like the Wall Street Journal. That is, food and fuel costs are rise together because, in our economy, food is fuel, more than it’s ever been, and vice versa.

I don’t mean that both food and fuel contain calories and serve to power people and machines, respectively. That’s always been true.

I mean that, due to our farming methods, most food in our economy is fossil fuel which has been converted into food with the aid of extracted resources from the environment such as soil and water. That is, the key source of energy which creates, say, factory pork, is fossil fuel — both as it is added to soil as fertilizer to grow the genetically modified corn and soy, and then as it is used to transport the corn and soy to confinement houses where the corn and soy are in turn converted into protein and fat (also known as pigs).

In short, much of what America eats, from breakfast cereal and bacon to marbled dinner steaks and french fries, is created by an industrial system which converts fossil fuels into edible (if not exactly nutritious) substances. The process takes resources of not only sunlight but soil nutrients and water which are not replaced. This industrial production is extractive.

This extractive conversion of oil to food stands in opposition to traditional farming, which cultivates the wheel of life — birth, growth, death, decay — for a myriad of forms, from the crops and animals and people to the bugs and microorganisms which populate the soil. In traditional farming, the health of the soil, where death becomes life, is the foundation on which the cycle rests. Since the system is in balance, and feeding the soil is paramount, the system is not extractive. It’s sustainable.

So, in the current economy, an industrial producer of beef or pork or bread is subject to rises in the cost of oil not just for transportation, but as the very source of energy that the producer is selling. Obviously in this environment the rise in the price of oil will be quickly followed by a rise a price of oil based foods — which, in our Corn Economy, is damn near everything you can buy in the supermarket.

But wait, as the Ginsu man says, there’s more. With the addition of a mandated ethanol market, rather than converting oil to food and selling it to the public, we now convert oil to corn and then back to oil and then back to corn, indefinitely. Given that each transformation diminishes our environment’s ability to sustain human life , this has to be one of the most insane applications of government policy in history (bread and circuses without the bread).

The World Bank estimates that ethanol has caused a 75% increase in world food prices. Converting oil to food and back again is causing the supply of food to diminish.

Of course, each transformation from oil to corn and back is quite good for the shareholders and directors at companies in the oil, corn, and transformation businesses.

Government-compelled ethanol production actually removes the necessity of market demand to raise prices (though of course there will always be plenty of demand to move goods, drive cars, and, you know, eat). Now, all that’s needed to drive profits is enough energy spent in the transformation process and we can have perpetual shortages of both food and oil, which will boost the shareholder value of companies not only in the oil business but also in the petroleum-based food business such as fertilizer, seed, and corn processing companies. In fact, the only way I can think to further assure profits is to start feeding our crops Brawndo. (It’s got what plants crave!)

(BTW, note that actual farmers in the industrial system get the shaft here, all they do is give up the health of their land in exchange for the minimal amount of money allowed them by the companies who sell them seed and fertilizer and buy their corn and soy.)

So here we are now in caught in the cycle of rising food and fuel costs which seems to be largely out of the control of the actual eating/buying populace. How to we get out of it, and in the meantime, what does this situation mean to restaurants like the Linkery?

The answer to the first question is, I think, clear (if challenging to implement). With the addition of biofuel production to the agricultural/industrial complex, the only way to save the soil, the farmers who tend the land, and the communities that depend on the farmers, is to quickly develop a traditional farming infrastructure on which we can live. This means small farms growing myriad crops and animals in harmony with their ecology. Some farms like this do exist, even here in San Diego, but they are often considered providers of luxury items, when in fact they are providing our barest necessity: the framework for how we can continue to feed ourselves.

As for what the current situation means to restaurants in general and the Linkery in particular (this is the question I’m often asked which leads me to write this post), it’s really a challenging time for restaurants, particularly traditional ones. We’re all dependent to a certain extent on basic commodity staples, such as flour and so forth. And to the extent that any of us are dependent on Midwestern-grown staples, we’re feeling the cost impacts hard.

Furthermore, restaurants that sell primarily specific cuts of meat, such as pork chops or T-Bone steaks, etc., are in an even tougher bind. This is because, traditionally, the preferred cuts of meat are where the farmer recoups the main cost of growing the animal. Pigs in this country are grown primarily for the loin (pork chops). So the farmer has to recoup most of the his cost of the pig in selling the loin — the rest is often sent to the commodity market and does not return much to the farmer. A restaurant that always has a pork chop on its menu, then, is feeling the whole of the impact of the soaring cost of oil and corn, all in the 10 ounces or so of chop on the plate.

As a result, the best way for a restaurant to insulate itself from the cost of rising food and fuel is to 1) buy from farms that are separate from the corn economy, including local integrated traditional farms and farmers that raise animals on natural pasture, and 2) buy and serve whole animals, so any additional costs of fuel and food are spread through the whole weight of the animal rather than just a single muscle.

We’re fortunate that our basic idea for the Linkery has brought us to where we’re already doing quite a bit of both of those, and have been continuing to work to do more. However, our menu and purchase structure isn’t enough to totally remove us from the food/fuel rises, because (due to almost no infrastructure for a local food economy) most of our producers — even local and regional ones — have significant transportation costs, and because none of our producers are completely insulated from the costs of introducing at least a little food or energy into their systems (remember, in Omnivore’s Dilemma, Michael Pollan notes that even Polyface Farms uses the input of chicken feed).

Next up for all of us, to reduce the impact of the food/fuel cost craziness: rebuild the local food infrastructure, including local farms, urban microfarms, real local greenmarkets (either virtual or physically located), and a local USDA meat processor to restore the viability of local livestock farming.

Hey everyone,

Just a little note as to what’s going on so you don’t think we’ve just been napping…our Grand Opening weekend for our new location was a lot of fun. Thanks to all of you for coming by, like Steph said in an earlier post it was great to see our regulars (and future regulars), friends, farmers, brewers, winemakers and community members, all so many people night after night. Cool beans.

A lot of times it’s easy to think that however you see a restaurant at a given moment is kind of its timeless essence — how it was when it started and how it will be eternally. But if you’ve been part of our community for a while you know that at the Linkery the only thing that stays constant is change. We’ve got a lot of plans and things we’re working on. Some of them we’ve been talking about for a while, but have progressed slowly because of how busy we are (and again, thank you). Some of them we’re starting to make a new priority for whatever reason.

So here’s some things you can look for in the near(ish) future:

* From us, continued improvement with our fluidity as capability as we continue to learn the dynamics of the new space. We should eventually be able to seat the entire back room on busy nights.

* This fall, we are going to start on our program of coordinating a network of urban farms that can serve our community of restaurant patrons. There’s lots of folks in town committed to local farming at this level, and we’re really excited about helping it happen here in a market-driven — i.e., financially sustainable — way.

* 4-5 handles of beer on cask; 1-2 handles of local wine on cask. This is coming closer by the day — our dispense expert Lee Chase is working with Michael on a great (we think) cask cooling solution that will allow us to keep everything at the right temperature.

* A new, added menu of delicious offal dishes. This is something we’ve been working on for a long time as part of our commitment to using the whole animal; we’re looking to roll this out by the end of July.

* Linkery Brewing Company in effect. I think we’re gonna start with some kombucha, a house favorite and non-alcoholic drink, and then move to beer.

* Our sandwich shop, about which we are still very excited, is being pushed back a bit. We just have our hands full with our dinner business. But we’re still committed to being able to eat our kind food for lunch, which means we will get the sandwich thing going eventually.

* Facilities improvements: cushioned backs for the booths, a few more ceiling fans, a few more sound panels, a door for the back room.

* Hey it’s college football season soon! We’re still learning to work the TVs but we’ll get it figured out by August. My personal dream is that we have enough people working here by then to open during the day on the weekends, eat delicious farm-to-table food, drink delicious craft beverages, and watch the glory that is American Gridiron Football. It’s a goal, anyway.

The “City”, the BART the Redwoods, the Mystery Spot, Google, the Sharks - the lovely north. Starting tonight, and through-out the next two weeks or so we will be featuring a few specialty ales from our pals in and around the Bay Area.

Tonight we will be tapping a cask of IPA from Magnolia in San Francisco. The Magnolia is a brew pub in the Haight specializing in their own craft beer and farm fresh cuisine. They have been around for a while but recently renovated their spot, thus we have recently been story swapping. Anywho, the folks at Magnolia sent down a few casks by way of the real ale festival a few weeks back and one landed here, lucky us. It’s called Proving Ground IPA and from what Ben, who brews at Magnolia, says it’s a winner. A west coast style IPA mellowed out with an heirloom malting barley called Marris Otter. For more about this check out their own blog spot. magnoliapub.blogspot.com

We also have bottles of Tribute Brown from Bear Repubic as well as a cask of APEX IPA from them. This is their own house IPA, that they sent down extra special for us! From Moylan’s we have a cask of Moylander IPA and a keg of their award winning Hopsickle.

This weekend has been a ton of fun, thanks to everyone involved- breweries, farmers, winemakers, diners and drinkers. It’s a great feeling to look over the bar and see a slew of familiar faces, those who have helped to make things like ours possible, all mingling and intertwined. If we are not yet pals, please introduce yourself, and welcome to the community!

The fun continues tonight with AleSmith. They pulled together a cask of Speedway Stout for us and we have been sitting on it for a little over two months now-enough is enough, lets drink it! We will tap it tonight at 5. We will also have unreleased 2007 Barrel-Aged Speedway Stout available in bottles. On draft we are offering AleSmith Horny Devil, a Belgian-strong ale, and AleSmith IPA. The kitchen folks are making a few tasty treats as well. So far we have a mussel dish with Horny Devil broth,  and a chocolate dessert, mixed with that barrel-aged Speedway we already talked about.yum.

As it worked out, our current draft line-up is made up of 6 world class beers: The Horny Devil and IPA from AleSmith for start. We are also pouring Stone Pale ale and Stone’s 12th Anniversary Ale which is a brew called Bitter Chocolate Oatmeal Stout made with unsweetened, unprocessed cacao. From across the way, we have Rodenbach Grand Cru and Ola Dubh. Rodenbach brewery only produces two beers, this and Rodenbach original. Grand Cru is a blend of beers matured in floor to ceiling wooden tuns for over two years at the brewery in Belgium. Its a beer that people seem to either love or hate as it is both very tart, and a little sweet. For me its love, love love. The first sip says “what the?!” the last says ” I think I need another tomorrow”.   Ola Dubh is quite a treat as well, it is a collaboration between Harviestoun Brewery and Highland Park distillery. Harviestoun’s Old Engine Oil Ale, (an Imperial Porter) is aged in the same casks used to make Highland Park 30 year old malt whisky, and you can taste that whisky!  Its an experiment gone brilliant, and from what I understand we can expect more from this new forged team in the future.  The best is that both of these beers pair perfectly with food, I actually think they are even  more palatable when paired with a meal as opposed to on their own.  Come to think of it, all of these beers will sit with food nicely.

Hope to see you soon.

The folks in the kitchen just whipped up a delicious chilled stone fruit soup, or gazpacho of sorts, with plums and nectarines harvested in the backyards of some friends of The Linkery. Barbara Davenport, of Normal Heights, supplied the white nectarines, and the Munch family (or Munch Bunch, as they prefer to be called) of Rancho San Diego hooked us up with the plums. Fantastic.

OK…here we come.

We’ve got a lot of our construction done, we’ve got a lot of new people working with us, we’ve figured out a couple tricks to running the new space and we’re ready to present ourselves to the world at large. Of course there will still be a lot more to come in the next few months (more cask handles, more art on the walls, more people joining us, more menu items, more sound panels…I could go on).Either way, we dub it the Grand (re-)Opening and we’re putting on a celebration this weekend (Thursday thru Monday) specifically highlighting some of the beer and wine producers who have been such amazing partners to us over the last few years.

Thursday: Green Flash and San Pasqual Winery. At 5:30 we will tap a cask of keg of SuperFreak, which is Le Freak that has been aged in wine barrels from San Pasqual Winery and spiked with brettanomyces yeast. This is my favorite beer ever from when I had it on draft during the World Beer Cup, we are very grateful to be serving it again. In a while the cask will be done maturing and we will serve that, too.

Thursday we will also have Green Flash 2008 Summer Saison on draft dry-hopped Trippel on cask and, in bottles, all 3 big GF award winners: West Coast IPA, Hop Head Red, and Trippel, we even got Chuck to dig up some Nut Brown! At the same time we will be also be serving several San Pasqual wines by the glass. GF Brewmaster Chuck Silva and San Pasqual winemaker Erik Humphrey will both be here in person hanging out. We are stoked to count these folks among our personal friends, come meet them and see why.

Friday we’ll be highlighting unusual and specialty beer, including drafts of 1) Harviestoun 30 year Ola Dubh (or ‘Black Oil’), a collaboration between Harviestoun Brewery and Highland Park distillery — the first ale to be aged in malt whisky casks from a named distillery, with traceable casks and numbered bottles and 2) Rodenbach Grand Cru.

Saturday: Ray at Night. Now that we’re up here at North Park Way, we are right in the midst of Ray at Night. If you come visit us on Saturday, be sure to spend some time visiting the galleries, checking out the various performances, and so on. It is really fun.

Smokehouse Sunday with Stone Brewing . We used to do Smokehouse Sunday every week for a while at the old place, and once we get staffed to where we can be open during daytime on the weekends, we’ll do it again. In the meantime, here’s a taste. We’ll feature grass-fed brisket slow smoked over Santa Maria red oak, and pair it with Chipotle Smoked Porter from Stone on cask and Stone Levitation on draft. Greg Koch (if his international travel plans go as scheduled) and others in the Stone family will be here to celebrate.

Monday: AleSmith Day at the Linkery. We have a cask of Speedway Stout. ‘Nuff said.We will also have barrel-aged Speedway available in bottles and Horny Devil (a Belgian strong pale ale) and AleSmith X (extra pale ale) on draft. Our friends from AleSmith will be here in person along with their friends and families. Our kitchen will prepare a special dessert to pair with the Speedway and a special starter to pair with the Horny Devil.

I’ve spent the last few months slowly working my way through Wendell Berry’s Art of the Commonplace, which I have to say has become not only one of my favorite books but also in my opinion serves as a tribute to everything that could, one day, be made whole with us and out communities, in spite of the devastation visited upon all of us by industrialization run amok.

One of the final essays in the book is called “The Idea of a Local Economy”. This essay really resonates with some of the unspoken forces that guide us in our work, and is a blessing in how clearly it articulates both the environment we (as a community) operate in, and the actions we can take to restore our health (as a community).

Basically, he shows, at a time where our dedication to exploiting all matter reduces everyone to malnourished vassals of unfettered oligarchs — making us not unlike the perpetually sick, cornfed cows we pack into feedlots — our path to redemption lies in the self-sufficiency and shared worth realized in small, local economies.

OK, my summary is lousy, he’s the writer. Read the whole thing here.

This essay was fresh in my mind as I took a break from work last nite to walk to the (chain) store to buy razor blades, deodorant, and toothpaste, and also stopped to pick up some kombucha. Looking at the organic, chemical-free deodorant which is still made in some unknown factory with an unknown approach to our shared resources and unknown thoughts about people — and undoubtedly made by a public company that values maximizing its profit above all else — it struck me that lots of people in my neighborhood could probably make these things, if they don’t already.

Lynne from Wingshadows Hacienda makes lotions and soaps with the milk from her goats (they are marvelous). I know several people in town who do metal work, and I know a couple guys who dig the art of the straight-razor, I’m sure it’s just a matter of time before someone could start making them here. Michael and Steph here at the Linkery made soap with some of the beef tallow we had left over once, and have been experimenting making kombucha.

I have a belt I found with some items belonging to my great-grandfather. It’s not a particularly ornate belt — they were farm people in Central California — but it seems to have been made by a craftsman and is stamped “1908″. One wonders, how many of the belts I bought in a mall will make it 100 years and still bear the personality of the hands that shaped it.

Everywhere I look in my neighborhood, I see artisans and people exploring craftmanship, whether it’s making bikes, knitting, brewing, garment-making, gardening, fine art, or so many other things. I think we could be on the cusp of having a dedicated, real, local economy right here, which could provide an amazing percentage of the things we need.

Walking back to work I passed several empty storefronts and it made me wonder how long it will be before we could sustain a retail business entirely with necessities and joys made by our friends and neighbors. Not long, is my guess.

We are very happy to introduce a new local winery, Hawk Watch, owned and operated in Warner Springs by Mike and Lisa Schnell.

One notes that San Diego wine can have a spotty reputation, sometimes the grapes themselves could (should) be better. In order to make the best wine possible, the Schnells are growing their own grapes and paying a lot of attention to their quality. To make things more interesting, these grapes are at fairly high elevation — over 3,000 feet.

We had Mike and Lisa over to taste some of their wine with Linkery food (I have a tough job) and I was really impressed with the quality of wine, and found the Schnells a joy to spend time with as well. They are friends with their neighbors Bruce and Lynne of Wingshadows Hacienda, so it’s safe to assume some sort of wine/farm dinner is in the offing at the Linkery!

Right now we have two of Hawk Watch’s offerings by the glass:
- Syrah, which is full bodied with some spice character
- White Grenache — actually bright pink — which has a little residual sugar but enough acid to balance it so it doesn’t taste particularly sweet. This is a great wine with salads and with spicy sausages.

This weekend we’ll also be featuring Erik Humphrey’s San Pasqual wines, so we’ll have a bunch of local stuff available…come on in and check it out!

Add stone fruit: Many thanks to our friend and neighbor Barbara Davenport, who brought us organically grown white nectarines from her yard…they are amazing.

In order to share as much of the good stuff as we can with everyone, we’ve been augmenting our great local farm produce with fruit & veggies from Central California and the north LA area, through farmers we’re getting to know at the Santa Monica farmers market.

Tomorrow we’re expecting to connect with (the notes are from Lea)

* Weiser Family Farms: fingerling potatoes, really sweet and delicious onions, and several boxes of fantastic melons, which are apparently the true cantalope…. the ones in the market are of a different breed.

* Tenerelli Orchards: nectarines, cherries

* Lehman Farms: peaches, nectarines, apricot

* Pritchett Orchards: yellow nectarine, white nectarine

* Mud creek Ranch: peaches

* Pudwill’s Berries: marionberries, raspberries, red currants

And, perhaps, anything else tasty we think looks irresistable. The food we’ve been getting from these particular farmers has been just amazing, we’re very grateful to be able to share it.

A lot of folks really loved the truffle we made for a while, in which we used Mayordomo chocolate, an actual minimally-processed chocolate from Oaxaca, the cradle of traditional chocolate. It ultimately turned out that the chocolate was not being imported in exact compliance with customs regulations (which I assume meant it was, like, FedEx’ed packed in coffee grounds or delivered via remote airstrips in the Anza-Borrego desert). So, our supply lines were cut and the Oaxacan Chocolate Truffle was relegated to history…or so it seemed.

The reason we’ve been fascinated by Oaxacan chocolate is that is it minimally processed and not conched, and so it would seem to be the truest way to experience the essence — and, eventually, the people and terrior — of chocolate.

Fortunately, it turns out that other people have not only shared this interest in “close-to-the-bean” chocolate, they’re actually doing something about it. We found out about Taza through our good friend Peter Giuliano, who as a coffee superhero is also pretty in tune with the world of chocolate (the two beans have a lot in common, I gather).

Taza not only hand-mills their chocolate in the Oaxacan style — using tools imported from Oaxaca — they also use only organic and/or biodynamic ingredients, and buy from small farmers’ co-operatives they know. This is the chocolate that basically perfectly embodies the way we want to eat, and the food we want to serve…we are very stoked to find these people! They were even nice enough to custom-make a batch to our specifications (specifically, with no sugar) so that we would have more flexibility with cooking.

We expect to have the truffles back in effect by Thursday, I will update if there is a delay.

As part of our goal of valuing animals in whole — as opposed to just for certain parts, as is typical in the industrial paradigm — we’ve been working to offer more offal more often. This weekend the kitchen did a great confit of calf’s tongue (from Brandt beef) and made kind of open-faced ravioli over house made whole wheat pasta, served with cherries from Tenerelli Orchards in Littlerock CA and with a little brown butter. It’s a great tasting dish, and it is on the menu tonite.

Also on the offal front, Max is pondering a dish with lamb’s kidneys and lamb sausage, more on that when it reaches the menu.

Since we’re showing off the new place this weekend, here’s some information about the people and materials that are in effect here. As you’ll see, we did our best to reclaim and reuse existing materials where we could.

This building, known as the Home Supply Co. building, was built in 1929 as a grocery market. It housed four independent vendors: a bakery, a butcher shop, a florist, and a produce seller. Later the building housed the North Park Meat Co., a meatcutter/butcher.

The renovation was put together by our architect, Jared Bradley (his day job is at M.W. Steele) and general contractor, Louie Chau. Many of our regular patrons and team members participated in the design work as well.

Forest Dickey of Varian Designs built both bars, the harvest tables in the back room, and the center workbench. They are made principally of birch reclaimed from a very old barn in Indiana.

Jeremy Kaplan and Dan Herbst made our tabletops. The wood is Douglas fir, reclaimed from floor joists removed from demolished buildings at 1865 National Avenue in San Diego. Jeremy and Dan also made our wood serving slabs, from reclaimed or naturally felled wood, including red gum eucalyptus, blue gum eucalyptus, sweet gum eucalyptus, olive, tangerine, Italian cypress, ash, cottonwood and Australian blackwood.

Our black dining room chairs are late of a Pei Wei in Orange County.

The overhead acoustic panels are from a design by Greg Koch of Stone Brewing, who prior to entering the brewing industry was a sound engineer in Los Angeles. They were built and installed by George Kimsjo, Joe Schneider, and AJ Lenahan. George and Joe also built the mobile islands we use in the bar area. AJ built and installed pretty much everything else we’ve added after construction.

Our wine manager Bobby and our server Ethan did most of the building of the dining room booths. The benches are upholstered with factory-original upholstery for 60’s and 70’s models of the Chevy Caprice. We bought the upholstery from House of Naugahyde on 30th Street.

Our exterior mural was painted by North Park artist Acamonchi. The smaller paintings inside are by Harry the Hat, also of North Park.

The stunning handmade lanterns that hang over our bar are by Renee Utt of Starlite Lanterns. She made them for us when we first opened in 2005, and we brought them with us. Our front doors and front light fixture are reclaimed, we bought them at Architectural Salvage.

Our wine dispense system was designed by Lee Chase, who is also putting together our new cask system and our on-site brewery.

The building’s exterior signs were designed by Mary Beckert of Mousetrap Design and built by Tim Spann of Directional Graphics. The openable “garage door” style windows were the work of Dave Christensen of Advanced Garage Door Solutions.

I’m sure there are key people I’m forgetting, I’ll update this as I remember.

We will be closed to business on the Fourth of July so some number of us can bike down to OB (which I’m told is also known as “North Park By The Sea”) and then hang out in Bird Park (28th and Upas) in the late afternoon, evening, and fireworks. We’re not busting out the Santa Maria grill this year (no excess energy after this move!) but we’ll be relaxing there, please come say hi if you’re in the neighborhood.

We’ve got Alesmith Summer YuleSmith in the house, btw. It’s their seasonal beer for the Fourth of July, and it’s a big delicious Double IPA thing.

“Le Freak”  in beer form, is on cask tonight.

In exactly one week Super Freak will be on cask. More about that later……

This time as barbecue. Tonite we’ll have BBQ sucking kid as a main dish. I’m not yet sure of the details but I saw some lovely Rainier cherries from Tenerelli Orchards being pressed into service. Also, the local spot prawns are still on menu and we have grass fed bevette steak tonite, too.

A month ago or so I had the pleasure of spending the day in Sacramento with State Senator Christine Kehoe, who is a North Park resident and a splendid person, to boot. I was there because she named the Linkery the “Small Business of the Year” for her district, which is part of an annual celebration of small businesses throughout the state.

I really enjoyed the day, getting to spend time with Senator Kehoe and meeting lots of interesting and nice people. Also it was a real honor that our enterprise was recognized in this way, which really means that all of our team and all of our community of guests were being recognized as contributing something of value and meaning to our neighborhood. Thank you to everybody for letting me be a part of that.

If you’re wondering why we’ve been a little quieter than usual on the blog, it’s just because we’ve been working like busy bees trying to get everything together. So some quick notes…

* Spot prawns go on the menu tonite. These are large local spot prawns which we bought live at Pearson’s on the water in Newport.

* We’re making the most of stone fruit season, now that we’re getting to know the farmers at the Santa Monica market (and their fruit) the quality has just been getting better. Plums, apricots, nectarines, peaches, pluots, and cherries are all amazing. We also picked up blueberries, raspberries, and marionberries.

* Our acoustic panels went in today! At least, half of them did, the rest tomorrow. Thanks to Joe, George and AJ who built and installed them. We’re excited, they seem to already be notably effective just with a few people talking. Mad props to Greg Koch of Stone for providing detailed construction instructions.

* DIRECTV came and installed their goods, so we now have Setanta Sports on the bar TV — rugby, soccer, and Aussie Rules, just like the old days when we first opened. Plus we’ll keep showing Padres games and all that, too.

* We’re building up our wine & beer equipment and inventory, as well, I think we’ve made some progress in that area already but in the next couple weeks it should flesh out. We’re still planning to have a Grand (re-)Opening celebration starting July 10th and by then we’ll be pretty full on.

In news about other places…

* I went to Pappalecco in Little Italy last nite and loved it, both the handmade gelato and the people, including Francesco and Lorenzo, the owners. Oh, the coffee was really well-made, too.

* Sea Rocket Bistro, in our previous location, is turning out great food AND great blogging. Check it out.

* Toronado San Diego is now open. If you love beer, check it out.

* Cardamom Bakery has opened up at the corner of 30th & Upas, in between Jack In the Box and Zensei. If you are one of the many people who are interested in breakfast, check it out.

We were excited about the quality and variety of stone fruits and berries that we were able to offer on our menu last week, so Jay and I repeated the Santa Monica Farmer’s Market expedition this week. This time we went armed with a bit more experience and a better idea of the quantities we need to buy so that everyone in our community can more fully appreciate the bounty.

We came back with a car FULL of great fruit. Peaches (Lehman farms, Fitzgerald’s, Reiger Farms), nectarines (Tenerelli Orchards), plums and pluots (Pritchett Orchards, Fitzgerald’s), cherries (Lapins this week, from Tenerelli), red raspberries and marrionberries (Pudwill’s Berries), and blueberries (7th Heaven, up in Big Sur).

A few of the varietals are different from last week- we especially enjoyed the Santa Rosa plum, which is new this week, from Jim at Pritchett Orchards in Visalia. It’s juicy and sweet, with a stronger finish than the plumcot grown on the same farm. It’s interesting to eat them side-by-side, in part because it’s easier to appreciate the softer apricot-influenced finish in the plumcot this way. If you find yourself confused, look for the plum’s slightly spotted skin. The difference in peaches is enjoyable, too- the Virgin Blush white peach from Fitzgerald’s is very sweet and sort of floral, especially when eaten side-by-side with the June Lady peach from Reiger, which is more acidic and less sweet.

On the way back home, we stopped off at a tiny little place in Newport Beach tucked away at the end of a short dock on the Back Bay called Pearson’s Port. This is little mom and pop shop, the walls of which are lined by live tanks. They sell prawns in the spring and summer and crabs in the fall and winter, when each is in season. They also have a small selection of fish-some locally caught, some frozen and shipped. All in all, it’s a great find, especially if you’re looking for very fresh and local seafood.

These spot prawns are trapped in the Newport Trench, which is a 600-1000 foot deep trench in the ocean floor off the coast, and sold alive. Prawns like this are only found in deep waters- typically in deep canyons or in cracks in the continental shelf off the west coast, by California and Alaska. They’re called spot prawns because of the spots they have on each side. (Technically, they’re a type of shrimp, but there’s nothing shrimpy about them so everyone calls them prawns.) We came home with somewhere close to 60…

we’ll see how long they last