Loading ...Gridiron events aside, it was a delicious, inspiring, and, to a certain extent, frustrating weekend in the Bay Area.
5 of us Linkeroos were on board, including chef, GM, and beer manager, so as you might imagine we made a point to eat and drink well.
Among the culprits were the Cafe (aka upstairs) at Chez Panisse, Pizzaiolo, and, randomly, Foreign Cinema for a quite delicious brunch. I missed the crew’s meals at old favorites Alembic, Magnolia, and Hog Island Oyster Co.
If we’d had several more nights, we would have dined at even more restaurants with similar spirits, such as Flour & Water or Camino or Pizzetta 211, none of which I’ve ever been to but all of which have come highly recommended by friends I trust who also know my tastes pretty well.
It’s amazing to be in a place where there are so many restaurants that are dedicated to making delicious, unpretentious food from the best ingredients possible that you couldn’t eat at all of them in a couple weeks, let alone a weekend. You really sense that a huge community of eaters has decided that the minimum they’ll settle for is fresh, thoughtfully-farmed, world class ingredients — and after that, fancy places and glamorous food is great too, at least for special occasions.
It really struck me to be in Pizzaiolo, waiting for our table with cocktails and bocce ball, it was a really casual crowd of all ages, enjoying each other’s company and being out on a Saturday night just as much if not more than the amazing food. That’s when you know there’s been a tipping point: world class food just happens to be on the table when people are living life. It’s what I’ve heard about San Sebastian, too, and what I imagine is true (or, perhaps, was true, depending on the inroads of industrial agriculture) in most of France.
Of course, this quality all comes at a very literal price: the dishes at casual, simple places are priced at levels that, while being quite inexpensive given the ingredients, in San Diego are typically considered the mark of upscale dining (typically, main dishes slightly above $20). The central Bay Area, home to dollars from Google and Facebook and Craigslist et al., must have as many well-heeled diners as any place in the country, and I have to think that this plentiful environment has provided essential conditions for such a great food culture to thrive. Plus, as the area’s commitment to good ingredients becomes mor thorough, the cost does come down a bit due to certain, modest economies of scale.
In San Diego, to contrast, we finally — as of fairly recently — have wide access to the same quality of ingredients as those served in the Bay Area, but the economics are much harder to work out in a spread-out city with a lot less disposable income floating around, and with interest in these ingredients still limited, their price remains even higher. As a result, in my opinion none of us restaurant types have yet put something together that could consistently stand up next to the best of San Francisco or Oakland — although we’ve made a lot of progress in that vein, and it seems plausible to me that we will get there eventually.
I guess the prerequisite for much more improvement in the restaurants is a big increase in the number of local people who are committed to eating entirely, or principally, food composed from high-quality ingredients. Fortunately that kind of eating is much easier to do now, with great Farmers Markets in town on both Saturday and Sunday and numerous excellent CSAs available. And, eating that way at home is not notably more expensive than eating mediocre food from the grocery store (as long as one doesn’t eat a lot of meat), but it is more labor-intensive. (All that cooking takes time.)
Additionally there will have to be some developments that help remove the “elitist” stigma of local, high-quality food; it’s hard to imagine our city eating well as long as it’s somehow more “authentic” to eat the kind of mystery meat that kills people because “food served with beer should be cheap” or because this is the kind of stuff that comes off a taco truck or from an ethnic food stand.
I’m sad to say, though, that I think it will be many years before we as a city achieve that kind of breakthrough. With times being tough, the moment is most receptive to those who fear change, to the “populist” types that trumpet the status quo in the name of comfort and security, and lash out against improvement as being foreign, elitist, and diabolical. The status quo means bad food and continued good times for the companies that produce and process it; but the effects of change are unknown and when dollars are short most people would rather stick with the devil they know.
Hopefully some San Diego industry will become so insanely profitable that we as a city will at one point have the money to, as a city, extensively develop a world of quality food. Maybe if a craft brewery could make money like Google…