From Italy toNapa Inspiration for the bruschetteria food truck came by way of Erickson and Crawford’s travels through northern Italy, where they became friends with owners of a restaurant that specializes in bruschetta, a classic Italian dish of toasted bread dressed in olive oil, rubbed with garlic and topped with fresh ingredients such as tomatoes and other vegetables. “On cycling trips to Italy, we would often end a long day on the bike sharing bruschetta and local wine,” Crawford said. “We wanted to offer a similar experience in our own tasting room.” Their plan was to use ingredients from their organic farm in Pope Valley to re-create some of the “delicious and vibrant, unique toppings” for the bruschetta, Crawford said. Erickson was specific about the bread, McConnell recalled: Slices needed to be large enough, almost the size of a small pizza, so that the bruschetta could be easily shared. “They were fascinated by this concept (of the bruschetteria) because nobody was doing anything like this,” McConnell said. Pedal power This time of year, it’s not uncommon to see cyclists come through the Clif Family Tasting Room in St. Helena, grab an espresso or a Clif Bar, fill their water bottles, go about their day and later return from their cycling trip to the tasting room for a chilled glass of wine and a bite to eat from the food truck, open since 2014. “The first three years of our existence, it was the best- kept secret locally,” McConnell said of the bright-green mobile eatery. Though he came from a fine-dining background and had never stepped inside a food truck until his current position, McConnell said he was “totally excited” about designing his own kitchen and bringing Erickson and Crawford’s vision of the bruschetteria to fruition. Typically parked just off the back patio of the tasting room, the food truck serves a variety of bruschetta, salads, sides and main dishes that change according to what’s in season at the farm. At the height of its production season, the 90-acre farm—which includes a vineyard that produces about 8,000 cases of wine annually—supplies 70%of the food truck’s produce. Peppers from the farm go into the company’s line of hot sauces and jel lies, and the orchard’s more than 30 varieties of fruit are used to
Tessa Henry, right, manager of Clif Family Farm, grows a variety of fruits, vegetables and herbs that end up in dishes served by the food truck, such as the chicory-citrus salad above.
make jams, preserves and olive oil. Chickens, which the f a rm added in 2015, prov ide eggs for some of McConnell’s dishes. Ingredients not available from the farm, such as pork, other meats and bread, come from local farms and vendors. Taking a backwards approach As the farm’s manager for the last three years, Tessa Henry said she likes that Clif Family Farm grows such a wide va r iet y of crops to promote biodiversity “in the middle of what is pretty much all vineyards.” But managing the farm’s more than 70 crops is labor-intensive and can be challenging, she acknowledged, especially when trying to figure out how much to grow at different times of the year to match what McConnell needs. “We both have to be super-f lexible,” she said, noting that she keeps in constant contact with the k itchen, pa r t icu la rly dur ing the busy summer months. “Because we both have to work with each other to make it work, I think it makes both of us think outside the box a little bit.” Although she’s mindful about choosing crops that will do well in the region, Henry said she also considers what McConnell wants to see on the menu and what’s unique that he can showcase. Whereas most chefs create a menu and then acquire the ingredients to execute the recipes, McConnell said he takes a more “backwards approach,” in that many of his recipes are born in the kitchen as he tries to adapt
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May/June 2021
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