in praise of sardines

We're blushing

Contigo received a lot of great press this morning. We were in three four email newsletters: Daily Candy, Thrillist, Ideal Bite, and Urban Daddy.

Here's the behind the scenes story. One of the million tasks I've been working on while preparing for tomorrow's opening is the website. Knowing that we were going to be in some email newsletters this morning, I frantically worked on adding and editing content on our website into the wee hours this morning. It is still a little rough around the edges. Contigo's website is hosted through Typepad (appropriate, no?).  The way our web designer has currently set it up, however, I can't access the columns or the home page to edit them and add photos. Hopefully we will be able to fix that soon.

Good news: I have posted a menu on the Contigo site! It's still a work in progress.

Other good news: our test dinners over the weekend went better than I could have dreamed. We learned all the areas where there is room for improvement and thank all of our friends who gave good, honest feedback in exchange for feed.

I have a trillion more tasks to do. Thanks for your support and see you soon!

Update: Of all the places on my resume, I really, really wish the newsletters had not highlighted Chez Panisse, where I worked without pay on my days off during the time that I was a sous chef at another restaurant. I list it on my resume as an intern. I am not a "Chez Panisse vet" by any means and regret that that is the one restaurant that was featured. I have worked at many excellent restaurants that were all in the Chronicle Top 100 while I was there, including Zax and Zax Tavern, L'Amie Donia, Bizou (all are now closed), Lulu, and the Greens. I did work for a Chez Panisse vet when I cooked at Eccolo in Berkeley.

Contigo sign is up

After months and months of mistakes and delays, the Contigo sign was installed yesterday morning. The wait was worth it. It is beautiful.

Escuela de Contigo is now in session

Contigo's opening is now scheduled for Tuesday, March 3rd.

We couldn't be happier with the talented team we have assembled to work with us at Contigo . We started training yesterday with an orientation to fill out paperwork and go over our employee handbook, written by our GM, Maz, with an introduction by me. 

Here's an excerpt from my introduction:

"We chose the name  for our restaurant because it synthesizes our philosophy about the dining experience into one word. Contigo means “with you” in Spanish. It implies connection, community, collaboration, and conviviality.

"We believe that the single most important facet of dining is connection: friends, neighbors and lovers sharing a meal together. We are humbled at the thought that the guests at Contigo on any given night will have chosen to spend their time with their companions at our restaurant over the thousands of other restaurants in this city. Our guiding mission at Contigo is do everything in our power to care for our neighbors as we would guests in our home. We want our team to anticipate and exceed our guests’ expectations – ensuring our guests’ comfort, anticipating their needs, and allowing them to have a good time. We want to offer our guests service that is casual, unpretentious and delivered with sincerity and warmth. We want you to be confident, technically precise and able to respond to any question or request.Your spontaneity, resourcefulness and adeptness are Contigo’s secret weapons.

"Contigo also implies community. Our restaurant participates in several communities. On the smallest level, we see Contigo itself as a micro community. We will all be spending a significant amount of time working together and our goal is to make Contigo as happy a place to work as possible. We believe that each member of our team plays a role in making Contigo as good as it can be. Contigo is also part of the Noe Valley neighborhood and, drawing the circle wider, a part of San Francisco. Our hope is that Contigo will become a Noe Valley and San Francisco gathering spot. On the widest level, our restaurant is part of the global community. We strive to walk softly on our planet and leave the earth a better place than we found it.

"Running Contigo or any restaurant is also a miraculous act of collaboration, a process involving countless people working together with the end goal of feeding our guests. Think about all the hands that built this restaurant, all the hands that grow our vegetables and catch our fish, all the hands that prepare the food, that serve our guests and wash the dishes.

"Finally, we strive to create a convivial ambience for our guests. The food and atmosphere of Contigo were inspired by summers spent in Spain, and in particular, Barcelona. We love the conviviality of dining standing up in small tapas bars hidden down narrow alleyways or perched on a stool at a kiosko< inside one of Barcelona’s bustling covered markets. Contigo’s open floor plan, counter seats, standing drink rail, kitchen that spills into the dining room, and outdoor patio were all designed to bring a taste of Barcelona to San Francisco."

 

We hope to see you all soon.

Just in the nick of time...

We received our liquor license in the mail today! We can now officially serve beer and wine to our guests at Contigo.

More news: we will be opening the last week in February instead of the 17th. We want to make sure our team is well trained and ready to roll.

We've received quite a few requests for reservations. We have decided to open without taking any reservations (unless you have more than 6 people in your party). When you walk in, Elan or Maz (our General Manager) will find you a seat. If there is a short wait, no worries. We'll soon be installing a standing bar rail where you can watch the action in the kitchen while sipping Cava and whetting your appetite with Catalan nibbles.

We are looking forward to having dinner with you soon. Very soon!

Meet our printers: A. Maciel Printing

Opening Contigo, I have learned so much about myself. It has been an incredible workshop. A wise person once told me that how you do anything is how you do everything. I am a cook and I'm learning that I bring a cook's perspective to everything I do. I make decisions the same way that I cook and shop. When I go to the farmers market, for example, I like to survey the entire market before I choose which tangerine to buy. I sniff, I squeeze, I taste. I ask the farmers questions. I listen to their stories. I gain equal amounts of pleasure from the process as I do from the sweet juicy tangerine that is the end result.

I shopped for a long time to find the right printer for Contigo's business cards and other print materials. I interviewed, I got samples, I got price quotes. I wanted a printer who cared not just about the quality of the end result, but the process. I wanted a printer with integrity.

I had nearly given up my quest when I asked Elan, my girlfriend and partner in Contigo, to try her hand. I pride myself in my research abilities, but I am a punter compared to Elan. Ask Elan to research a topic and she will have an answer — no, the best possible answer — for you faster than a chocolate bar melts on a hot summer day. Her discovery: A. Maciel Printing.

 For those who care about the environment, A. Maciel Printing (and their subsidiary greenpostcards.com) is the dream print shop. Thanks to A. Maciel, we can proudly proclaim that all of Contigo's business cards and postcards are printed on 100% post-consumer recycled content, chlorine free, uncoated paper with soy based inks. And that's not all. A. Maciel's print shop is 100% wind powered, their presses are twice as efficient as comparable presses, and their workers are unionized. Their delivery car? A Prius, of course. I heart our printers.

Best of all, A. Maciel's story is as sweet as one of Will Brokaw's gold nugget tangerines. A. Maciel is a family run business. When he started the shop more than 20 years ago, Alfonso Maciel Sr. wanted to make sure his kids would be safe running around in their dad's print shop. He and his wife did everything they could to eliminate potentially toxic chemicals from their print shop. Now their children are grown and they work beside their parents in their idyllic printshop that includes an awesome 50-year-old Heidelberg letter press.

We at Contigo feel fortunate to collaborate with a print shop that shares our passion for sustainable and environmentally responsible business practices. Thank you, A. Maciel!

The answer to your question

Contigo will open at 5:30 pm on Tuesday, February 17th.

That's 4 weeks/28 days/677 hours/40,620 minutes from now.

See you there?

Read more in today's Tablehopper.

Or apply for a job on Craigslist!

Menu for Hope 2008 - We have a winner + a Contigo update

Congratulations, Thea Dwelle!

You won the combined In Praise of Sardines/Vinography Menu for Hope prize (UW14) this year: dinner for 6 at Contigo with wine pairings by Alder Yarrow! Please contact me so that I can send you your gift certificate.

Alder and I are so very proud and humbled that our prize helped to inspire our readers to purchase so many raffle tickets for Menu for Hope's 2008 fundraiser. I lost count after the number tickets for our prize exceeded 200. As a community, we food bloggers, restaurateurs, and our readers, fans, and friends raised over $60,000 for the UN World Food Programme. What an amazing feat, especially in these challenging economic times. The school children of Lesotho thank and applaud you all!

I'm almost ready to answer the question I'm asked several times a day: when will Contigo open? This week's big news is that we have started hiring! Contigo's fantastic new General Manager starts Monday. Our first order of business is to set an opening date and time table. Stay tuned for details.

You can follow me here or, if you desire even more current, up-to-the-minute inside scoop and thrilling behind-the-scenes action, follow me on Twitter or Facebook.

Menu for Hope 2008 - feed the children of Lesotho

Prize Code UW14

Dinner for 6 at Contigo +

Sommelier Services by Vinography

Menu for Hope

I am proud that In Praise of Sardines is donating a prize for Menu for Hope for the fourth consecutive year. Menu for Hope is the name of the charitable raffle started by Chez Pim in which food bloggers offer mouthwatering prizes to encourage our readers to support those in need.

This year's recipient is the same as last year: the UN World Food Programme. Specifically, we are raising money for the school lunch program in Lesotho. Pim writes: "We chose to support the school lunch program because providing food for the children not only keeps them alive, but keeps them in school so that they learn the skills to feed themselves in the future. We chose to support the program in Lesotho because it is a model program in local procurement - buying food locally to support local farmers and the local economy."

Prize Code UW14

Like last year, I will cook a multi-course dinner for the winner. The exciting difference between this year and last is that that this year the winner will dine not at my house, but at my real live honest to goodness restaurant Contigo. As you read this, we are putting the finishing touches on Contigo and will be opening right around the time that Pim announces the winners.

Here's what the winner of UW14 will get:

1. 4 courses (plus a surprise or two) for 6 people. Contigo serves rustic Spanish and Catalan food prepared with seasonal ingredients (and a dash of love) from local farms, ranches, and our own backyard.
2. 4 different bottles of wine from the cellar of Alder Yarrow of Vinography. Alder will also serve as your personal sommelier for the evening.  
3. The coziest table for 6 in the house (note: while all of Contigo's tables are equally splendid, one table, tucked away in a nook between the kitchen and the bar, is especially suited for parties of 6).

How to Bid on UW14 - Dinner for 6 at Contigo + Sommelier Services by Vinography

1. Go to the donation site at Firstgiving to make a donation.
2. Each $10 you donate will give you one raffle entry. Please specify the prize code UW14 in the 'Personal Message' section in the donation form when confirming your donation and also specify how many tickets you wish to purchase. For example, a donation of $50 could be 5 tickets for UW14 so in that case please write 5xUW14. 
3. If your company matches your charity donation, please check the box and fill in the appropriate information. 
4. Please allow the administrators to see your email address so that they can contact you in case you win. Your email address will not be shared with anyone.

To see the full list of the other amazing prizes available worldwide, please visit Chez Pim.

For a round up of the all the prizes on the West Coast of the US, please visit Matt at Matt Bites, our local host for 2008.

I wish you all the best of luck!

Behind the paper: final inspection

Contigo's final inspection was scheduled for this afternoon. After all the various inspectors — plumbing, electrical, health, etc. — sign the Job Card, the City Building Inspector comes through to pass judgment on the entire project. It's a big deal.

Yesterday, we got a last minute email from the architects explaining everything we still needed to do to pass. My task was to drive to our sign maker's shop in Dogpatch to pick up various required signs and decals, including the address numbers.

The signs we needed for the building inspection were ready, but I had ordered one more that we would need to pass the health inspection: the "employees must wash hands" sign. The sign makers told me they would call me when the new sign was ready. Inspection was scheduled between noon and two, so at 11 I decided I couldn't wait any longer and drove to the sign shop. There I learned that my graphic designer had sent the wrong type of file, so the hand washing sign wasn't ready. They were waiting for her to send the correct file.

At 11:45 I couldn't wait any longer and dashed back to the restaurant with the other signs. It was just after noon on a week day and parking is usually a cinch. Not today. I drove around and around trying to find a parking space. My heart was racing.

Twelve minutes later I finally found a spot two blocks from Contigo. I sprinted over to the restaurant just in time to see my contractor pulling away in his pickup.

What the...?  It was only 12:15. Immediately my mind concluded that inspection must have been postponed. After all that's gone wrong, all the delays and mistakes, the miscommunications and changes, I expected disappointment. After more than two years of planning and a year of construction, my glass-half-full disposition has been nearly shattered.

Fortunately, my contractor saw me. He pulled over and I dashed across the street.

"Where are you going? What happened? Did inspection get postponed?"

"The inspector showed up an hour early. Believe it or not," he said with a relieved and astonished smile, "we passed."

WOOHOO!!!

We still have a few more things to do post-inspection, but one of the biggest hurdles is now behind us. The Cava will be flowing at my house tonight!

Behind the paper: upside down and backwards

Nearly 4 weeks have passed since my last post, yet Contigo is still no closer to opening.

Why? Behind the papered up windows of my little storefront, more has gone wrong in the past month than has gone right. If Contigo were a planet, it would be retrograde.

Shortly after my last post, we discovered that the bar refrigerators were built backwards. There are two refrigerated cabinets behind the bar, a short two-door one stacked on top of a longer 4-door one. The one on top is for red wine, the bottom one for beer kegs, white wine, Cava, etc. At some point communications got crossed and the factory configured the upper unit to sit on the left when it's supposed to sit on the right. This blunder required one fix after another (beer taps, drain lines, and other conduits had to be moved) to the point that the upper refrigerator now contains more holes than a tray full of doughnuts. We're still waiting for one more part.

Can we fix it? Yes we can.*

Last week, the sales representative for Contigo's hi-tech water filter/chiller/carbonator system stopped by. He wanted to make sure it was working well. He noticed that two of the three taps (one each for room temperature still, cold still, and cold sparkling water) had been installed in reverse order, so he unscrewed and switched them. Bad move. Moments later water flooded everywhere. We're still waiting for replacement taps to arrive.

Can we fix it? Yes we can.

Yesterday, my contractor informed me that the HVAC installer had to rip out the ventilation ducts above the water heater that they installed 6 weeks ago. Why? The ducts were installed upside down. That's right, professionals who do nothing but install ducts for a living installed them completely wrong. The city's plumbing inspector caught the bone-headed mistake and required Mr. HVAC to fix it, a task which involves tearing out walls, then rebuilding, mudding, sanding, and painting them.

Can we fix it? Yeah, sure....

But c'mon, construction and equipment installation dudes. Upside down? Backwards? Enough is enough already. Let's finish up so I can get this show on the road and open my restaurant before the first day of winter (and my birthday).

Can we do it?

________________________

* I couldn't help myself from riffing off of President Elect Obama's most famous line. His election was easily the best news of this past month. I am overjoyed for my country and, for the first time in many many many years, proud to be American.

If you'd like more up-to-the-minute information about me and/or the opening of Contigo, you can now follow my tweets on Twitter or, if you friend me, my updates on Facebook, which I just joined last night.