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Relate Restaurant puts roots down in Encinitas - for one month only.
Dan Moody
For three weeks in February, Encinitas will be getting its second pop-up restaurant (the first was Farm To Fork, which set up shop on the patio of a local Italian restaurant for a few months last year.) This iteration of an itinerant restaurant is the creation of Dan Moody, a CIA-trained chef who spent the last year as the sous chef at LudoBites, the popular roving restaurant experience that French chef Ludo Lefebvre started in Los Angeles in 2007. Moody chose San Diego for his first solo short-term food event, called Relate Restaurant, partly because of family ties; his parents live here, and he graduated from Torrey Pines High School.
The allure of the pop-up is that the concept allows chefs the ability to experiment, without the overhead costs of a traditional restaurant setup, by using an unconventional space or an underutilized kitchen. In this case, Relate Restaurant is being hosted at St. Germain’s Cafe in Encinitas, which is conveniently closed in the evening. February 3–26, Tuesday–Saturday, 6–10 p.m., Moody will serve a prix fixe menu whose lineup will change nightly; the minimum number of courses will be five and the dinners will be priced $50-60.
At an L.A. practice run last fall, Moody served a signature dish that will likely turn up on Relate’s menu, a chili-rubbed ribeye with avocado spinach puree, truffled potato gratin and a Guinness gastrique. Other dishes being polished include a beet salad with persimmon, chestnuts and citrus, and a carrot consommé with ravioli. The chef also hopes to incorporate live cooking demos into his stint at St. Germain’s, perhaps toward the end of the evening’s service. Go here for a reservation or call 858-367-3709. relaterestaurant.com
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Reader Comments:
The term 'pop up' is quickly becoming abused. Chef Ludo Lefebvre's LudoBites is the pop up that's driving what is becoming something of a movement in the restaurant industry. Farm to Fork, whatever they choose to call it, is not a pop up in the sense of what Ludo and now his sous, Chef Moody is doing. If we are to call Farm to Fork a 'pop up' then we should be calling every food vendor at the local Farmer's Market that as well, which of course we won't. Relate is San Diego's first professional pop up.