Loading ...Hi Friends,
This week’s “highlights” are a little different, in that I’m not going to mention the delicious ingredients we are getting in this week (like the first wave of California peaches). Instead, I want to let you know about some stuff we’re offering day in, day out, that you might be interested in.
Because we try to source our ingredients, particularly our meats, from specific farms where we personally know the farmers and their methods, it’s a constant challenge to meet our mission of providing real food at prices where you can come in casually and grub. Real food is always going to be more expensive, but we are working to offer day-to-day dishes along with the more posh ones. Sometimes I think that we forget to let people know that part of what we do.
With that in mind, here some details about a few things on the less fancy side of our menu, that you might like. They’re all priced so that you can have the dish and a bottle of beer or glass of house wine for around 20 bucks, including table service and tax.
* Serving BBQ is tricky — there are so many opinions about what makes barbecue “authentic” or what the best kind of BBQ is. With that in mind, we set out to develop a dish that could become an authentic pulled pork sandwich for California, as opposed to imitating another region’s style. What we came up with is pork shoulder (from Iowa, though) rubbed with spice and slowly smoked over Central Coast (of California) red oak, which imparts a great sweetness to the meat. The barbecue sauce is made with whatever local beer we have handy, and with jus from the smoker. We serve the pork on a jalapeno-cheddar roll made in the artisan style by Bread on Market. Along with a little salted coleslaw. This plate is $12.50.
* One of my favorite ingredients we keep in the house is olive oil from Rancho Cortes in the Guadalupe Valley. It’s not just because to get it, I have to go to my favorite restaurant (Laja). It’s also because of the rich fruitiness of the oil. We dress our herb salad in this oil and nothing else, and put some (often local) citrus on the plate to add enough acid to balance it out. $9.50.
* Sausage Tacos. A favorite around here for two years, we now use fresh handmade tortillas from a local Mexican market, which in my opinion cranks it up a notch. $11.50
* Our goal with our burger is, eventually, to have be a dish where we personally know the farmer or artisan that made every item on the burger. We’re pretty close…so far we’ve got the beef (Brandt Farms, we grind it), the bacon (Vande Rose Farms), the cheese (Winchester Farms, though we’ve only met them over the phone), the bun (challah from Bread on Market, downtown), and the real ranch egg (Wingshadows Hacienda). We just have to work on finding specific farmers for the rocket, the tomato, the onions, and the pineapple. And it tastes good, too — I particularly like the richness of the ranch egg mixed with the burger. $13.50.
* Everyday veggie stuff: we’ve settled on a group of vegetarian mains to go with our rotating “market” vegetarian dishes. Portobello tacos, vegetable lasagna with house-made pasta, roasted acorn squash with couscous and veggies, Portobello burger (vegan or vegetarian). (Heck, or with bacon.) $11.50-$13.50. We rotate stuff around every now and then, but that’s where we’re at now.
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* OK, I will mention just a couple things from the market menu – our house cured meats have been coming out fantastic, including peperoni made from grassfed California beef from Old Creek Ranch in Cayucos, and Spanish Chorizo; We’ll have a grilled peach salad with that first batch of California peaches I mentioned earlier; Joe made an awesome pork-and-duck terrine that we still have available; and the spring flavors of sweet corn and organic English peas from the farmer’s market really complementpork loin perfectly. The menu changes daily now, so even next week is hard to predict, but there’s lots of good stuff right now.
* Links at the moment: Fresh Polish, Chicken Curry, Chinese Pork and Shrimp, Smoked Kasekrainer. Rey says future links this week will include Boerwors and Merguez.
* For those who don’t know, we have the good fortune to be able to offer cask-conditioned beer all the time. (If you’d like to learn more about cask-conditioned beer, check out our blog post from a year or so ago, at http://thelinkery.com/blog/?p=185). Tuesday, the cask is Stone IPA, and probably by Wednesday we’ll tap a cask of Pizza Port Carlsbad’s Good Grief English Brown Ale. This is going to be great, Pizza Port makes so many divergent styles of beer, and they’re all fantastic, particularly on cask. Starting Thursday we’ll run both handles of cask beer, and add Green Flash Le Freak on cask to the mix. Le Freak is a Belgian-style Imperial IPA.
* When the Good Grief is finished, we’ll move on to American Amber Ale from Lightning Brewing, on cask. On draft right now we have Walker’s Reserve Porter (from Paso Robles) and Pizza Port’s Amigo Lager. Next up is Old Numbskull from Alesmith.
* Tolosa Pinot Noir from the Edna Valley starts this week by the glass. This winery was my favorite discovery on my last trip to the Central Coast, and we’re excited to offer this wine.
* This summer weather is perfect for happy hour – from 5:00 to 6:30 every day we feature a selection of light-bodied beer, wine, and mead for $2.75-$3.75. Of particular note is Virgin Island Pale Ale, a super-refreshing and mildly hoppy beer with mango essence. They make the stuff for this weather.
* Speaking of weather, the A/C combined with the windowshades seems to be doing a good job keeping it cool. Last year, before we got the shades, we had some hot ones, but we’re cautiously optimistic for this summer, now that it’s stayed cool in here through the last few days.
* Coming up: Carolina dinner, Tuesday May 29. We decided to make this a little smaller than the last dinner, it’ll be 4 course meal, including beverages, for $45. (If you signed up for all three of the first dinners, it’s $40). Email me at jay@thelinkery.com for more information or to make ressies.
* Lastly, we have meatloaf right now. I know there are quite a few fans out there.
We’re open every day from 5pm until at least 11pm. Thanks everyone for being part of the Linkery community!
Best,
Jay