While I'm ironing out some wrinkles that are (surprise, surprise) slowing down my timetable for opening Contigo, I thought I'd point you to some interesting recent articles on Spanish food and wine. Access to some articles may require subscription.
Today, the Wall Street Journal profiles Spanish winemakers who are breaking the gender barrier. I learned that over half of the 198 wineries in one of my favorite Spanish wine regions, Rías Baixas [REE-ez BUY-shez] in Gallicia, are run by women. Awesome! The list includes most of my favorites — Martin Codax, Condes de Albarei, Santiago Ruiz, and Valmiñor. If you haven't had one of the affordable (usually $15-$20) aromatic Rías Baixas whites made from the albariño grape, you've been missing out. The citrusy, almondy wines are my go-to choice for seafood, especially scallops and octopus.
A couple of Spanish (Catalonian, actually) men, on the other hand, are having a very public cat fight. Read the BBC article about the Clash of the Culinary Titans, Ferran Adrià vs. Santi Santamaría. Since May, two of Spain's four Michelin 3-star chefs, Adrìa of the avante-garde-techno-emotional El Bulli and Santamaría of the more traditional Can Fabes, have been throwing metaphorical tomatoes at one another. Santamaría has labeled Adrìa's reliance on chemical stabilizers and gelling agents at El Bulli "pretentious" and a "public health issue."
What's my take? While I personally rely on more traditional methods in my cooking, I believe there's room for both styles. Then again, if you ever catch me using methyl cellulose or sodium alginate, slap me. Please.
If you'd rather watch a real tomato fight, check out Der Spiegel's slide show of last year's La Tomatina, the annual tomato wars in the tiny town of Buñol, near Valencia. In a tradition dating back 60 years, residents and tourists throw 300,000 pounds of tomatoes at one another for one hour every August. This year, the food fight will take place on August 27th. Book your tickets now!
Taking a break from Contigo construction updates, I want to toast a Cava to all the Spanish athletes and sports fans who have celebrated an unprecedented number of victories the past month. Go Spain!
Today Carlos Sastre won the Tour de France for the first time, upsetting expected winner Cadel Evans of Australia. Poor Cadel finished second to another Spaniard, Alberto Contador, last year.
It's been a month since I last posted, so I have a lot to tell you.
First of all, happy birthday to my blog. On June 15, IPOS turned three!*
The next bit of news concerns my next baby, Contigo. Her birth has been postponed to later in the summer. We're currently aiming for late August... but early September is starting to look like a distinct possibility.
Whew. Now that the big news is out of the way, I want to catch y'all up on the construction progress.
Like IPOS, Contigo is an extension of me. It's imbued with my beliefs, my passions, my life experiences, my style, my quirks.
Unlike my blog, however, Contigo is a group effort, a collaboration of an ever-growing team of characters that so far includes architects, contractors, carpenters, plumbers, electricians, HVAC installers, roofers, equipment suppliers, interior decorators, cement pourers, window makers, cabinet makers, metal workers, upholsterers, tile installers, tile makers, dry wallers, painters, and a bevy of building inspectors.
Through trial and (a whole lot of) errors, I'm gradually learning when it's best to assert my control and push my vision and when I should get out of the way. One point where I have been uncompromising in pushing my vision is this: I want Contigo to be built as green as possible... without breaking the bank. I'd love solar panels, for example, but on my tight budget they aren't a realistic option.
Instead, I've focused on two relatively affordable green concepts: reuse and buy local. These are principals that I, like so many of you, have incorporated into to cooking for years. For example, I compost and recycle my waste and buy locally grown produce at the farmers' market. My building and design team has successfully risen to the challenge to incorporate both of these green concepts into Contigo.
Reuse
At its core, reclaiming and reusing old materials is born from frugality. Like many of my generation, I learned frugality from my mother, who grew up during the Depression. Her mantra was use everything, waste nothing. My construction and design team has applied the concept of reusing old materials in many innovative ways, such as using craigslist to find a home for the building's old insulation.
As I've mentioned before, though, I'm most excited that we were able to reclaim and reuse the old growth redwood siding from my restaurant's building. In the photos below, you can see the fruits of that idea (starting from the picture of the gray painted wood before it was removed and progressing to the final installation). My contractors initially attempted to plane the wood on site to avoid transportation costs, but the task proved too time inefficient and the results were more rustic than we wanted (see the sixth photo). Eventually, we sent the wood to our local cabinetmaker, yielding the awesome (to my eye any way) results in the final photos. It's the urban barn aesthetic I had hoped for.
Buy Local
In my kitchen, I'm a fanatic about sourcing products locally. Why not apply that same principal to building my restaurant? The two concepts, reuse and buy local, often overlap. For example, the choice of tiles in Contigo's kitchen and bathroom are rooted in the frugality that underlies the principle of reuse. They are the unwanted "seconds" that weren't up to the tile maker's standards. Waste nothing. They are also local. They are hand made by local ceramic maker Heath Ceramics, which fired the tiles in its kilns across the Golden Gate Bridge in Sausalito. It's my understanding that Heath tries to use as much local materials as possible to make their products.
My latest news is that my tables, banquettes, and counters will also be made from reclaimed and local wood. My table tops will be made out of Douglas fir that spent the last century as beams and floors in the old Levi Strauss factory(built at 250 Valencia Street just after the original factory was destroyed by the 1906 earthquake and fire). The building is currently under renovation to become a Quaker school. Contigo's tables, then, will be made from wood reclaimed from a San Francisco landmark located less than two miles away. What luck!
Unfortunately, sometimes the decision to go green can have unexpected consequences and costs. My decision to have my cabinetmaker fabricate Contigo's counters and banquettes from reclaimed wood (we got a great deal on oak from an old Northern California barn) is one of the main reasons we won't be opening our doors this month. It took an inordinately long time for the cabinetmaker to finalize the purchase of the wood and we're still awaiting its arrival.
While I can't afford to incorporate all of the latest green design innovations, I feel fortunate that I have been able apply a few of the green building practices that are closely aligned with my sustainable approach to cooking. It keeps Contigo feeling as much a part of me as IPOS.
* Am I the only one who feels like my blog has been around longer than three years? It's astonishing to me how much my life has changed in that time. On the surface, it's been turned completely upside down and inside out. Yet deep down my life feels better and more exciting than ever. On reflection, so many of the most wonderful, positive, life altering gifts Life has presented to me can be directly traced to this little blog. So, thank you IPOS and, especially, thank you readers. I'll do my best to write again sooner than last time.
sardines defined
sar·dine(n) 1. a young herring or similar small fish.
2. a metaphor for the small and often less well-known ingredients, restaurants, farmers, and artisans that San Francisco-based chef Brett Emerson writes about in this website.
