Our 5 Year Anniversary is coming up!!  This is what we’ll be doing to celebrate, and we really hope you can join us!

Friday, May 31st – Sunday, June 2nd
5 for $55 5-Course Pairing Menu with your choice of beer or wine pairings (price is inclusive of food & beverages!)  Plus $5 Glasses of Champagne all weekend, any time!

On Saturday, June 1st, our official anniversary date, we’ll be throwing a party in the form of a Clam Bake.  From 12-5pm we’ll be outside grilling it up, and the restaurant will be open for casual seating and beverage service.  Our regular menu will then resume at 5pm so if you want to enjoy the clam bake, you need to come down during the day!

 5 for $55 PAIRING MENU
(choose from beer or wine pairings listed)

1
Oyster Shooter
with Rough Draft Brewing Weekday IPA & Grapefruit Jam
no additional alcohol is paired with this course

2
Spinach and Arugula Salad
orange segments, grilled sardine, and citrus vinaigrette
paired with Port Brewing Anniversary Ale (Strong Pale Ale/IPA) or Brander Wines Natalie Cuvee

3
Yellowtail
mole, raisins, banana puree, and greens
paired with Cismontane 3rd Anniversary Strong Belgian Ale or Ghost Pines Cabernet Sauvignon

4
Pork Belly
beets, beet greens, frisee, and apple chutney
paired with Stone Brewing 16th Anniversary Ale or Chacewater Winery Malbec

5
Peach Creamsicle
peaches, cream, and Chronic Cellars Spritz & Giggles sparkling wine
no additional alcohol is paired with this course

Also available all weekend long will be our Anniversary Beer Flight for just $10 any time, which will include the four beers listed above!  And, we had some super cool T-Shirts made by local printer Andy Loy of Extra Graphic, with graphic design courtesy of neighbor Clay Summers of Propoganda Creative.  They’ll be for sale for $15 if you’d like to own one!

Well, this is a very exciting time of the year for us here at the Rocket!  Our 5 Year Anniversary is coming up and we have some fun things planned for the weekend of 5/31-6/2 (June 1st being our official anniversary date.)  A few other events will be happening before then, and those are outlined below.  Just click on the active links for more detailed information about any events you are interested in, and please mark your calendars now so you don’t forget to stop by on June 1st for our special Anniversary Clam Bake!

Saturday, May 11th: Vegan Cooking Class with Chef Jenn

Sunday, May 12th: Mother’s Day Prix Fixe Menu

Thursday, May 16th: Grant & Roger Guest Bartending Night
Our good friends and neighbors Grant Ferrier and Roger Lewis of South Park will be guest bartending for us from 6-10pm, and each of them will be creating a special mixed drink featuring some of their favorite local ingredients.  Grant runs this farm in Fallbrook that we got our beautiful blood oranges from this spring, and Roger is a former restauranteur and current advocate for sustainable city planning and development. Grant and Roger will be mixing up several blood orange inspired drinks such as “martinis,” spritzers, a randy, and sangria.  Blood oranges are at the end of their season, so this will probably be your last chance to sample beverages made with these amazing little fruits!

Saturday, May 18th: North Park Festival of the Arts, 11am-6pm
Just a friendly reminder about this long-standing arts & music street fair!  Go, have fun, it’s your neighborhood!

Monday, May 27th: We will be CLOSED in observance of Memorial Day this year.

Thursday, May 30th: 30th on 30th will kick off our anniversary weekend with a cask-tapping of Rough Draft’s Weekday IPA with Grapefruit (brewed just for our special weekend!)  Guest Chef Rob Rubalcaba will prepare our food pairings for the night: Raw Ahi or Vegan Tostadas made with beans, sushi rice, wasabi-avocado, serrano, and sriracha topped with shredded cabbage and pico de gallo.

Friday, May 31st – Sunday, June 2nd: Sea Rocket Bistro 5 Year Anniversary Events!
We’ll be hosting a 5-hour long Clam Bake on Saturday, June 1st, a 5-Course Pairing Menu Friday through Sunday nights, and offering $5 Champagne all weekend long!  Can you see the theme??  ;-)  Our 5 for $55 Pairing Menu details will be announced next week on our blog, so check back here or on facebook for details and updates as this weekend approaches.

For those of you who like to stay in the know, or just love cool new technology…there’s a fun new up-to-the-moment way to be informed of goings on in your neighborhood called Breadcrumbs.  Check it out and download the app (for Android only so far) to follow Sea Rocket and get $2 Off any tapa during your next visit! And that’s not even the cool part- whenever you’re in the area of a place that you follow, you’ll get special offers and event reminders right to your phone so that you don’t miss out on what’s going on at your favorites spots! Click here for a quick video about how it works, or Like them on Facebook here.

Elena says”Love Your Mother!” (T-Shirt courtesy of Mother Earth Brew Co.)  Treat your mother to a special evening out at the Rocket this Mother’s Day!  On Sunday, May 12th, we will be offering a special 4-Course Prix Fixe Menu for $45 and if you like you can add beer or wine pairings to all 4 courses for another $20.  (The specific beer & wine pairings will be posted several days in advance.)  Before you look at the menu below, know that there is intent to make you drool!  We hope you can join us.  Reservations can be made by calling 619-255-7049, but are not necessary if you prefer to play it by ear.

MENU

Pear and Arugula Salad
serrano ham, frisee, cherry tomatoes, truffle vinaigrette

Seared Scallops
porcini, asparagus, leek, quail egg

Quail 2 Ways
serrano ham wrapped breast, confit legs, pineapple jalapeno chutney, creamy brussels

Caramelized Banana Panna Cotta
coconut foam, candied ginger, strawberries

Hello from the Rocket!  We hope you are having a wonderful April so far.  We are a bit quiet this month but rest assured we have a few things up our sleeves for the coming months, including a 100 Year Lynhurst Building block party in May, and an all-out 5-Year Sea Rocket Anniversary bash come June 1st!  Details will follow soon but for the meantime you can plan on a blowout birthday party in the style of a Clam Bake, some unique cask beer from one of our favorite local breweries (custom made just for us!) and a special celebratory pairing menu that we’ll run in the theme of our longevity.

But here are our nearer future happenings!  In honor of Earth Day (Sunday, April 21st), we will be showing some of the films from the documentary series Blue Planet and Frozen Planet for our Wednesday Night Movies on April 17th and 24th.  Showtime will be at 8pm now that it is getting darker so much later!

In other news, Dine Out for Life is happening on Thursday, April 25th.  Come spend your money at the Rocket and we will donate 25% of all sales for the night to help fight AIDS!

Have you been holding your breath for our next Cooking Class with Chef Jenn?  Well, you can exhale!  We’ll be hosting a “Quatros de Mayo” Cooking Class on, well, May 4th, from 3-6pm in the usual format.  Students break into small recipe groups and make the meal from scratch from start to finish, sitting down at the end of the instruction for a communal meal.  In keeping with the theme, this menu will be accompanied by a Michelada, which is included in the price of the class.  Click on the link above for more details and to register!

On Thursday, April 25th, Sea Rocket will be participating in the 7th annual Dine Out for Life event, a fundraiser created to fight AIDS organized by The Center (San Diego LGBT Community Center.)  We will be donating 25% of all sales for the night (that’s a lot!) so come in for dinner and spend as much as you can to help benefit this great effort!  Reservation are highly recommended and can be made by calling us at 619-255-7049.  Make your plans to dine out for life today!

Happy Spring San Diego!  Our favorite news for this month is that we released our new Spring Menu last week!  Click here for some photos of our new dishes and here for a copy of our printed menu.  Our new Grilled Sardines are high on the list of our guests’ favorites so far!

Also exciting, our friend, neighbor, and cinematographer extraordinaire Nick Colombini, is working on a promotional video for us which will feature, as we do here at the bistro, our local sources – farmers, fishermen – highlighting our concept of local foods and our goal of connecting our guests to those who grow and harvest it.  This is a photo from yesterday’s visit to the New Roots Community Farm in City Heights to gather some footage- a beautifully developed, small area along 54th Sreet run by IRC Ssan Diego and tended to by refugees from around the world.  We currently get kale and some other veggies from them on a regular basis.

We celebrated the spring season recently with a Blood Orange Menu highlighting the delicious fruits of Miro Ranch Farm in Fallbrook.  Some of these dishes are now on our regular menu so come check them out while the season is in full swing!

Our Wednesday Night Movies continue with a slew of Leslie Nelson flicks.  Join us at or before 7pm to take advantage of these free showings plus bottle discounts every week!

Tonight (March 17th) we’ll be serving some St. Paddy’s Day specials, including last year’s popular corned swordfish, some Irish Nachos, and an all night long happy hour draft featuring the Mad River Brewing Extra Stout for just $3/pint!

An event we’re really looking forward to is a screening of the San Diego craft beer documentary “Suds County USA” by local filmmaker Sheldon Kaplan.  This will take place at the bistro on Thursday, March 28th at 7pm.  Meet the producer, and cheers the early San Diego brewers who struggled to make possible the wonderful explosion of craft beers we have today!

On Easter Sunday (March 31st this year) we will be doing something a little different than past years and offering a family-style share menu inspired by holidays on the family farms in Italy.  The menu is still being finalized but will serve 4-6 people…and you don’t even have to be with family to order it!  So get some friends together and make a reservation!

Heads up to April: We will be participating in the Dining Out for Life fundraiser this year.  25% of the total night’s net sales will be donated to fight AIDS.

Thank you to all of our friends and regulars for making what we do worth doing!  We hope to see you again soon.

Hello North Park, and Happy Spring!  Chef Tommy Fraioli, along with former Chef/Partner Chad White, have worked up some scrumptious new preparations of our signature local foods, which we introduced last weekend.  Here is a photo collage including most of them.  They are very colorful, playful, earthy, seasonal, and of course extremely fresh and tasty.  Come check them out when you can!  (Our full menu is always available on-line here.)

Also, the San Diego Oceans Foundation has declared this week Sustainable Seafood Week to help promote awareness and encourage habit-forming eating by uniting restaurants in a common goal.  All of the restaurants participating donate back to SDOF based on a portion of sustainable seafood sales.  We will be donating to them for every order of our Grilled San Diego Sardines sold from tonight March 10th through Friday, March 15th, so if you like the idea of some charitable giving tied into your enjoyment of food, this is a great week to enjoy our most signature sustainable seafood item on the menu!

This coming Sunday, March 17th, we’ll be hosting a St. Patrick’s Day Celebration featuring the following specials, available for one-night only.  If you missed our highly-praised Corned Swordfish last year, we’ll be offering it again, along with some other Irish-inspired specials.  Check out a photo of last year’s dish in this San Diego Foodstuffs blog from 2012, and see how we make this unique seafood twist on the traditional corned beef recipe.  Reservations are always recommended, but not necessary.  Hope to see you Sunday!

MENU

$3 Stout special all night!
- – -
Stout & Oysters
Stout + 6 oysters – $15  |  Stout + 12 oysters – $25
Read the recent U-T article here exploring the historical pairing of Stout & Oysters!

Irish Nachos  $10
roasted potato chips piled high with bacon, cheese, tomatoes, onions and jalapenos

Corned Swordfish  $18
with potatoes, cabbage and whole grain mustard sauce

Irish Cream Pie  $8
made with Bailey’s Irish Cream

Watch out folks!  It’s gonna be a Leslie Nielson movie month!  Join us every Wednesday at 7pm in the front room for some cheeky laughs, great food, and bottle night discounts.  No reservations required.

3/6 –  2001: A Space Travesty

3/13  - Wrongfully Accused

3/20  - Spy Hard

3/27  - Dracula Dead and Loving It

edible San Diego magazine has started a new dinner series called edible Eats, featuring the hand-made cuisine from various restaurants in San Diego that work with seasonal locally grown ingredients.  They’ve chosen Sea Rocket to be the first, so we’re throwing a dinner party on Sunday, February 24th, highlighting our wonderful local seafood and produce with a 3-course menu plus wine pairing for $62.  Tickets can be purchased here, and seatings are available at 6pm and 8pm.  We hope you can join us!

MENU

Sea Urchin Gelee
Chef special!
sea urchin from Mitch Hobron

Suzie’s Beet Salad
watercress, frisee, crème fraiche, horseradish, goat cheese
beets and frisee from Suzie’s Farm

Sea Bass
kale, broccoli, almonds, egg, dijon cauliflower puree
kale, broccoli and cauliflower from Suzie’s Farm

Strawberry Bread Pudding
rhubarb syrup, macadamia brittle, mint whipped cream
strawberries from Suzie’s Farm, macadamia nuts from Russell Farms, rhubarb from New Roots Urban Farm