table talk / By Jada Calypso Brotman

Summer Food Notes

Restaurants, produce and the meaning of local

(July 28, 2011)  Hooray, it’s summer! And it totally is less crappy thus far than last summer. Sun, bearable wind, not too much rain. While I appreciate our temperate clime, I sometimes long for the psychologically comforting seasonal delineators of Actual Weather Changes. In the Midwest and back East, seasons are specific. There’s snow. You wear a big coat. Rain melts snow in a hullabaloo of mud and silt. Bam! Spring. The grass is interrupted by flowers. Trees vomit blossoms. Then bam, Summer. You unpack your short shorts, crank up the AC and lament how that gym membership lies dusty and ignored. Seasons here are distinguished mostly by what’s available at the Farmers’ Market. More on that later, but first, restaurant news! 

New ones seem to be blossoming like buttercups. In Arcata, Toni’s Thai menu is up and running, finally. The Thai menu is not actually served in Toni’s; you buy it from the gleaming red truck next door and eat it inside. The summer rolls are refreshing and the peanut sauce is not just peanut butter and sugar, it’s an actual sauce with layers of coconut and coriander. The rice is perfectly steamed; the meat curries contain a comfortable amount of meat; and the Pad Thai is as good as any I’ve had.

“Locally grown” cherries - from Bakersfield PHOTO BY BOB DORAN

GALLERY >

The Beachcomber Cafe up in Trinidad bought Hank’s over in Bayside; it is open for business, complete with awesome local produce and cutie-pie waitresses in alt. aprons.

Z & J’s Asian Subs is about to open a new branch in the former Quiznos on Fifth Street in Eureka (by Starbucks). They say there’s “still more work to do” but it should be ready in August (we hope). They will have their trademark Earl Grey bubble tea, which is a good reason to go on living.

Avalon unexpectedly lost a VIP chef to the wilds of “family needs,” and in a domino effect the Arcata operation Bizou will only be serving dinner intermittently this summer. So last week’s special grilled lamb dinners were it, aside from an “occasional spontaneous night here and there,” since Chef Ron Garrido is needed at Avalon. “Do you know a chef/cook??” they wonder in their e-newsletter with double question marks. “Would they settle a spell, build very useful skills?” If so send them to Avalon.

In produce news … Still no word on the stone fruit situation, at least nothing definitive. It’s perhaps a little early in the season. The Co-op says they will have peaches from Hunter Orchards over in Trinity in a few weeks; Michael Deppe in produce assures me they were quite good last year (which is not as yours truly recalls them but I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt). Watch for the line at the Neukom’s stand at the Arcata Saturday market (kitty-corner from the post office) and you’ll know their peaches are in. I also hear Willow Creek Farm’s cherry harvest is looking great, barring any natural disasters; get them throughout July at the Farmer’s Market and local stores as well.

Melons are shaping up tolerable well too: Jane at New Moon Organics says the newly planted ice-cream watermelons are lookin’ fine, and that the Hokkaido squash plants are enjoying the sun — we just need to drag ourselves through the next few months before the Hokkaido drought is over.

It has been an awesome season for greens, thanks in part to the wet spring. The prices of local greens are satisfyingly low right now — collard, kale and chard from Wild Rose Farm, Luna Farms and Willow Creek Farm are well under two bucks a bunch.

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