in praise of sardines

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.

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.

Behind the plywood: latest photos

Below are the pictures I promised in yesterday's post. I included a couple of pictures from the pot luck food blogger party that I hosted for David Lebovitz.

As you can see, a lot has changed since the last time I posted pictures nearly a month ago. Believe it or not, we're inching closer and closer to finally opening Contigo's doors.

Behind the plywood: a day in my life

The city's electrical inspector is on the roof with my electrician. I hear bits and pieces of what he's saying as they pass through the restaurant. He's grilling the electrician nonstop. "You need to label these meters more professionally with a P-Touch label. You got one of those? The water heater needs to be strapped more securely." The electrician's brother tells me that inspectors are the cops of their world.

Speaking of electricity, PG&E just upgraded the building's power service yesterday afternoon. They had initially told us they would do it 3 weeks earlier, but then they postponed it.

Earlier today, the plumbing inspector was here. We didn't pass. The plumbers are now welding all sorts of copper pipes on the floor in the middle of the restaurant to make the changes needed so that we can pass.

Two guys from my stainless steel manufacturer are installing pot racks on the front of the restaurant's HVAC hood. "How high do you want it?" I grab my biggest paella pan and hold it up to make sure the bottom of it won't hit anyone in the head. I make a mental note not to hire any cooks over 6'2". The stainless steel installers need to perform a lot of work in the dish room, but one of the plumbers is in there welding things. They head off to lunch.

The refrigeration installer is also here. "I never hooked up one of these water chiller/carbonators before." He turns to my equipment supplier's rep. "Have you?" "No," the equipment rep answers. "It's a new product." I clench my teeth. "Just make sure you do it right." It's starting to look like all the equipment (water chiller, filter, CO₂ tank) isn't going to fit in the cabinet under our little wait station. The stainless steel installers are going to need to cut ventilation holes in the side of the cabinet. The 5-pound CO₂ tank that the equipment supplier brought with him is ridiculously small and will be empty in about a week of use.

"The ADA door opener has dozens of different settings," my general contractor says. "It regulates how fast the door opens, the angle, etc. How do you want it set?" I look inside the mechanism and see that it has a mini-computer inside. I wonder to myself how long that will last.

My architect emails me asking me to coordinate with my graphic designer (who left 3 weeks ago to work on a job in Paris and won't be back until next week) about getting a sign made indicating that the door must remain unlocked during business hours. I tell her it will be easier for me to coordinate. After we exchange 3 or 4 emails, I find out the size, location, and color of the font and contact the sign making company.

In between all the construction madness, I field calls from a POS rep, a wine rep, a banker, and a payroll company. I pause for a minute to research laser printers that can accept legal sized paper for my menus. My current printer can only handle legal sized paper if it's hand fed one page at a time.

My brother emails me. He coming into town from San Diego to stay with me this weekend. I add "buy guest bed" to my calendar. His best friend's mother passed away and I offer to provide food for the memorial service. There will be 80 people. Contigo's kitchen still doesn't have any pots or pans. I check my calender to see when I scheduled the appointment this week with my equipment supplier's "small wares" rep. I'm pretty sure it's tomorrow, but the date seems to have disappeared from my iCal. It isn't the first time. When will Apple get its wireless syncing to work better?

While I sit down to a late lunch, I write this post and discover that Typepad has updated the "compose new post" page (at long last). I wonder how long ago that happened and when I'll be able to learn the new features.

I think about all the things I want to write about but don't have time.

The post I most want to write but probably never will is the one about last weekend. Actually, now that I think about it, it was the weekend before last. David Lebovitz was visiting from Paris and I hosted a pot luck get together for a few friends at Contigo. PG&E hadn't turned on the upgraded power service yet, so we couldn't cook or reheat or refrigerate. Fortunately, we had enough electricity to turn on the lights and play music. We filled the room with candles and bouquets of flowers and branches of fresh olives. At one point, I stood back and took in the scene. I held a cold glass of Cava in my hand. Frederico Aubele's "Contigo" played in the background. I felt my heart burst wide open with pride.

"This is why I want to open a restaurant. This is what makes all the challenges and set backs worth enduring."

I'll share pictures soon. And more stories. Promise. The people installing the glass display cases for the kitchen just arrived and I have to get back to the restaurant. I also want to check in with the plumbers, stainless steel installers, and the refrigeration guy. Sounds like we didn't pass the electrical inspection either.

EDIT: Contigo will happily hire cooks of all heights :)