Things to do in San Diego when you're hungry

June 16, 2009

Next time you're in San Diego, California, you owe it to yourself to visit a restaurant called The Linkery. They go to extraordinary lengths to bridge the gap between eaters and the people that grow and make food. The Linkery sources its ingredients from dozens of local purveyors, acknowledging them all by name in an addendum to the menu.
In many restaurant kitchens, the choice between working with a multitude of small artisans versus one or two national or multinational food corporations comes down to a single concern: money. It's almost always cheaper and easier to buy all your ingredients from one source. But this approach also comes with drawbacks. You lose the ability to buy local and seasonal, to be selective, to get something special. You lose flavor.
The Linkery takes a different approach. They're a farm to table restaurant in the truest sense. Both on the menu and on their website, you can read about the farms and the farmers responsible for the food on your plate. And it isn't only the tomatoes or the steak that get a shout out. The provenance of nearly every ingredient is indicated by the restaurant. And the wait staff is fully versed in the story behind your meal. Oftentimes, they've visited the farms themselves, and even helped to have grown / made / butchered what's being eaten.
Much of this will sound familiar to those knowledgeable about our Direct Trade sourcing model. We also value the interaction with the growers, so much so that we use no intermediaries or brokers, buying our cacao direct and paying a premium above FTO prices for it.
It should come as no surprise then that the Linkery uses Taza Chocolate in their kitchen. Here's what chef Joel Cammett had to say about us on the Linkery's Casing The Joint blog recently:

As a pure cooking ingredient, it simply rocks, providing the perfect lift to dark moles, chili, and certain sausages, which benefit from its bold punch. In terms of pastry work, things get a little more complicated. Since Taza’s chocolate liquor is unsweetened, unconched, and therefore quite a bit sharper than most of us are used to, we’ve experimented with less than traditional proportions of cocoa to cream when creating ganache, and often use local honey to tame the wild phenolic compounds and alkaloids in the chocolate. From truffles to tortes, chocolate “salami” to xocolatl-style hot cocoa, ice creams to chocolate layer cakes, it’s been an enjoyable challenge working with this cacoa wonder.

In short, the next time you're in San Diego, go eat at the Linkery. They're cool in many more ways that are listed here. And if you've already eaten there, let us know what you thought in the comments.
-A