Strange times. Southern California has been in a drought for as long as I remember. There was a moment when the populace seemed to care, when grass lawns disappeared and turned to sand and rock accompanied by succulents and cacti. When the billboards on the freeways asked people to conserve. All of that has turned into a city wide cognitive dissonance. Still, we twist the faucet dial and as much water as we want gushes out. People have stopped shaming the mansions with their opulent, gleaming, green, lawns. We’ve accepted our fates. The fact we live in a desert with little or no natural water is in the rear view of our subconscious. We must continue.

I mention this because it’s been raining here in the City of Angels for some time now. Weeks? A month? It may never stop. We need it, everyone says, but it’s not as if we store any of the water anywhere. It just travels out into the ocean. For sure there’s some parts of the state that need it, (those depressing dry lakes we see pictures of) and I’m sure there’s some weirdo militia types that are happy to replenish their rainwater catchers for when the apocalypse finally comes. If anything, this spoiled Californian bartender is annoyed because the restaurant has been agonizingly slow. The weather has been very East Coast, meaning the rain doesn’t come down for an hour or two but goes for days at a time.

Anyway, it made the farmer’s market this week a maudlin experience as many of the vendors I was looking for were not around. In particular I was desperately searching for the cherimoya. Yes, the dragon egg, the custard fruit dreams are made of as well as quite possibly the most annoying item to prep due to the imbalanced seed to flesh ratio. So yeah, maybe the cherimoya window is closed for another year. I thought about going to a store on Santa Monica Blvd that I know stocks them but no. The ones they have there are not organic or local. There’s rules.

It’s a tough time for the bar program. We’re in a holding pattern right now before citrus season starts to get good. The pomelos are still absent. Blood oranges don’t show up for another couple of weeks. Meyer lemons are still not as fragrant. Funny, years ago, I used to say citrus season was the best for cocktails but now I view it as quite boring. Maybe I’m getting better at what I do because now I look forward to challenging ingredients instead of the easy ones.

I picked up a couple pounds of the year’s remaining guava from Garcia’s and two pounds of sunchokes from Apricot Lane (who usually have cherimoya). The guava will breathe some life back into the dying star, Be Somebody, a cocktail on life support we thought would go bye bye. The sunchokes…Well, no idea. We ended up juicing them and the juice turned fully brown within seconds. So, $8 literally down the drain.

Without cherimoya I had to get rid of Donahue’s Quaffer, maybe my favorite cocktail of all time. Sad to see it go. This one was super simple and delicious. With this gone, as well as a couple other cocktails, our seasonal side of the menu has dwindled to just three, down from six just before the new year.

Alas, it’s always darkest right before the light. Before our pastry chef exited she left me a bunch of bergamot to play with. I zested and supremed them then added equal parts Malibu honey by weight and .5% salt. That all went in the closet to mature. Fingers crossed. The trim went into a pot with equal parts by weight sugar and some leftover orange juice. I thought it’d be some sort of marmalade and maybe the kitchen could use it for something if I didn’t. Uh. The result was a catastrophe. A few pounds of the most unpalatable bitter mess that made me feel like I had no business working in a restaurant. It gave me flashbacks to my days as a sous chef in my twenties and having to put something not great on a menu for New Year’s Eve, a soy/citrus reduction that tasted like burnt ass hairs.

Sous chef Keith came up to me and asked “What is that stuff labeled ‘Berg Marm’ in the walk in?” “A total disaster,” I told him. “Oh,” he said, “Yeah, I tasted it, it’s…” “Total shit?” “No, no,” he said, laughing being nice. “Yeah, it’s garbage,” I said. “I’m making vermouth with it now.” “Yeah, oh that’s cool. Yeah, in the future,” he said, “Maybe blanche everything first, that takes a lot of the bitterness away.”