We are proud to announce the opening of our New American restaurant, Blue Cow kitchen & bar, in early February!

Blue Cow will showcase the evolution of Mendocino Farms into a more formal, sit-down restaurant setting. The downtown Los Angeles restaurant will feature the same whimsy, seasonality, and support of local purveyors that have become tenets of Mendo, in a more refined setting that highlights the breadth and adaptability of the humble sandwich.

Blue Cow has recruited Joshua Smith, formerly of Church & State, Anisette, and Milos at the Cosmopolitan Las Vegas to run the kitchen as Executive Chef.  Chef Smith will be executing serious food, without taking himself too seriously.

Examples of Chef Josh’s dishes that represent this philosophy include Pink Eggs & Ham – beet marinated deviled eggs with Mendocino mustard, double smoked bacon & candied jalapenos, The Lamb Lavash – house ground lamb kefta with Soledad Creamery tzatziki, potatoes, roasted red peppers & zucchini pickles on housemade Indian flatbread, and The Spanish Chicken Tartine – char grilled organic chicken with piquillo peppers, pimento cheese, cherry tomatoes, aged Manchego & charred leeks on grilled rustic white bread.

In addition to functioning as a traditional restaurant, Blue Cow will also serve as a test kitchen for the Mendocino Farms sandwiches.  Sandwiches will be at the heart of the Blue Cow menu, so Mario asked friend, Jason Travi to collaborate with him, as the inaugural “guest chef” to invent the Blue Cow version of the most popular sandwich in the country: the burger.  The New School Burger is presented on an original buttermilk bun developed with Dolce Forno bakery and layered with butter lettuce & Point Reyes toma, and spicy remoulade.  Travi is also designing a selection of in-house sausages in line with the Mendocino Farms’ ingenuity.

Here is a sneak preview of the construction progress…

Like us on facebook to be invited to tasting parties, or visit our website for the full menu.

One of the new sandwiches I’ve been working on recently will do MORE than just fill your need for a Classic Italian Deli Sandwich. It will actually be helping to send underprivileged inner city kids of LA to one of the top youth leadership camps.

Here at Mendo, we pride ourselves on the continued leadership of our team members and managers. So, we thought, what better way to give back to the community than to use the sale of our sandwiches to help inner city kids of LA go to summer leadership camp. Enter The California Association of Student Councils, CASC for short. CASC is a student led non-profit organization that provides leadership development programs for elementary, middle, and high school students. They’ve been around since 1947, providing leadership training for active community leaders and even a few current CEOs. We are becoming one of CASC’s largest scholarship donors by facilitating the selection of 20 LA Youth to receive a once in a lifetime training opportunity.

The sandwich that I created to breathe life into this project has been appropriately named, Papa Mario’s “Social Mission” Italian Deli Sandwich. It is named after the grandfather of Mendo’s founder – who was a very charitable businessman. We wanted to come up with a sandwich that would allow us to collect a portion of the proceeds, and use that money to send these students to the CASC leadership program.

I hope it makes your day brighter knowing that with every delicious bite of your handcrafted sandwich, you are playing your part in our “Social Mission” to make the lives of a few LA  kids a little better! Together, we will help give our future leaders the skills to be great!

Enjoy!

I recently went to Artisanal LA, a downtown showcase of LA artisans, and tried a great local goat cheese maker from Ontario, just east of LA. They’re called Drake Farms and they are located just 34 miles from downtown LA. After meeting Dr. Dan- veterinarian, third generation goat farmer and true goat-lover – I was committed to having Mendocino Farms support him. They are the only local goat dairy that produces cheese in Southern California. At Mendocino Farms, we have been using Cypress Grove goat cheese from Northern California for a long time, and I still love their product, but Drake Farms is smaller, more local, and, as it turns out, needs our help. They are still struggling to get into the big farmers’ markets.

So we’ve made the big switch and shifted the entirety of our goat cheese buying (which, thanks to you guys loving our goat cheese sandwiches, is not an insignificant amount of cheese) over to the Drake Family Farms. We are a loyal bunch here, but if you spent a few minutes talking to Dr. Dan the Goat Cheese Man (as he’s known), you’d make the switch too. The love that goes into this cheese, from treating each and every goat as a pet, to the artisanal craftsmanship that goes into the creation of the cheese itself, is beyond compare.

More and more today, I’ll hear the word “artisanal” thrown around, and it’s a compelling word, but I’m not sure everyone knows exactly what it means when it relates to cheese. The American Cheese Society (yes, that’s a real thing) has stated that the word implies that a cheese is produced primarily by hand, that it’s produced in small batches, and using as little mechanization as possible. All of the cheese produced by Drake Farms is both artisanal and farmstead (meaning made on the farm, with milk exclusively from the farm’s own animals), and made with the highest quality milk.

It was a lucky day when I stumbled onto Drake Farms at Artisanal LA, a downtown showcase for some of the greatest LA craftsmen (a truly awesome two-day festival; to read more about Artisanal LA, check out this blog from LATimes.com), for Mendo and for you guys, who now get to enjoy the product. I know you guys are already loving the goat cheese-centric sandwiches on our menu; as an added treat, I’m including a recipe for the Jingle Balls Rolled in Holiday Cheer, a terrific way that you can showcase Drake Farms’ goat cheese to your friends and family at home this holiday season.

I know everyone who tries Drake Farms’ Goat Cheese is going to want it at home. Right now, you can buy this cheese in only a few stores and farmers’ markets; if you can’t find Drake Farms at your local cheese shop, ask for it! Look for them at the following Markets and Stores:

The Cheese Cave in Claremont
Temecula Valley Cheese in Temecula
The Cheese Store of Silverlake in Silverlake
Say Cheese in Silverlake
Laguna Hills Farmers’ Market
Costa Mesa Farmers’ Market
Tustin Farmers’ Market
Chino Hills Farmers’ Market
Rancho Santa Margarita Farmers’ Market
Great Park Farmers’ Market in Irvine

And keep coming back to Mendo to get your fix!

Check out Drake Family Farms at www.drakefamilyfarms.com, or “like” them on Facebook by searching Drake Family Farms Goat Dairy California.
Jingle Balls Rolled in Holiday Cheer