in praise of sardines

Behind Above the plywood: up, up and away

Contigo got its lungs this morning.

The crane arrived at 7 am to lift the three largest pieces of HVAC equipment onto the roof. The heaviest one weighs about 900 pounds, the others a little over 100 a piece.

In a restaurant, the most important function of the HVAC equipment is, of course, to suck the grease and smoke and other cooking odors out of the kitchen. The ventilation motors also blow fresh air back into the restaurant. It will be tricky but important to get the balance of the two just right at Contigo, because the wide open kitchen is located next to the front door. If the HVAC technicians and engineer get the balance wrong, every time the door opens we'll end up with a wind tunnel. My HVAC equipment will also supply heat to the dining room in an efficient way that partially utilizes the heat generated by the cooking. Clever, no?

On a side note, the only piece of cooking equipment that doesn't have to be under a hood is the wood-burning oven. It vents naturally, like a fireplace. Apparently not every jurisdiction allows this. At my friend Russell Moore's new restaurant, Camino (set to open within the next couple of weeks), the city of Oakland required him to install an exhaust fan over his pizza oven and a separate one above his massive stone hearth. This is one of the few instances where a city outside of San Francisco has more stringent requirements.

Behind the plywood: the two words I fear the most

The "Change Order."

A Change Order is contractor speak for an invoice that covers the cost of construction work done outside the scope of the original contract. It requires my signature of approval. A Change Order can be initiated by a change that I request. Or it may cover something that was accidentally deleted from the bid when we were trying to cut costs. But usually it refers to unanticipated construction required by unforeseen conditions.

Whatever the cause, a Change Order means I owe more money.

Thus far we're up to Change Order number 12, with still two months more to go, bringing us nearly 10% over budget.

Below are pictures of Change Order Number 8 taken during the middle of April. Due to the vast amount of equipment needed to run a restaurant, we had to increase the electrical power supply going into the building. That meant that we had to upgrade the building's vintage 1960 electrical boxes and bring everything up to the current standards. That much we knew and expected.

What we didn't anticipate was that the local electric company would require us to move the front door of the stairwell that leads to the upstairs apartment. Without getting bogged down in boring details about specific building codes, we needed to move the door back 3 feet to make room for the new power boxes, circuit breakers, and meters.

The cost? $4,876.

Change Orders give me nightmares.

The salmon question

In May, cooks trawling* San Francisco's Ferry Plaza Farmers Market are like 6-year-olds on Christmas morning. Fava beans, spring onions, green garlic, pea leaves, English and snap peas, artichokes, asparagus, field grown rhubarb, and (at long last) sweet-as-candy pixie tangerines. Soon we'll taste Ben Lucero's miraculous strawberries (this coming Saturday, perhaps?) and the first good cherries.

The absence of one of our region's most beloved harbingers of spring, however, has left a gash in every omni-locavore's heart. No locally caught wild king salmon for the entire 2008 season (typically May through October). The sudden, drastic, and thus far unexplained decline of the local salmon population is an immense tragedy.

Like other regulars of the Saturday market, when I heard the news my thoughts went immediately to Larry Miyamura, the local salmon fisherman who has pampered our palates with pristine fresh-out-of-the-Pacific Chinook for nearly a decade. Larry and his wife Roz of Shogun Fish are still attending the market, but this year the coolers of ice that used to hold salmon that Larry caught are now filled with the more expensive Alaskan counterpart (along with an enviable selection of other beautiful fish, some of it far more local and affordable). I urge all my Bay Area readers to please frequent the Miyamuras' stand. You won't find fresher fish anywhere else in San Francisco.

I challenge you to find a cook out there who adores the local king more than I do. The current situation breaks my heart, so much so that I woke up one night last week at 3 am pondering it. I knew then that I had to write my thoughts down on IPOS.

At Contigo I planned to feature the unctuous fish on my menu throughout the season. Granted, like other local chefs, I will fill the void by serving other wild and sustainably caught seafood. Expensive wild Alaskan salmon most likely won't be an option. Instead, my menu will focus on utilizing local goodies like petrale sole, sanddabs, sardines, anchovies, smelt, halibut, black cod, lingcod, California sea bass, squid, Hog Island clams, mussels, and oysters, and, on the off chance I get it at a great price, sea urchin and spiny lobster. You'll also find other Pacific fish, like the various tunas and Alaskan halibut and black cod. Occasionally, east coast treats will make an appearance, like skatewing, Sierra mackerel, wild black and striped bass, line-caught hake (and its roe) and cod (most likely salted), scallops, monkfish liver, maybe even Maine lobster. When you see octopus on my menu — and believe me, you will — it will likely be from Spain. Economics may even encourage me to consider some of the farmed fish endorsed by the Monterey Aquarium Seafood Watch. But none of these fish are as dear to my heart as wild local king salmon.

It will come as no surprise, then, that there is one fish I will not serve at Contigo: farmed salmon.** Not even Scotland's eco-friendly Marine Conservation Society-endorsed Loch Duart salmon.

My decision isn't based on holier-than-thou food snob bull shit. It comes from my heart. My decision is based on respect for and solidarity with people like Larry Miyamura, hardworking fishermen who depend on the salmon season for the majority of their income. It's a personal choice. It just wouldn't feel right to me to put farmed salmon on my restaurant's menu. Especially not this year.

Remember the name that you all helped me choose for my restaurant? Contigo. Spanish for "with you." The name places emphasis on the values of connection and community, that circle that includes people like Larry and all the other producers, artisans, and foragers who make a living by bringing us the best seasonal products our local ecosystem has to offer. You and I dwell in that circle too. What hurts Larry hurts all of us.

I'm aware there may be logical contradictions in my decision. There's a lot of gray area in the topic of sustainable fishery stewardship and I don't pretend to be an expert (but my future purveyors, Monterey Fish and Ports Seafood, are. In fact, Monterey Fish founder/owner Paul Johnson has just written the best book on the subject, "Fish Forever." I highly recommend his book and plan to make it required reading for all my cooks).

I also want to emphasize that I'm not judging any restaurant or chef or home cook who serves or eats farmed salmon. Heck, I admit I sometimes eat farmed salmon, particularly when I find myself in New York pondering what to put on my bagel.

But my restaurant is like this blog. It's my personal vision, my tiny attempt at making the world a saner place. And in my world, when the local wild salmon population has been decimated, people don't have the option of eating farmed salmon imported from halfway around the world. They try something else.

In my world, serving farmed salmon lands you on a slope as slippery as a shoal of sardines. Local king salmon is one of the iconic seasonal products of the Bay Area. If I decided to serve purportedly eco-friendly Scottish farmed salmon as a replacement for the unavailable local Chinook during our usual salmon season, what would stop me from serving conventional hot house peppers from Holland in August? What would stop me from serving ever available farmed salmon year round? By extension, what would stop me from serving tomatoes in January or asparagus in October? You have to draw a line somewhere. You have to do the right thing.

On the plus side, now maybe I'll have more success convincing Omega-3-deprived diners to eat sardines.

* Fishing metaphor intended. Word geeks: see discussion of trawling vs. trolling.

** For various reasons, you won't find Chilean sea bass, tilapia, or catfish on my menu either.

Note: photos of dishes I made with local king salmon are from 2005 through 2007 and can be found on my FlickR page under the tag "salmon."

Behind the plywood: oops

In late February, I discovered a problem. The bar equipment was no longer going to fit in the space the architects, kitchen designers, and I had allotted for it.

How could that be? We had spent months taking measurements down to the tiniest fraction of an inch. Yet some how we ended up with a bar area that was a foot narrower than we had planned.

One foot. 12 inches. 305 millimeters.

It may not sound like much, but in the compact 1,400-square-foot world that is Contigo, it's a mile.  One of the reasons I chose the architecture firm I did was its proven track record of working creatively within tight quarters. Delfina Pizzeria, one of the firm's previous projects, was masterfully shoehorned into a space about half the size of Contigo's.

The bar area at Contigo will only be a "service bar." That means it will be used only for preparing drinks. There will be no stools. That was an unfortunate compromise we had to make in our, dare I say it, sardine can of a space. Try as we might, we couldn't seat people at the bar as the overall width of the room was too narrow. Fortunately for those of us who like to dine on stools, there are a handful of seats at the kitchen counter.

We only allocated an area 10.5 feet wide by 8 feet deep for the service bar. The minimum amount of equipment needed to run a full bar — ice bin, bottle rails, condiment shelves, hand-washing sink, small dishwasher for glasses, reach-in refrigerators, ice machine — fit. Barely.

Until, that is, the space was built. After the concrete was poured and the walls framed in, we discovered that the space was just 9.5 feet wide. The equipment could no longer fit.

Oops.

Someone made a mistake. It's a long story and who's to blame isn't important (I calmly write now that nearly 2 months have passed... time truly does heal all wounds). What impressed me was how quickly and professionally the architects and contractors worked together to correct the mistake. Within a week the contractors poured new concrete and reframed the walls. I am happy to report that the bar is now once again the width we had planned on. Yay! What could have been a disaster turned out to be a mere hiccup.

I have more (bittersweet) bar related news, but I'll save it for a future post once the new issue has been resolved (breathe, Brett, breathe).

Behind the paper plywood: first equipment

The stork made a special delivery to Contigo Monday morning ! Like any proud papa, I took lots of photos. Delivery was touch and go at times, but I suppose that's to be expected when your baby weighs 2,300 pounds.

My little bundle of love is a one-ton wood-fired oven made in the Tuscan hillside village of Reggello and imported by Mugnaini in Watsonville (near Santa Cruz). She has siblings at many local restaurants, including (if I remember correctly) Chez Panisse, Nopa, Coco500, and Lulu. She's the smallest Mugnaini sells, but just the right size for little Contigo. We're going to dress her up in locally made Heath tiles ("seconds," the tile equivalent of hand-me-downs from your older brother or sister).

Is it just me or does she look cuter than other restaurants' ovens?

In no time, my little hearth will grow up and become the focus (literally) of Contigo. She'll be churning out a seasonally changing coca (a type of Catalan flat bread similar to pizza), whole roasted fish, sardines, squid, braised and roasted meats, and all kinds of other yummy treats.

Sigh. They grow up so fast, don't they?

The answer to the question I'm asked daily

Hey, you. Long time no see. What’s up?

[You: blank stare]

Hehe. Guess it has been a while, hasn’t it?

[Smile politely]

It's me. Brett. You know, that guy who’s really into Spain and Spanish food. The sardine guy.

[Glance at watch]

Not ringing any bells? Oh, this’ll help: Remember reading about that guy who missed his flight for a slice of New York’s finest pizza? That was me!

[Look down uncomfortably, shuffle feet]

C’mon. Least popular recipe ever. The art of frying an egg. Cook like a girl. Sound familiar?

[Shrug apologetically]

Surely you remember The Name Game, when I asked my readers to help me name my restaurant.

Yeah, that was me! Nice to see you again too.

What? Have you already forgotten? Contigo!

Thanks. I’m pretty pleased with it too.

Sorry I haven't written or posted in a while. The whole restaurant thing has been kicking my ass. My to-do list grows longer every day. But it's all good, it's all exciting. Keeps me out of trouble.

Construction? It’s going all right. A few bumps in the road, but overall can’t complain. Thanks for asking.

What’s that? When?  When what?

[Me: I smile politely, glance at my watch, shuffle my feet, pretend like I didn’t hear you]

Oh, all right. You’ve been so patient with me. If anyone deserves the news, it’s you.

First, you gotta promise me one thing: don’t hold me to it. I don’t want to jinx it.

Okay, good. One more thing. Can I ask a teensy little favor? Until Contigo's doors actually open, please send positive thoughts my way, shout out a word or two of encouragement every so often. I'm so excited by the whole process and feel so unbelievably fortunate to be fulfilling my dreams, but every so often it feels overwhelming. Thanks.

Here goes, then. The answer to the question I'm asked daily: when will Contigo open?

Behind the paper: pouring it on

Before we started construction, my contractors warned me that there would be a lonnnng period when my restaurant space would seemingly look the same from day to day. If you're wondering why you haven't read a Contigo update in nearly 6 weeks, that's the reason. If Contigo were a ship, she would be adrift in the doldrums. A crew of six to eight guys come on board every day for eight or so hours. They pound, bang, saw, drill, dig, heave, ho, curse, grunt, sing pirate songs (okay, I made that last bit up). The work they're performing is vital. Plumbing and gas lines have been installed; foundations laid; framing, seismic upgrades, and some roofing and HVAC (duct work for the ventilation system) work has been completed. Unfortunately for this blog, these accomplishments aren't so photogenic. How many more artsy photos of nails and drains can I expect you to tolerate?

There is one exception: the concrete pours. I already documented the first one, performed just before Christmas. Since my last "Behind the Paper" post, there have been two more pours. The exciting news is that Contigo now has floors. Woohoo! The bummer is there are still two more pours to go.

Which begs the question: "Why so many separate pours? Why not do it all in one go?"

The answer lies in the elevation of the property. If everything were on one level, one or two pours would have sufficed. Unfortunately, that's not the case. While the building that houses Contigo is all at street level, the backyard is a couple of feet higher. In order to get enough seats to make this construction worth my investment, I need to be able to use the back patio for additional restaurant seating. Nearly a third of Contigo's seating will be outdoors. The restaurant is only permitted to use the backyard if it makes the area accessible to diners who use a wheelchair. Of the two possible solutions — lowering the backyard to street level or installing a ramp to access the higher backyard — the latter proved less expensive. My architect decided to split the dining area into two tiers with two access points, one by three stairs and one by ramp.

The second pour filled in the upper dining area at the back of the restaurant, including the stairs and part of the wheelchair ramp. The bulk of the ramp and the lower dining area were filled in with the third pour at the end of last week. As I was looking at the space over the weekend, I had a thought. If this whole restaurant thing doesn't pan out, I can always turn Contigo into a skateboard park.

Next up: more HVAC work, roofing, the beginning of electrical rough in, closing up the walls. The last item is the one I'm waiting for. Then things will really start to heat up.