Grilled Fish Tacos

Hopefully you noticed that we've opened for lunch! Saturdays & Sundays from 11:30-3pm. Here's a special offer for you blog subscribers: Come in any Saturday or Sunday for lunch in the first two months (January and February 2010) and get a bottle of wine for just a buck to enjoy the next time you come in for dinner! Just ask for your dollar bottle when you come in for lunch and we'll give you a promise note to redeem when you come back.

Simple details: One per party per visit. There is no limit on the number you can collect! Come in every weekend for lunch and collect a $1 bottle of wine every time for the first two months of lunch service! For enjoyment in the restaurant only with purchase of food- we do not have a package license. Offer applies to any wine on our list up to a $30 menu value, which includes 60% of our reds and 80% of our whites! Just redeem your bottles by the end of June 2010.

If you need more enticement than that, we will also be serving Mimosas for $3, and here are some photos of our beautiful lunch plates! That coleslaw on the side has the most delicious, tangy mustard apple cider vinaigrette, and we're grilling the fish rather than pan-searing it.

Sloppy Joe

Beet Salad

Grilled Fish Sandwich

We'll be screening The End of the Line on Thursday, January 14th at 7pm, accompanied by a special 4-course sustainable seafood tasting menu (details below). The cost is $25 per person, which includes a small fee to help pay for the screening license. This is a fantastic and enthralling documentary about the state of the world's seafood, unsustainable fishing practices, and the forecast for when we will collectively run out of wild fish to eat. Call us at 619-255-7049 or e-mail elena@searocketbistro.com to hold your reservation. Seating will be limited to the first 20.

Fresh Point Loma Sea Urchin, direct from diver Mitch Hobron
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Summer Oysters from Carlsbad Aqua Farm, baked with medium Winchester Gouda Cheese & garlic
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Whole Grilled San Diego Sardines with South Bay Saltworks sea salt & lemon-infused Temecula Avocado Oil
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Miniature American Tuna Melt featuring pole-caught Albacore Tuna in its own oil

You may have heard about Suzie's Farm through some other wonderful 30th Street restaurants, namely Alchemy and The Linkery. They started in July as really the only farm in the City of San Diego, located just 15 miles south of us.

Suzie's Farm is really changing the game for restaurants. One of the big challenges in working directly with small local farms is that they only deliver once or twice a week. Get this, Suzie's delivers 5 days a week! If their pricing and selection are workable, this could fill a big void for many restaurants who care about getting farm-direct, organic, local San Diego produce.

Curious about this small farm that's rockin' the city? Watch the videos below. Each one is between 2 and 5 minutes long.

This video is about the history of the farm and business model.

This one is about organic certification and the lack of other farmers in the area.

This video is about farmers markets, North Park rejuvenation, and running a CSA.

Walk around the farms and see the veggies...

More about farmers market rules, certified producers, and farmers market managers...

One of my resolutions for a while now has been to offer some of our lighter fare during the day as well as every night. So, in honor of the new decade, we'll be opening for lunch on Saturdays and Sundays starting Saturday, January 2nd, 2010. 2010 might sound like a long way off, but it's only a few weeks away!

We'll be open from 11:30am-3pm and offering most of our more casual, standard items off our menu (steamers, beet tart, lamburger, tuna melt, etc.) in addition to announcing the arrival of a few new items, including Chris' Famous Mercato Fish Tacos which he's been serving up every week at the farmer's market in Little Italy- fresh tortillas filled with grilled marinated market fish, grilled onions, salsa fresca, white sauce and lime; a Full-Sized Pork Sloppy Joe which many of you have had a taste of through our miniature tapa; a Grilled San Diego Sardine Plate to keep our signature ingredient well represented; and this is my favorite- our Old School Fish Sandwich, as we call it here at the bistro- this is a pan-seared market fish fillet served up on some of our toasted ciabatta bread with lettuce, tomato, and a dash of chimichurri sauce. It got this nickname because we used to serve it a long time ago, but when we put our Tuna Melt on the menu last year, we took it off to avoid duplicate items. Of course it's nothing like the Tuna Melt, which is amazing in it's own right, and considering that I have insisted on ordering it "off the menu" all this time, I figure it's pretty silly to keep it from everyone else!

See the attached Lunch Menu to see what else you can expect from our lunch service. Come check it out after the new year...

Here's what's on tap (literally) as of this weekend. Plus, learn about the FREE Third Thursday Drinkabout shuttle!

And tonight, 12/17, we're showing this crazy Christmas movie for your enjoyment, starting at 7pm.

We still have some dates left for holiday party reservations, and we're starting to accept reservations for our New Year's Eve Prix Fixe. If it's anything like last New Year's, we'll be busting at the seams, so make sure you give us enough notice that you want to come in. This is one of only two days in the entire year when we take reservations, so call us at 619-255-7049.

Before that, of course (next week!) we're offering a Christmas Eve Prix Fixe Menu. If we don't see you there, we wish you a very happy holidays!

Big news for next month! We're opening for Weekend Lunch starting Saturday, January 2nd. We'll be open every Saturday and Sunday from 11:30am-3pm. Most of our casual dinner favorites plus some new lunchtime only additions will be available. Fish tacos anyone?!

Got Corks? Bring us your used bottle corks (real cork only, no synthetics) and we'll send them off to be recycled into various things- cork tile, cork shoe beds... Alternately, if you've always wanted to make something out of corks yourself but could never collect enough of them to do it, just let us know and we'll give you some!

Dennis got some funky salted croaker from some shady Russians in Hillcrest. Actually, I'm sure they were perfectly normal people. Check it out.

He also went on a little road trip a few weeks ago, and made some pretty cool stops at some NorCal slow-food hot spots!

Sea Rocket in the News
San Diego Food Finds article by Maria Desiderata.
examiner.com article on San Diego's Sustainable Restaurants.