Rain, rain, go away. Come again another day. Daddy wants to play. Rain, rain, go away. Yeah, if you haven’t heard, it’s become a real problem. Many of the farmers were blocked from making it down to LA because the 101 freeway was washed out by a landslide. So I wandered yesterday in a ghost town of potatoes, cauliflower, and brussels sprouts. The cherimoya eluded me yet again. One farm told me they were coming but it was Apricot Lane, notorious for high prices. Yes, there was citrus, lots of it. Damn, I once really got up for citrus season. Now it’s a yawn fest. It’s me, not the fruit. Out of despair I picked up some early season blood oranges after eating one and saying “Not bad” to myself. I bought some blueberries as I’ve been lacto fermenting lots of them for some unseen future and I also grabbed a few pound of oro blanco grapefruit, the weird hybrid of a hybrid (grapefruit crossed with pomelo).

The rain is a major bummer. Everyone seems a little depressed. Slow restaurant. Poor farmers suffering. Yes, it’s way worse in other parts of the country and the world but you have to realize California is soft and we’re just not set up for all of this. We’re lizards, we need sun. Whoever master planned the infrastructure in this place really didn’t think it through, had no idea just how many millions of people would be stuffed in here. It’s very insane if you think about it. A place with no real fresh water supply but tons of undrinkable, salty coastline staring you right in the face. Earthquakes and mudslides and crazy wildfires, the homeless situation only getting worse. It often feels apocalyptic if you watch the news. Meanwhile, in Santa Monica, everything is fine. The sun is out this morning, I’m healthy, life is good. I’m listening to the Inception Soundtrack as I write. Sometimes all you need is good old Hans Zimmer.

I saw a dude who used to come to the bar but I forgot his name and so cupped my hand to my mouth and yelled “Eric!” to the side to see if he would turn his head. He either snubbed me or that wasn’t his name.

Cauliflower jumped out at me everywhere I looked. The long spindly kind you don’t see in supermarkets (why is it called a supermarket?) Cauliflower cocktail? How the hell would that even work? I’m not Nico de Soto. I’m pretty sure he pulled it off at some point. I mean, roasted cauliflower is delicious. I’m sure there’s some weird molecular gastronomy I’m unaware of that would work, make it creamy. Roasted cauliflower syrup? If you saw that on a menu would you order it? For sure it would have to appear cleverly disguised, call it “essence of brassica” toward the end of the description so people would just gloss over and ignore it. I mean, there’s worse places to go but some things are standard fare for a reason.

There’s a cool place in NYC I would like to visit, it’s called Double Chicken Please. Check out the menu here. They do all sorts of wild shit based upon classic comfort food dishes like French toast and cold pizza. Pretty cool. Why didn’t I think of that? Still, I don’t see cauliflower soup on there.

There’s times when I have this crazy imposter syndrome where I realize I have no idea what I’m doing. Yes, I can shake up a decent daiquiri, but there’s a lot of weird shit going on the cocktail world that is totally out of the reach of my meager talent. Bars now distill their own liquors and have cool contraptions like centrifuges and force carbonation doohickies. Shit, we don’t even have good ice or nice glassware. We buy clear BFRs (Big Fucking Rocks) but barely have the required freezer space to store them. We’ve pretty much hit our limit on what we can do. The bar is crammed to the hilt with all the fermentations and experiments going on. I’m allowed one crappy shelf in the walk in which is stacked to the ceiling. We’re lucky enough to have a little booze closet where we can store spices and such but it’s literally overflowing with dried ingredients both purchased and made in house. When you try not to throw anything away you really don’t throw anything away.

On occasion a regular or two tells me we have the best cocktails on the Westside. That really means something, but goddam, the cocktail is such a limited part of the whole meal, to me the most difficult and underappreciated aspect of any restaurant. Don’t believe me? People will gush about the food and deserts and mention the cocktails were just “good.” It’s so restricted. Sort of how constructing a screenplay is different from writing a novel. Rules versus freedom. There’s laws in place you pretty much have to adhere to. Any asshole can cook a steak and throw broccoli down on it, charge $50, do a little sauce. Try making shochu taste good in anything. We do have the benefit of our one main ingredient, booze, never going bad. That’s a big one. And our costs are super low. From there the only thing to do is build upward by sticking to the basics and attempting to be somewhat original without alienating anyone.