TWO NEW PROJECTS IN 2012
2011 has been a great year for us, a maturing year for us. We expanded our daytime menu way beyond sandwiches. We refined our dinner menu and service, elevating the cuisine and dining experience way beyond our opening concept. We did this with your feedback and insight.
We are thrilled to announce that we have two, new neighborhood projects in development, both on track to open in 2012. These projects were inspired by your loyalty and trust.

Local Mission Eatery was born from a dedication to local food and a love of lower 24th St and the Inner Mission. Since we opened in March 2010, the love has deepened and has been reciprocated: We have established deep relationships, grown a strong customer base, and have been presented with and seized upon opportunities that only arise from living and working on the same streets.

Our goal has always been to provide meticulously-sourced and handcrafted food, to build a community of values, of local eaters. And we hoped the transparency of the restaurant would inspire our customers to take these values home. To a degree, this has succeeded. Yet we wanted to do more for our customers and neighbors, to provide for them even when they ate at home.

Even while LME was under construction–now two years ago–we conceived of a new type market, like no one has ever done. We imagined a market driven by the same values of the restaurant–meticulously-sourced and handcrafted. That is, sourced only from California and and crafted only by our hands. Yes. Every pasta, jam, pickle, spread, bread, cracker, hot sauce, spice rub, extract, marinade, cured meat, smoked fish, sausage, and more would be made on-site, in an open kitchen, using the same ingredients–and only the ingredients–available on our shelves. By ingredients, we mean local vegetables, fruit, grains, fish, meat, cheese, beer, wine, and spirits.

After six months of design with principal architects Atelier KS and kitchen designer KRBS, in February construction will begin on this market, Local Mission Market. Located in a historic industrial building on Harrison St, just a few blocks from LME, our ideal market will hopefully open during the summer of 2012. Of course, we need to open with apricot jam, cucumber pickles, and tomato sauce. So we’ve been busy. Our Tweets have referenced our summer and fall production–thousands of jars of jams (apricot, nectarine, peach, fig, cherry, strawberry), pickles (dill sliced and Bread and Butter), hot sauces (red jalapeno and red padrons), tomato sauce (Early Girls and Shady Ladies), apple butter (Pippin, Howard, Jonagold), pear butter (Bartlett), and more. Come by Local Mission Eatery to taste previews of Local Mission Market.

That’s project number one.

Here’s number two. Several months after signing the lease on the Market, Yaron looked out his bedroom window and saw the corner store had shutdown and the building owner had started work on the space. Yaron ran downstairs and learned the owner intended on putting in a deli. It’s a beautiful corner, with great morning light and wide sidewalks. The building is historic. The space is intimate. It could not become a deli. It did not want to be a deli. It wanted to be Local’s Corner.
Within weeks, design began (again with Atelier KS) and we are already several weeks into construction. Pending approvals from the city (turning a corner store into the restaurant with outdoor seating) and the state (wine and beer license), we should be serving by spring.
Local’s Corner will be where neighbor come for a relaxed breakfast with excellent coffee and outdoor seating. In the evenings, the menu we will dedicated to local and sustainable, head-to-tail fish and seafood with several draft beers and many, local wines by the glass. Stay tuned for more details.

With full sincerity and appreciation, we could not embark on this adventure of growth without you.
With great thanks for your friendship and support,
Yaron Milgrom and Jake Des Voignes

Chickens and Lodi Plot

For the first time, last rainy Monday, I joined Jake to to see our plot of land in Lodi.  Our first stop: the chicken coop and the twenty-seven chicken happily running and roosting.  Our chicks are all grown-up and should be laying eggs within a couple months.  Stay tuned.

At the garden, the favas, strawberries, carrots, radishes, herbs, and greens are on the menu or will be soon, though in limited supply.  The many tomatoes, corn, blueberries, squashes, peppers, and beans are looking strong, but a ways out.

Winemaker Dinner

Tomorrow, May 25, Chris Brockway is here for our third winemaker dinner.  Two of the wines are sold out.  Unless you have them already, this is your last chance to sip Chris’s not-to-be-missed 2009 mourvedre and carignan.  Here’s the menu that Jake paired with the wines.

See the full calendar of winemaker dinners here.

Partners with the Arts

We are thrilled to announce a year-round partnership with the Brava Theater at 24th and York.  For the 2010-2011 season, we will run a pre-theater menu and, if you dine with us, you will receive a %15 discount on your Brava tickets.  Details when tickets go on sale.

A Tragic Loss

On Saturday night, Ryan Sitko, our lead line cook, died in a motorcycle accident.  He was 23 years-old.  Ryan was driven and dedicated, talented and sweet.  He worked the line with speed, grace, proficiency, and smiles.  Among the joys of each evening service was seeing the cooks–board filled with tickets, ten burners at full tilt–laughing.  From turned artichokes to composed plates, this is what Ryan loved to do.

On Sunday, when Ryan–reliable and punctual–did not show up to work and we could not reach him, we knew something was wrong.  At noon, I called every emergency room in the city.  When we found out the news on Monday, the staff gathered at my apartment to mourn, reminisce, and eat together.

Every day, I am reminded of the humanness of this business–More than the farms and ranches, tools and equipment, press and media, this business is about people.  The fourteen–now thirteen–employees are not only the moving parts but also the bloodline of this restaurant.  In Ryan’s death, in our shared ephemerality, we are reminded in the harshest way.

If there is something to walk away with–more so, to continue forward with–from Ryan’s death, please remember that when you enter a restaurant–any restaurant–that that place runs on the fullness of life, the fullness of these peoples’ lives: their training and passion, their burned forearms and smiles, their families and, more than I ever understood, their trust and love of the men and women to their left and right, this family that works, eats, bleeds, travels, celebrates, and grieves together.

From January 13-29, the Brava Theater is presenting Gush, curated by Joe Goode of the Joe Goode Performance Group.  We partnered for a pre-dance dinner and dance package.  For every performance evening (Thursdays – Saturdays), we will offer a a pre-dance, three-course $30 dinner–two savory courses and dessert, all of your choice–for 5:30 and 6:00 reservations. Bring proof of purchase for your Gush tickets.

When you buy your Gush tickets, use the promotion LOCAL for a %15 discount.  When you arrive at Brava, show your dinner receipt to confirm.

We’re throwing the dinner party and Terroir the after party.

Below is our New Year’s Eve menu, chalk-full of delicacies to end-out the aughts.  All night, Dagan, owner of Terroir Natural Wine Merchants and our guru, will be with us to pair wines. We may even open some wines from the bottle list, if it seems just right.

In addition, we’ll have a Californian Pinot Noir flight–Clos Saron’s Tickled Pink Rose from the Sierra Foothills, Paul Mathew from Dry Creek Valley, and Ghostwriter from the Santa Cruz Mountains–for $20.

When you’re sated, head over to Dagan’s place in SOMA for more wine, lots of bubbly, and to bring in the New Year.

Thanks for an unbelievable (and we mean that–We cannot believe it) 2010.  Here’s to an even better year to come.

A few weeks after we opened, amidst the hustle-and-bustle, the endless hours, Jake drove to his in-laws in Lodi, tilled a plot of land the size of our restaurant, and planted squash, melons, pumpkins, peppers, pole beans, and a lot of tomatoes. Over the last weeks, we’ve incorporated a little of this and a little of that into the menu. A late bloomer, our crop is all coming in at once, with an extraordinary tomato harvest.
This week, September 15-18, in addition to our full menu, we will offer a set menu harvest dinner (menu below). To highlight the menu, Chris Brockway–maker of Broadside and Broc Cellars wines–has paired each course with one of his wines (For Wednesday’s dinner, he will be here to pour and discuss his wines).

In these first few posts, I want to share some of the core principles, the driving ethics, of Local: Mission Eatery.  These principles carry from the conception of Local, to its construction, and into its implementation as a sustained (and hopefully sustainable) articulation of what we aim to do and a personal reflection on how I came to do it.

On Transparency

A year ago, I was on the other side, the diner’s side.  I had worked in a few kitchens and, at the close of every great meal, peeked in many more.  Late at night, sleepless in bed, I envisioned my restaurant, filled with people eating my food (In my fantasies, I was the owner and chef).  Yet, the more I interrogated my fantastic (fantastical?) restaurant and the more I peeked into real kitchens, the more I came to understand how little I knew.  And the more I wanted to know, the more I wished for transparency.

What equipment do real chefs use?  How many cooks are in the kitchen?  Who does what? How is that cooked?  What does that even look like raw?   Where did you get it from?  How can I get it?

Now, I am on this side.  I own a restaurant (in which I am not the chef–It is Jake’s kitchen).  So I aspire to offer  transparency.

We designed two totally open kitchens (Jake’s savory kitchen and Shauna’s pastry kitchen).  Guests–for lunch and even more so for dinner–spectate the ballet of well-trained chefs, cooking with speed and grace, efficiency and care.  Their every gesture is deliberate and studied.  How is that prepped and cooked?  Watch Troy and Vineta, and then ask them for more details.

Cooking is all about the transformative magic of raw into cooked.  We designed the restaurant around the existing meat locker, the only standing relic from Alhambra Meat Market, which preceded us at 3111 24th St.  Though reset and reframed, we kept the huge window into the walk-in refrigerator.  Not only does this open our raw vegetables, fruit, dairy, seafood, and meat–of which we are proud–to our diners, it reveals the ways chefs organize and store, maximize yields, and manage inventory.

The space can only tell what it is and what happens when it arrives, but the full story predates the kitchen and the walk-in.  From where did that huge box of tangelos come?  Shauna’s grandfather’s farm, picked by Jake on his day off.  How about the dozens of bunches of asparagus?  Zuckerman Farms via the Marin or Ferry Building Farmers Markets.   And where do you get your fish?  Always locally, sourced by Monterey Fish Company in Berkeley.  Those one-hundred pound lambs hanging?  Pozzi farms, delivered by Michael Biagio of Biagio Meats.  Of course, we can tell you, but our website does it more thoroughly.  Our website cannot tell how to build a restaurant nor how to run it (Nor can I.  We are only a month in).   Yet, as much as possible, it aims to withdraw the curtain.

Lastly, we conceived of the library and labs as ultimate transparency.  We do what magicians never do:  We reveal our tricks (the library) and teach how to do them (the labs).  We do so for two reasons.  First, we love food and we want you to eat great food more often.  Second (and this is a little more self-serving), if you are like me, the more I food I ate, the more kitchens in which I peeked, the more questions I asked, and more the I cooked at home, the more I came to appreciate the differences, the skill, the beauty, and the tastes.

One month in, I still pinch myself.  I am neither sleepless in bed with visions of my restaurant nor dreaming.  I own a restaurant, for real.  Now, I am on this side, behind the curtain.  Despite all of the careful attention and diligent research, I realize now there are always more curtains.  Every day, I peek in my kitchen and walk-in to find a new secret.  Every day, I ask my chefs questions, inspired by their skills, moved by the tastes.  Every day, I learn, as I did before, how to bring it back to the other side–my home kitchen.

- Yaron Milgrom

This first post marks the liminal transition–from dream (who knows – January 09) to the conclusion of preliminary research (March) to property search and lease (September) to design (mid-November) to permitting (end of November) to build-out (early March) to final inspections.  Over this time, 3111 24th St has been called the Property (real estate search), Premises (lease documents), Site (construction), and now it will be the Restaurant.  At times, entwined and occasionally buried in bureaucracy and construction , I forgot entirely that the end goal was to serve food:  When the table saw sounded its last zing and the nail gun its last thwap, I would have completed my work.

Indeed, it is just the beginning.

In this ways and others, this blog reminds of my only other blog experience.  For the last seven weeks of Miriam’s pregnancy, I chronicled the elasticity of her belly and the growth of the fetus.  The blog–as was her pregnancy–was all about her pregnancy and not the expected child.  The conclusion of the pregnancy blog was the birth.  This was the start of Cruv’s life blog.  Now, too, I (as is Jake) am eager for the birth of our restaurant, its life, the pulse of prep, cook, and clean, the circulations of its guests.

As relieved and elated as I am to close-out the construction phase, I already feel nostalgic for the wonder and excitement of the launch of this venture (sparkling wine with Miriam, Jake, Shauna, and Mr Lam at the lease signing), hours and days of designs, the deep smell of wood cut wood, the daily progress, the stunning transformation.  There were thousands of decisions–miniscule to grand–that punctuated this process.  There were hiccups, setbacks, and fortuitous finds.  There were days filled with successes and other tarnished with letdowns.

Overall, through-and-through, I am thankful to the people who have immersed themselves in this project, beyond the expectations of contracts and payments, necessity or demands.  The major players are included on this site (see About Us-Design), but most aren’t.  I’d like to thank them here.

Pedro, Cruz, and Salvador, from the first to last hour (including some very late and weekend hours), built this restaurant:  They framed, drywalled, mudded, tiled, molded and welded zinc, stained wood, painted walls, and more and more.  They did with it care and craftsmanship, with keen eyes and big hearts.

Niall, the electrical foreman from Wells Electrical, spent days crouched in the crawl space above the ceiling, running wires and cables.  When he dropped-in from the world above, he was filled with good humor, charm, and integrity.

Richard Li, the mechanical contractor, sensed our commitment and passion and met it with his.  In short order, Richard fabricated and installed the three-story duct and make-up air system for the kitchen.  Beyond the call of duty, he bent all of the zinc for our countertops.

Vartan, the HVAC contractor, bounced in and out.  But in the few moments he stood still, he repaired our walk-in.

Kevin James, the installation manager at AAA Fire Protections, ensured the permitting and installation of the ancil system in time for our fire inspection.

Terrance Kane, the sales person and installer of our EcoLab dishwasher, transitioned from tablet PC to pipe wrenches seamlessly, and always in slacks and a button-down.  When we asked for a rush, he was there.  When he came and the set-up was askew, he worked his equipment to fix our mistakes.

Edgar Oropeza, our advocate and sponsor at the Department of Planning, shepherded us from 790.102 to 790.92.  He is the model civil servant–A promoter of small businesses, a believer in first timers–and a kind soul.

Lastly, though we praise him on the website proper, Sterling Tougas deserves additional and endless thanks.  For fourteen weeks, he poured his prodigious talents and indomitable spirit into this project, and always with his winning smile.  I will miss seeing him every day.

To all of you, I owe you more than I have to offer.  Thank you for this beautiful gift.

-Yaron Milgrom