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

In case Jay’s post didn’t get your mouth watering enough, here are a few snapshots of said fruit.

These marionberries are huge and delicious. After trying my first one, I had a moment in which I thought the rest were too precious to eat. They are super-juicy; in just resting on a plate they sort of sigh a deep purple juice to mark their spot.

The pluots have a smooth and taut skin that offers the slightest resistance to the treasure within on that first bite. You might first appreciate the juicy flesh and its pleasantly mild sweetness then give in to a smile as you savor that bite and discover a tartness, so subtle it just winks at you, from the skin. A fantastic combination.

The cherries are so good you have to keep eating them to find out if the next could possibly be as good as the last. It is.

I had my first great nectarine of the season up there, too. The sort that reminds you what a nectarine is really about. The texture of these is spot-on. When we sampled them, Jay and I both got that “this is it” look on our faces and knew more fruit like this would be in all of our futures.

We’re super excited to be able to serve another one of our unique takes on street food done Linkery-style.

This time it’s pastured CORN DOGS, with a central coast twist, to boot! We took our house made grass-fed central coast bison hot dogs (the bison is from Wild Wind Farm in Creston CA), dipped ‘em in a jalapeño corn bread batter, and flash fried ‘em. We’re serving them with a spicy aioli alongside baked central coast piquito beans, seasoned with a little of our house cured beef pepperoni. In this case the beef is from Jim Neville’s farm, also in the central coast.

Since we don’t have a deep fryer, it’s always a big deal when we serve a fried item. It means we have to beg one of the kitchen folks to give up his or her day off to scorch their hands while dangling wooden sticks into a pot of near-boiling oil. After tasting the finished product, however, I think it’s all worthwhile. Of course I’m not the guy with burnt fingers. Shhhhhhh.

We’re finally getting a sense of this new scale we’re at, and starting to learn some new ways to do what we do. Clearly we need to expand the number of farms we work with, so today Lea and I drove up to the Santa Monica Farmer’s Market.

This I’ll say, there’s a reason everybody goes there. It is the real deal. And this being stone fruit season, my favorite, I pretty much ate every peach in sight until I became a stuffed J. Alfred Prufrock. There is some fantastic fruit being grown all over California and it was treat to be amongst it!

Here’s the goods we came back with:

* Rainier cherries from Tenerelli Orchards (Littlerock, CA). They have a late growing season so the Rainiers were still in, though this is the last week. They don’t even get apricots and peaches for a few weeks yet.

* Fiesta Gem peaches from Fitzgerald’s (Reedley, CA — my dad’s hometown!). We’d bought Fitzgerald’s before but we’d never met their folks in person. The woman who tasted us on these peaches was intense knowledgeable about them, it was fantastic. This varietal has a strong tartness and a moderate sweetness which makes them really interesting and still satisfying in the sweet-juice-everywhere kind of way.

* Yellow peaches and Queen Sweet apricots from Lehman Farms (Sanger, CA). These are both delicious as in, they ain’t getting any perfecter.

* Pluots from Pritchett Orchards (Visalia, CA). Mr. Pritchett was there to talk with us, and he was as enjoyable as these pluots (which is a lot).

* Red raspberries and marionberries (we were set up) from Pudwill’s berries (Nipomo, CA). Marionberries are, all surveillance tape chuckles aside, a type of blackberry with a big, rich flavor and nice sweetness.

* Halaway dates from Bautista Family Organic Date Ranch (Mecca, CA). Nice and dry with a rich caramel flavor.

* Persian lemons from Polito Farms (Valley Center). These are eating fruit, they’ve got no acid and are watery and mildly sweet like a honeydew melon, with a nice floral component. I don’t know what we’re gonna do with ‘em but they are really interesting.

These fruit start showing up on the menu tonite, and they’ll be all over it tomorrow (Thursday).

The cask tonight is Craftsman’s English style Brown Ale. A few breweries were kind enough to add a cask or two on the truck headed for last weekend’s real ale festival and disperse them around town at local pubs and such. This Craftsman brew is the first of that bunch. On deck are Mission IPA, and a specialty brew from  Magnolia Pub in San Francisco…but more about those later….

Drafts tonight are Stone Ruination, Avery Salvation, Pizza Port Shark Attack, AleSmith X and Green Flash Double Stout- good ol’ house hold names….

So long!

I just got back from a very quick trip to Mexico City for purposes of research (and R & R). It was awesome, of course. Particularly memorable meals at El Bajio (traditional Mexican) and Contramar (seafood), and Biko (Basque traditional or modern, you pick) was out of this world. Lots of delicious street, cantina and market food, of course, and many foods that are novelties to the US palate. I’d eaten brains, black fungus, and snails before, but never all on the same day.

Of course, I saw Linkery alumna Mars, who is doing great and gives her best to everyone. She’s manning the range at pastabox weekdays for lunch, if you’d like to visit her. The pasta is ******* delicious (as we used to say in the old days).

Our resident wonder-baker Aileen just baked up a batch of traditional soft pretzels, topped with California sea salt, which we’ll be serving with our spicy house mustard. And what better way to wash down that salty treat than with a freshly tapped cask ale.

Matt Brynildson, of Firestone Walker Brewing, has hooked us up with a cask of their award-winning California Pale Ale, Pale 31. What’s a California Pale Ale you ask? Well, basically they’ve taken the classic British pale ale and kicked it up a notch with a healthy dose of northwest American hops. I’ll drink to that!

Here’s a case study in what a community can do when fuel prices are high, the economy is in the dumps, and good food is therefore priced out of the reach of many folks…grow good food in the city. I think this direction is where our community is headed, or should be, and we’re working to contribute to it. It will benefit all of us, which is cool.

Tonite, our bacon-wrapped Mexi-dog features a house-made hot dog of 100% pasture-raised buffalo from Wild Wind Farm in Creston, California. This is the first time we’ve served buffalo!

Also, the Hinesley steak is back for at least tonite. Or at least part of tonite.

Linkery baking wizard Aileen just made a bunch of the damnedest pavolvas I’ve ever tasted. They’ll be a dessert special tonite.

The Pros: Troy Johnson talks Linkery on KPBS’s These Days.
The Amateur: I talk Linkery and Guadalupe Valley on Signonsandiego Radio. (Choose the 21 May show…I think my bits start around the 22 minute mark.)

One week in, it’s still fun. Hard, but fun. Our “soft opening” is kind of a conceptual thing, with 200+ people coming in every weekend nite! For which we are grateful, and working hard to get capable of handling well. There’s so much more activity on this corner than our last one, which means that there are a lot of new people to whom we need to properly introduce ourselves.

For the benefit those of you who know many of us personally, I just want to take a second and share some of the incredible things the folks here have accomplished. Probably the most impressive, to me, is that all the Linkery people came in on moving day and moved the entire restaurant themselves, in cars and borrowed trucks, and set it up at the new place. We didn’t have access to (and maybe we really didn’t want) professional movers and so forth.

Since then the entire group has set about organizing our stuff, buying all the new stuff, and building new systems for the bigger restaurant — all without any top-down direction, and all while holding down their (more than) full time jobs of actually operating the restaurant.

For me, it’s an absolutely inspiring thing to be a part of. I know that as we finish building and organizing the new Linkery, it will mean a lot to all of us that we — including our community of guests — really brought this into operation largely by our own hands and imagination.

Of the 8 days we’ve been open, 5 have gone really well, and on 3 of them we’ve had significant system breakdowns (I predict today will be the 6th great day). Happily, each of the 3 breakdowns was totally different, so in each case we were able to address the particular cause and get to a higher level of capability.

The weekends are so busy at this location that I’m starting to think that, basically, “game-time” is Thursday thru Saturday, and Sunday thru Wednesday are all about preparing to improve over the last weekend — i.e., to be able to handle the crush more gracefully. That is a lot different than our last place where the busiest weekend nights tended to be only about 50% more than our busy weekday nights…here it’s been closer to 150% or even 200% more. That change is really interesting and makes the puzzle-solving part of our jobs very fun.

We’re open today, although on my end I’m taking all nite off from service to begin tackling the mountains of paperwork, bills, and so forth I’ve let gather on my desk for a month. I swear if I ever go to jail, it won’t be for killing a man in Reno just to watch him die, but because I was late in filing yet another benefit audit from the California EDD. I continue to be naive about the realities of small business — perhaps one has to be — and it never fails to amaze me how much overhead in legally mandated paperwork is required for a business to operate, at least in California. But I have no complaints, and recently had a great experience regarding small business and the State of California guv’mit, the details (including a photograph!) of which I will relate in a future post.

Tomorrow we start building and installing our booths…the tables along the restaurant’s south wall will be closed for at least a couple days. And we’ll be installing our ceiling fans in anticipation of the weather getting warm soon (at least by July, right?). After that, the acoustic baffles, which we are making according to the awesome design of Greg Koch of Stone Brewing. Greg was a penniless but ingenious sound engineer in L.A. before becoming a leading figure in craft brewing, and if you’ve ever been to Stone’s World Bistro & Gardens you’ll note how great the acoustics are there, even though it’s a big hard box. Cool beans.

We are still on track for a big Grand (re-)Opening festival starting around July 10th. By then we’ll have all our seats active, all our beer & wine facilities working, our staffing up to handle the big crowds, and all of our construction done. (OK, most of our construction.)

In non-building related news, this week we’re getting in a whole buffalo from the Central Coast, pasture-raised by Wild Wind Farms in Creston CA, which is part of the L Ron Hubbard organization (for reals).

Thanks everyone for sharing in this very fun experience with us. I got to work the new “Yellow Bar” (aka North Park Meat Company sandwich-shop-slash-beer-counter) all weekend and had so much fun seeing all of our longtime friends and meeting new ones too.

We just tapped the only cask in town of Black Marlin porter spiked with licorice root and oak chips by Ballast Point. The additions are mild but the cask overall is fantastic.

See you all soon.

The debut of the “Hinesley Steak” (pork belly braised, wrapped in bacon, and then grilled) is actually scheduled for Thursday, not today as I had said in the email. I misunderstood the schedule. Please accept my apologies.

After 3 days at 30th/NPW, here’s where we’re at:

1) We really like the energy and flow of the new space. It’s more appealing in all the different times of day and night, there’s way more room for everyone to work and to dine, and generally it’s really well suited to the kind of place we aspire to be.

2) The building currently gets really loud inside. We have to construct and install acoustic mitigation, because I think this place gets even louder than the last one. We have a pretty good plan and should get it all installed over the next month or so.

3) Speaking of construction — we didn’t build enough shelving, storage, etc. We’ve got quite a bit to do in order to set up things like glassware, server staitions, etc. We’re also still building our booths and so forth — we seemed really close to being done but then once we opened we haven’t been able to make nearly as much progress, which makes sense.

4) Ramping up 300% is about as hard as it sounds. We made it partway, at least, for now. Right now we’re operating at around 100 seats, which is 60% of the capacity we will have down the road. And, as we’re still getting used to this new volume, we still went on a waiting list at times this weekend. Over the next few weeks we’ll learn to operate at full capacity.

We’re targeting July 10th as our Grand (re-)Opening date…we think by then we’ll be complete enough to officially show it all off to strangers and all. Until that date, we’ll keep serving food & drink and improving at this new gig.

Thanks everyone for letting us have this experience and supporting us through it, it is challenging and incredibly fun for us and we will try our best to make it just as fun for everyone!

We are closed Monday in observation of the holiday. We’ll see you Tuesday, and thanks for your support during our move, we really appreciate it!

Cabrito is a regional dish of Monterrey, Mexico of spit-roasted whole young goat. We happened to be offered some suckling kid from Dream Dairy in Hanford CA. I don’t know anything about the dairy except that 1) the animals have not been given antibiotics and 2) like most dairies, they do not much value young male animals, as they eat the inventory rather than create it.

So, in the interest of respecting the lives of these animals, we bought some and are making cabrito, chargrilled-style. It’s a whole kid which serves (at least) 4-6 3 people, and comes with all the fixins. We had it on Thursday nite for our family meal and it was delicious.

UPDATED May 25 to only be a 3+ person dish, ’cause some of the kids are turning out to be smaller than others.

Just like riding a bicycle.

Thanks to Doug for the pics — the whole photostream here.

OK, as of right now we’re serving food to the public, just like an actual operating restaurant. An operating restaurant with a partial menu, wobbly tables, a new computer system, no tea or TV, and no shelves, but an operating restaurant nonetheless. We’ll be working on all the little stuff over the next few weeks.

Thanks to everyone who came by last nite and helped us do a test run. We had a great time.

Also, tonite we have a special dish of cabrito: whole suckling kid with all the fixins, which serves 4-6.

What a week, and it’s only two days old! Thanks everyone for all the support and encouragement you’ve given us during this move, it has really lifted us up.

The new place is really coming along nicely. It’s on the corner of 30th and North Park Way, six blocks north of our old place.

We’re more or less moved and have a better idea of our schedule. There’s still a couple permits and such pending, but here’s what we think will happen.

- We’ll be closed Wednesday. I know there are a few of you who had told us you’ll attend our dry run on Wednesday, please come on Thursday instead.

- On Thursday we’ll do a test run, starting at about 6:30pm. Email me if you’re interested in attending.

- If things go well Thursday, we’ll open on Friday. If not, we’ll do another night that is limited-access in some way.

- We’ll continue in that loop until we believe we can accommodate our community.

All that said, please note that we’ll really be continuing construction for a month or two more, and we won’t be a full speed until at least July. We’re still building our booths, and our coffee system isn’t hooked up yet, TV may take a while, etc.. But we are happy to be here working and would love to see you once we are open!

Oh, and Thursday we get a delivery of pastured goat and lamb from Rinconada Dairy, and a pastured Hampshire pig from NZ Ranch, both on the Central Coast. So we will have plenty of good food!

Thanks again –
Jay

Thanks everybody for coming by this week, it was such a pleasure to see everyone one last time in the old space.

We’re closed for a few days to get everything moved, set up, permitted, etc. We hope to re-open at our new digs on Thursday, but that is not yet certain. See you soon!

OK, anything we don’t sell tonite, we have to put in boxes and move tomorrow. So really it’s best that everyone come in and eat and drink all we have. Who knows, maybe we’ll throw in some glassware, too, or a floor mat. I’ll be behind the bar tonite with Michael, in case you wanna make us an offer on anything. Except the pig tchotchkes.

Now that we’ve sequestered Chelsea and Steph in Pittsburgh for the weekend, Jay and I can reclaim our rightful throne behind the bar at the (soon-to-be) Old Linkery. I’ll be warming things up back there starting Friday and then on Saturday, and Jay will join me on Sunday as we reprise some of our original roles at the Link. It’s been several years, but during the lean and mean first year Jay and I actually held things down back there on a regular basis. Alas, as we grew it became harder and harder for us to work a shift on the floor on a regular basis, particularly since construction at the new place shifted into full gear.

In any event, for those of you who have been wondering where I’ve been, particularly since I haven’t been regularly removed from the floor until recently, or for those of you who have been waiting for the time when Jay will absolutely, 100% guaranteed, be in the house at a specified time, this is the weekend to swing by. We’ve only got a handful of days left here at 30th and Upas, so it’s time to bring it all back home again. Looking forward to seeing some familiar faces.

OK, with four days left on the 30th & Upas clock, here’s what’s ticking:

* Today is Blair’s birthday and Max’s birthday. We’ve got scallop ceviche for Blair’s birthday. For Max’s birthday, Max gets…to make food for Blair. (It’s an annual tradition by now.)

* Lots of salad. We have a ton of fantastic greens in right now from Wingshadows Hacienda, La Milpa Organica, and Crows Pass. So we have a buncha salads including a Wingshadows Bibb with house made lardons, a blue cheese thing, and a roasted baby beet number. Enjoy.

* Mortadella joins the house cured meat plate.

* Superchocolate: house made brownie, house made Oaxacan chocolate ice cream (made with Mayordomo chocolate), chocolate nibs. I had this last nite and loved it.