Here's a 4 month update from your local seafood restaurant.

Lobster Season is Here!

Many of you have been excitedly anticipating this particular change in season. Everyone seems to know that lobster season starts in October and even before commercially-caught lobster was available, I was being asked if and when we'd have it, so to appease your curiosity, and hopefully your hunger for it, we do plan on serving local Pacific lobster very soon. John Law, who provided us with Rock Cod some time ago, has promised to sell us some of his catch and we've been discussing the best way to prepare it with chef Christy Samoy. I won't totally give our plans away, but I think it's going to involve risotto. Well, maybe I did give it away, but you'll just have to come see for yourself!

Movie Nights at Sea Rocket

So, Dennis went out and bought an LCD projector for the bistro, and suspended it along with what seems like an awful lot of other equipment, from the ceiling over the communal table. The idea was that we could show movies, either as background entertainment to special events, or as full-on dinner theater experiences, as well as project fishing-related images and videos onto the wall in our entryway, which we've been doing for the past few nights already. (Well, OK, they were Dennis' old skate videos for the first night or two!)

Starting next Thursday, October 9th, we'll be projecting a different movie each week for whomever is interested. It'll be first come, first seated as usual. The table can seat 20 people, and we'll just serve food and drink like normal off the menu. We'll announce each week which movie we'll be showing, probably starting about 8pm. Full service will be available throughout the movie, so you don't have to show up earlier to eat unless you want to. This should be fun!

Il Mercato

We tested out the Little Italy Farmer's Market a couple of weeks ago and are planning on attending every other week for a while, bringing sardines to grill and some of our lima bean salad to accompany them. The market is quite impressive for being relatively new, and draws a great mix of local downtown folks, out-of-town visitors/tourists, and farmer's market enthusiasts from other areas of San Diego. It's a fun, laid-back, community-oriented event. And not nearly as crowded as Hillcrest, which means no waiting in lines or jockeying to get near vendors' tables! Come pay us a visit, starting this Saturday, October 4th between 10am-1:30pm.

Presidential Debates

Although they are halfway through, I thought I'd mention briefly that after a nice crowd turned up this past Tuesday night to watch the Vice-Presidential Debates with us, we've decided to show the next two as well, Tuesday the 7th and the following Wednesday the 15th from 6-7:30pm. Enjoy a tasty local beer while you watch the country's future unfold!

Our Most Recent Special Event

Christy and I attended the 4th Annual Chef Showdown sponsored by Community Solutions on Tuesday evening, along with a dozen other much larger-name restaurants. Amidst their tables of fancy little finger foods we plated up whole grilled San Diego sardines and received rave reviews from a fairly tentative crowd. As an aside, I cannot stress enough what the book Bottomfeeder has done for us in the way of enlightening us to the environmental impact that different types of fisheries have all over the world, and how the way things are fished on one side of the world can affect consumers clear on the other side. I highly recommend this book not just as the great reference that it is but for the highly energetic, insightful, and witty writing that has captured my interest over and over with each chapter. Here is a recent blog Dennis wrote about these issues as they relate to us here in San Diego more specifically. And here's the video that Dennis posted about our trip out on a vintage sardine boat!

A Couple of Thanks

There are a lot of people who helped get Sea Rocket Bistro off the ground this summer, but since opening, we've made even more friends in the community who have greatly supported our concept and who have even donated some beautiful produce to the menu. I want to thank Craig and Valerie, our fresh urchin-crazed regulars, for your wonderful gift of passionfruit, which we served as a treat on our Local Fruit and Cheese Plate for a couple of weeks. Nancy Tarbell, of South Park, let us pick figs out of her lovely garden while they were in season, which were served on our Fancy Green Salad, as well as used in a batch of Strawberry-Fig Bread Pudding. We also Poached Figs a couple of times in a delicious porter beer sauce. Can't wait for fig season again next year!

As usual, check here for our most recent menu, which I've been trying to keep up to date. We look forward to seeing you again soon at the bistro!