Quick Update

We're approaching our third month in business here at Sea Rocket Bistro, and as with all new businesses, we've experienced our share of growing pains, but have been rolling with the punches and working hard to keep the unique, directly sourced foods which are the basis of our concept flowing to our North Park neighbors. In the last month, we've hired North Park resident Christy Samoy to head up our kitchen, added several items to our menu, and replaced the yelling between the kitchen and our servers with a nifty, high-tech paging system allowing us to silently know when your food is ready, just to name a few things! We've had really good comments on some of the changes and much-appreciated constructive criticism on others, so we want to thank you for being part of this process.

Where's the Beer?

We've been featuring four beers from a different local brewery every week starting on Fridays, with one or two people from the brewery with us on the weekends and running the featured beers until the following Friday. So far, we've hosted folks from Lightning Brewery, Stone Brewing Co., Mission Brewery and Ballast Point Brewing Co. Coming up this weekend will be Coronado Brewing Co., featuring their Saison by the Sea, a specialty Belgian-style farmhouse ale, the Islander IPA, Coronado Golden, and Nutter Brown, another specialty beer. Mark Schell and Brewer Sean Farrell will join us Friday night, and they might be able to send another brewer in on Saturday as well. We're more than halfway through these featured brewery weekends and it's been fun as well as a great learning experience for all of us at the bistro, since we now know better which types of beers will taste best with each of our menu items.

Menu Changes

We've expanded our menu a bit, offering new items in every category- our daily soup is now changeable (we recently offered a cold tomato soup instead of the creamy carrot), we've introduced a Local Cheese and Fruit Plate (which includes medium Winchester Gouda with fresh figs and plums, and walnuts drizzled with our avocado honey), there are a couple of new seafood appetizers (Ceviche and Filleted Sardines), slightly different preparations of our market fish (one grilled and one pan-seared, plus two different sauces on top), and a new repertoire of house-made desserts (Beer Cake, Pot de Creme and Macadamia Pralines). We've also had lots of requests for fish tacos, so you will probably see them on the menu soon too. Since we're having fun experimenting with local produce and the plethora of fish that have been in season during these summer months, we hope you'll understand if your favorites have changed, if we occasionally run out of things, or if the season for something has ended. There are plenty of items on our menu that will remain the same indefinitely, and others that we decide to play around with in the kitchen.

CSA Pick-up at the bistro

We've volunteered to become a pick-up location for the CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) program run by Sage Mountain Farm. If you live in the neighborhood and have wanted to join a CSA, this one has a great reputation and we know Phil and Juany personally. Sign up on their website or call Phil at 951-767-1016 with any questions. As soon as they have 10 people interested, they'll start dropping off your boxes of produce at the bistro every Wednesday.

Bring your own food!

A few weeks back, we had a Food Not Lawns dinner at the restaurant. Some of the people brought vegetables from their garden earlier that day, which we prepared and served back to the group as appetizers. It was a lot of fun, both for us and them, so if you're interested in something like this, get in touch with us to set it up. Also, if you're a fisherman and want us to prepare and serve your fish, bring it in and we'll serve it back to your party.

What's next?

Well, look out for our continued special events both at the bistro and out and about in the community. We are looking into getting involved with the Little Italy Farmer's Market and will continue to host parties and tastings for anyone who's interested. Please check out the rest of our blog to see if there's anything else you've missed!