Just a couple of random chumps at the bar last night…Or so I thought…I was speaking with a couple of regulars I hadn’t seen in almost a year, just flapping my gums as usual about how most restaurants and their bars don’t follow along with the seasons, which to me is a little puzzling considering where we live. Then, out of nowhere, this dude who I thought was minding his own business, chimed in.

“It is weird,” he said. “But take it from me, most places don’t do it because it’s too expensive. Believe it or not, ingredients from other places often cost less, which is a big reason why they do it.”

I’ve been doing this shit so long now I guess I totally forgot what it’s like. I go to the farmer’s market every Wednesday and stroll around and forget how goddam lucky and spoiled I am to live here. This shit is well ingrained within me now. It’s normal to walk along Arizona Avenue and go, “Oh, hey cool, cherries are back in season. Time to think of what to do with them.”

This dude treated all of us with an educated, controlled rant. He was a heavy hitter from a very famous restaurant. Color me surprised and impressed. It prompted a great discussion. He told us this place where he worked stayed with the seasons as much as they could but not always due to costs. Damn. Even them, I thought. Yes, I’ll toot my own horn for a minute here. We’re the only bar around that sticks with the seasons and attempts to keep it as local as possible. Yes, we offer a lot of spirits from all over the globe. We could only provide local and organic spirits as well but that would drive the costs up even higher. There has to be a balance. The point is we’re doing it and could go even further if we wanted to.

This all started with the ethos of Chef Jeremy Fox and continued, behind the bar, with our old manager, the muddler man himself, Aaron Ranf. Local, seasonal. Is it really so hard?

The take away? In the words of our seasoned kitchen veteran who had bellied up, “It is hard and extremely rare.” Yeah, I guess so. But is it really that hard? I mean, it is for places that experience winter, but for those of us with year round farmer’s markets it shouldn’t be. It should be common and normal. The produce isn’t so expensive that it should throw people for that much of a loop. Twenty bucks worth of strawberries can go a long goddam way. That’s almost the cost of just one drink.

A quick stroll across the street to the newly minted Michelin restaurant on the block, Citrin, sees their online offerings providing us with a menu laden with seasonal vegetables (favas, asparagus, etc.) presumably from local farms, but the seafood and half of the meatier proteins…Not so much. It’s obvious most of the fish is from somewhere else. Another one of our energetic guest’s points, “A lot of California and West Coast seafood gets shipped elsewhere in the world and most restaurants buy their seafood not from the fishers themselves but from purveyors who source their seafood from other places besides California.” Yeah, seems totally backward. Real fucking weird.

Google “seasonal restaurants” and you’ll get two things: 1. Rustic Canyon pops up immediately. 2. The actual online definition states this: “A seasonal restaurant refers to an establishment that is open during specific seasons of the year instead of year-round. Hmm. Well, I guess that is right. Shit. But it’s not my definition.

I guess I’ve got a bug up my ass because the top 50 North American Bars list just came out. Side note: I didn’t expect we would ever be on it. But almost none of these places flow with the seasons or keep it local. Shit, maybe I’m too obsessed with comparing our tiny operation to what the greats are doing (definitely, not maybe). But when I take a gander at Thunderbolt’s cool and tasty looking bevvies, I can’t help but notice immediately that the produce they use is from somewhere else and doesn’t vibe with what is available right now. And yes, they could if they fucking wanted to.

Yeah, we don’t have a canning machine, or a centrifuge, we have no sexy glassware and the bar is small and looks like shit, but goddamit our drinks create as little waste as possible and our produce comes from the farms here. Oh, and they’re fucking delicious too. I’d put them up against the fancy guys anytime.

Rant over.