Hippies Use Side Door

Last night I had the privilege of visiting, for the first time, the home of Captain Mike and Sally, the owners of Cap'N Mike's Holy Smoke Fish company (http://www.holysmokedsalmon.com/). Most Saturday afternoons you can find me at their booth in back of the SF Ferry Building Farmer's Market making gourmet smoked salmon sandwiches, on Acme sourdough bread, with Sally's homemade cream cheese and lavender salt from Eatwell Farms. I like to think of them as my West Coast parents, if I may humbly have the honor of calling them that.

Mike and Sally live nestled amongst Redwoods in Sonoma County and their house couldn't be more them. The first thing you encounter when you pass through the mermaid iron gates that guard their kingdom is Mike's boat, an old school cruising motorboat (sorry Cap'n, I forget the formal name). I squealed with pleasure on reading the little wooden sign hammered on the side, which read something like "All beautiful women and gamblers welcome". Captain and his friend who was a colonel lugged this boat up his long curvy driveway, and after watching it roll down the hill once, successfully buried its keel into the asphalt. It now sits as Mike's hideout, his own little boy tree house, where he can even see patients in the leopard-upholstered "office" that used to be a cockpit.

Sally cooked a meal to remember for us, her "sandwich crew" of myself and 4 young aspiring SF chefs, one of whom pointed out how different this menu was from her summer party menu-- no tomatoes or fava beans in February. She knows better. Instead, we had monster crabs in the heart of crab season and a salad of chicory, radish, and radicchio in neon winter green and red, glistening with lots of olive oil, vinegar, pepper and lavender salt. I loved the unusually high cheese-to-noodle ratio in her white sauce lasagna. I know I disappointed (both the group and myself) by not being able to appreciate the short ribs enough because of my lame recent vendetta with red meat; I took a couple tastes but felt quite alone as the rest of the group rejoiced as it fell off the bone after hours of soaking in honey-infused sauce and voted it the best dish. This is not to mention black cod mashed potato croquettes, or baby artichoke halves roasted with the most fragrant olive oil nested atop a chewy warm homemade crouton "stew".

Here are some pics of Sally cutting her chocolate peanut butter layer cake frosted with chocolate ganache. Sally's desserts were four star pastry chef-quality; one of the sandwich crew, a pastry chef who worked at French Laundry, declared her lemon-meringue tarts the best he'd ever tasted.

These are lessons Mike and Sally have taught me that I will bring to my cafe:

-Organization matters: The sandwich tickets must go in the wooden cash box when we pack up, not the blue tupper bin!

-Every little food expense matters: 50 cents extra if the customer wants capers!

-Making it homemade matters: the pickled onions, the cream cheese, the roasted red peppers....

-Vibe matters: project your positive energy and people will buy your sandwiches!

Sally, I can hear your voice when you read my blog in my ear now: "It wasn't radicchio in the salad!"-- That's what posing a comment at the bottom of the entry is for :)

Mike and Sal, last night was one for the books, but what I have to thank you for most of all is letting me into your salmon biz family.