Culinary entrepreneurs, Santa Ynez Valley residents and Solvang business owners Courtney Rae and Crystal “Chef Pink” DeLongpré have announced the target grand opening date for their second restaurant project: Bacon & Brine. The full-service restaurant will be the duo’s second Solvang endeavor.
Located at 1622 Copenhagen Drive (the now-defunct Heidelberg Inn), the new restaurant, unofficially dubbed Bacon & Brine Deux, is slated for a Monday, Aug. 22, 2016, grand opening.
Upon opening the new restaurant’s family- and dog-friendly format will feature grab-and-go goodies from the counter and retail area for lunch, with full dinner service in the evenings and brunch service on weekends.
Menu items at the new Bacon & Brine will span a wider range than the ladies’ previous Solvang sandwich shop, which closed at the end of March 2016, to clear the pair’s schedule for the build-out of the new restaurant.
Featuring inventive, unquiet takes on both proteins and vegetables, Beef, chicken and vegetarian options will mingle with the restaurateurs’ famous pork menu items.
All of the cattle and poultry destined for Bacon & Brine are being raised alongside the restaurant’s heritage hogs at Shadow Creek Ranch, a small Santa Ynez Valley farm.
Chef Pink’s dedication to utilizing whole animals — her “waste not, want not” cooking mantra — will be pervasive on Bacon & Brine’s menus, which display items such as a sandwich of coppa di testa, pickled carrot, jalapeño, cilantro, basil and cultured butter; an oak smoke brisket sandwich with kombucha mop sauce and crispy onions; smoked boneless beef ribs with fresh noodle, three-day bone broth, pickles and herbs; Vietnamese street-style quail with citrus, pepper and salt; fresh cheese gnudi with whey, shiso leaf and marash pepper; brined and fried chicken with sweet corn succotash, green tomato, dill and buttermilk; and a fried chicken sandwich with shredded lettuce and crispy pickles on a fresh doughnut.
The dessert section of the menu will include the restaurant’s popular bacon caramel donuts and a nitro frozen custard, among other sweet items.
One apropos example of the culinary pair’s “whole animal” menu concept is their dinner menu’s “The Steak” offering: whichever cut of beef remains and is in need of utilizing, be it a filet, a New York strip or a rib eye.
Wine and beer selections will be added to the new restaurant’s menu, with a wine list curated by Adam Hopkins, former sommelier at Los Olivos’ Mattei’s Tavern and former wine cognoscente at Santa Barbara’s Les Marchands Wine Bar & Merchant.
Bacon & Brine’s suds providers will be Carpinteria’s brewLAB and Santa Barbara’s M.Special Brewing Company, with mead from Carpinteria’s The Apiary.
Other featured beverage offerings will include hot coffee and cold brew from Santa Barbara-based Caribbean Coffee Company and Bacon & Brine’s house-made kombucha.
The new Bacon & Brine space will aesthetically lean towards a warmer version of industrial, with a completely open kitchen and hand-constructed wood furnishings, crafted by local millwork artisans, Brothers of Industry.
A hand-painted mural by San Francisco Bay Area street artist Madeleine Tonzi will adorn one of the restaurant’s interior walls, while the outdoor area will include a diminutive urban garden in planter boxes handmade by Chef Pink out of wood from one of the Santa Ynez Valley’s original farmhouses.
“With Bacon & Brine, we want to share with the surrounding community our personal mix: fine dining techniques using local ingredients and our use of fermentation to create flavor profiles, which let those ingredients shine,” said Chef Pink. “I’m meshing my years of training as a proper chef with our philosophies of hyper-local, organic, whole, sustainable food systems…and my love of, and allegiance to, a great food experience that’s accessible to everyone,”
Chef Pink and Courtney Rae’s food philosophy is a full commitment to utilizing local, organic vegetables and organic, grass-fed, pasture-raised animals; none of their food items come from more than 10 miles away, except spices and seasonings, which are all fair-trade.
Chef Pink has forged strong relationships and friendships with local farmers through her loyalty and support and their mutual dedication to producing good food.
The new restaurant space will afford the pair the opportunity both to broaden their food-based objective through culinary and nutrition classes as well as offer special events to be hosted on-site and charity endeavors, often in the form of fundraiser events.
Also in store for the new restaurant is delivery service for both lunch and dinner. Lunch delivery will be available to Solvang addresses, while dinner delivery will be available to Solvang, Buellton, Los Olivos and Santa Ynez as part of the co-owner’s plan to “make great food accessible to everyone,” offering up a healthy and conscientious, local meal delivery option.
The “Bacon” half of this namesake food business is Chef Pink, a 17-year food and restaurant industry veteran who has worked in kitchens from Los Angeles to San Francisco, as well as in New York and Paris.
Chef Pink has helmed local Santa Barbara eateries including Epiphany Restaurant and Square One, and she has worked in private homes of local and Los Angeles-area celebrities.
Her New York years had her working with Chef April Bloomfield at both The Spotted Pig and The Breslin, while a stint in Oakland had her cooking at Camino Restaurant with Chef Russell Moore, a Chez Panisse alum.
In recent years, Chef Pink’s dedication to her craft and her food mission garnered her attention and thus TV spots on Spike TV’s “Bar Rescue,” Food Network’s “Cutthroat Kitchen” and “Man vs. Child” on FYI(TM).
The “Brine” half of is Courtney Rae DeLongpré, a proponent of healthy eating with a passion for food, nutrition and small-scale homesteading, which led to her studies of traditional, old-world food preparations, segueing to her current fermentation craft.
She has been a probiotic foods resource and educator in the local community for the past three years and a member of the community for the better portion of her life, as she was raised in the Santa Ynez Valley.
“Our dedication and loyalty to this community is at our very core,” Courtney Rae said. “Of course, we want to see visitors from both near and far enjoying Bacon & Brine, and everything that we have to offer…but our locals are the biggest part of why we’re here.”
In April 2016, the Bacon & Brine ladies successfully concluded a month-long Kickstarter campaign that raised more than $23,000 in funds for their new restaurant.
Part of the project’s Kickstarter funding came from backers in distant parts of the United States, but approximately 90 percent of all pledges came from supporters in Southern California, a testament to the reciprocal, local loyalty and respect that Bacon & Brine has earned.
Chef Pink and Courtney Rae met in the spring of 2008; their friendship has since bloomed over their mutual devotion to, and obsession with, whole foods.
Shortly after their marriage in October 2013, the pair decided that they needed a place of their own where they could do exactly what they wanted: create honest food with integrity for individuals and the benefit the entire community, including farms and ranchers, in the Santa Ynez Valley.
The duo’s fondness for flavor and healthful choices launched both the first and second Bacon & Brine.
Bacon & Brine will be open seven days a week, with initial opening hours scheduled for Monday through Thursday, 10 a.m. to 9 p.m.; Friday through Sunday, 10 a.m. to 10 p.m.; and Saturday and Sunday, 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.
For further information about Bacon & Brine’s grand opening plans, follow the restaurant on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter or contact Anna Ferguson-Sparks at 1.877.327.2656 or info@stilettomarketing.com.
— Anna Ferguson-Sparks is a publicist representing Bacon & Brine.